Agile methodologies may find their comfort zone with co-located teams and with customers that are at hand for giving quick and valuable feedback. Is it possible to keep agility in distributed teams scenarios, where the customer is miles away and testers at the other side of the world? What are the main challenges when face-to-face communication is minimized and the time zone and cultural differences are an everyday factor? What approaches, processes and tools can help overcoming these challenges? 2 weeks ago I had the privilege to present at the Agiles@BsAs monthly meeting a topic that addresses these questions: “Agile Distributed Teams”. In particular, I shared some stats and findings of co-located vs. distributed approaches for agile teams and shared some approaches that tend to minimize the impact of being remote.

1. Agile Distributed Teams Ariel Schapiro – ariel.schapiro@southworks.net

2. Stats

3. Stats 32% + 13% = 45%

4. Why distributed? Global markets Costs Specialization Talent “Follow the sun”

5. “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

6. War-rooms vs. cubicles Co-located

7. Co-located Productivity Activities Distraction and recognition

8. Distribution levels Devs Customer QA Sponsor

9. Challenges

10. Goal Minimize impact

11. Communication HOW WHAT Status, plan, progress, Problems, discussions, expositions, training, complaints, congratulations, help… Frequent but efficient Channels for every need Balanced coordination and points of reference “Share the pain”

12. Follow-up meetings Presentations: inspiring, easy to follow, to the point Live meeting minutes / collaborative Checkpoints (open questions, summaries) “sorry I was on mute”

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14. Email 1:1-N Formal Discussions

15. IM 1:1 Ideas/thoughts Tool to get closer Status (available, busy, etc.) Availability + progress To the point Formal (?) Focus Exit Sensitive issues

16. Phone 1:1 Urgency/sensitive issue Tone Official Availability Agenda

17. Repository “Maps and dictionaries” Videos Tools Backlog Issues Shared Knowledge

18. Change of channels Minimum doc necessary Sketches  “specltes”  doc Organization based on distribution (Conway’s Law) Flexible process

19. Trust Frequent visits (sponsors, team members) Feedback: 1:1 Retrospectives Previous team cohesion

20. Sample

21. Thanks!

22. 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 MacCormackHypothesis 2008 IT Project Success Rates Survey Results - Ambysoft