Another way of thinking about the kinds of typical questions asked during interviews is to divide them into "direct" and "open-ended" questions.
A direct question asks for specific information and often results in a one-word answer. These frequently have to do with team members trying to verify information they have already received or attempting to clarify points that are still unclear.
Open-ended questions usually ask "how" or "what." The person being interviewed is free to interpret an open-ended question and provide the details in any way he or she likes.
Examples of open-ended questions are:
- "How did you plan the software development in your project?"
- "How are product size estimates developed?"
- "How are the product size estimates used?"
Open-ended questions are preferred during an interview because they reflect the perspective of the people being interviewed. They also make the people being interviewed feel like they are part of the interview process.
Open-ended questions can concern processes, products, or organizational cultures and obviously can follow up more specific inquiries. They can be either context-free or guided. A context-free question applies to any development activity or organization. For example, a context-free question about the environment may ask, "If you could fix any problem in this organization, what would it be?" A guided question on the other hand might ask, "Can you explain how you establish X?"
Open-ended questions can also be specifically related to the CMM/CMMI models. For example, activity X in the question "How is activity X planned?" could refer to configuration management, requirements management, or any other area where the CMM/CMMI calls for planning. The question is open-ended because the details of the planning process are not assumedthose being interviewed are free to answer in any way they wish.
Although open-ended questions are preferred during the beginning of interviews, interviewers need to ask direct questions as well. Direct questions are used to get specific information, but there is a high risk that they will not be answered unless open-ended questions are asked first and the proper context for the questions has been established.
For example, the question "Have your software development folders ever been configuration audited?" could provide useful information about the software configuration management process, but only if it has been established that the organization has software development folders and that the people being interviewed know what a configuration audit is. Without a context, the terminology involved in direct questions may render the questions unanswerable. The team must carefully adapt questions to the language of the organization in order to be understood by the interviewees.