Agile Distributed Teams

Ariel Schapiro – ariel.schapiro@southworks.net

Stats

Stats32% + 13%

=

45%

Why distributed?

• Global markets• Costs• Specialization• Talent• “Follow the sun”

“High-bandwidth communication is one of the core practices of Scrum… The best communication is face to face, with communications occurring through facial expression, body language, intonation, and words. When a white board is thrown in and the teams work out design as a group, the communication bandwidth absolutely sizzles.”

Ken Schwaber,The Enterprise and Scrum

Co-located

War-rooms vs. cubicles

Co-located

Co-located

Productivity Activities

Distraction and recognition

Distribution levels

Collocated

Collocated Part-time

Distributed with overlapping work hours

Distributed without overlapping work hours

Devs Customer QA Sponsor

Challenges

Goal

Minimize impact

Communication

Frequent but efficientChannels for every needBalanced coordination and points of reference“Share the pain”

Status, plan, progress,Problems, discussions, expositions, training, complaints, congratulations, help…

WHAT HOW

Follow-up meetings

• Presentations: inspiring, easy to follow, to the point• Live meeting minutes / collaborative• Checkpoints (open questions, summaries)• “sorry I was on mute”

Slide 47 with a very long title (the “anti slide”)

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Email

• 1:1-N • Formal • Discussions

IM• 1:1• Ideas/thoughts• Tool to get closer

• Status (available, busy, etc.)• Availability + progress• To the point• Formal (?)• Focus• Exit• Sensitive issues

Phone• 1:1• Urgency/sensitive

issue• Tone• Official

• Availability• Agenda

• Repository• “Maps and dictionaries”• Videos• Tools– Backlog– Issues

Shared Knowledge

• Change of channels• Minimum doc necessary

– Sketches “specltes” doc• Organization based on

distribution (Conway’s Law)

Flexible process

Trust

• Frequent visits (sponsors, team members)

• Feedback:– 1:1– Retrospectives

• Previous team cohesion

Sample

Thanks!

References and recommended readings• Scrum and XP from the Trenches - Henrik Kniberg• The Enterprise and Scrum - Ken Schwaber• A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum – Elizabeth Woodward• Adapting Agile Methods for Complex Environments - IBM• Global Development and Delivery in Practice (GDD) – IBM

• Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft patterns & practices – Ade Miller

• State of Agile Survey 2010 – VersionOne• How Does Radical Collocation Help a Team Succeed? - Stephanie

Teasley• Exploring the Duality between Product and Organizational

Architectures: A Test of the “Mirroring” - Alan MacCormack Hypothesis • 2008 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results - Ambysoft