The document discusses the challenges and strategies for managing distributed agile teams, highlighting issues such as communication barriers, cultural differences, and dependency management. It emphasizes the importance of collaboration, trust, and using tools effectively to enhance productivity across geographically dispersed teams. It also presents several approaches to mitigate issues related to dependencies and improve agile practices, including feature teams and open-source models.

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Agile with Distributed Teams and Dependencies
By: Nirmaljeet Malhotra
Agile Coach

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Intro
Distributed family
15 years in IT
7+ years in Agile
Twitter: #mnirmaljeet www.nirmaljeet.com
Agile coach and trainer

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Wanna be Agile?
Distributed Teams
Dependencies

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Scrum by the book…

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Why distribute? Agile hyper productivity and quality combined with offshore benefits: Availability of talent Scale up and down Cost reduction Round the clock support

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What are distributed teams? Not at the same place Different Floor Office City Country Continent Time-zone Offshore, near shore, not sure..
Courtesy: Keith Richards

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Distributed ways
Courtesy: Jeff Sutherland

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Survey 1
In one word, share your number 1 problem with distributed teams across countries/continents

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Survey 2
In one word, share your number 1 problem with distributed teams in the same building/floor

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Question?
So where is the problem?

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Agile Manifesto
http://agilemanifesto.org/
Individuals
Interactions
Processes
Tools
Working
Software
Comprehensive
Documentation
Customer
Collaboration
Contract
Negotiation
Responding to
Change
Following a
Plan
Distributed Teams

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Distributed teams | Key issues Communication tax Accessibility Information lost in translation Language and cultural differences Motivation drop Cost Compromise on personal time

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“Project costs increase in proportion to the time it takes for people to understand each other”
- Alistair Cockburn

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Key success attributes
Focused team work
Collaboration
Trust
Cultural Sensitivity

15. ©2008 Improving Enterprises, Inc. Communication Face to face Use WebEx, Skype etc… whatever it takes Phone and IM is better than documents and mails Go visual Travel - create a bond Collaboration Digital scrum boards / dash boards Wiki Avoid/reduce emails Share the pain
Communication and Collaboration

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Development and Tracking Tools Where is the code and how do we manage it? How much TDD and CI? What other tools are we using to: Manage requirements Manage project

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What’s important.. What is the vision? Don’t allow tools to drive the process Leverage creativity

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Agile Feature teams Story mapping Release planning Backlog grooming Scrum of Scrums Same scrum rules apply
Courtesy: agilenorth.org

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Distributed setup
Role distribution
Balance of power
Distribution in vertical slices
Affinity based feature
ownership
One team

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Before you scale Run scrum successfully locally Elevate quality through XP practices Stop thrashing, focus people Scale
Introduction to agile and scaling at the same time can be a challenge

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Inspect and adapt Hone the process, a tiny bit each time Find the root cause Retrospect Keep it simple

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Best practices for distributed Agile
People
Process
Tools
Open seating
Daily stand up
Wiki
Team building
Scrum of Scrums
Star phones
Vision
Retrospectives
Smart boards
Cross pollination
Remote pairing
PLM tool
Tracking and metrics
Build pipeline
Example:

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Manage distance

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Dependencies

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Where do dependencies come from?
End user driven
Requirements decomposition driven
Component driven
Technology driven

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Dependency | Key issues Conflicting priorities Team A dependent on Team B Team A makes a change causing work for Team B (Architectural refactoring) Dynamic scope Changing priorities each sprint Cycle time Higher cost Communication and process overhead Perception Integration Tough to predict / anticipate
Courtesy: gfi.com

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Option 1 | Feature Teams Feature teams Allow teams to deliver end to end feature
Search
Browse
Checkout
Pay
Team A Vision Autonomy

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Options 2 – Open Source Model Internal open source model
Team 1
Team 2 Reduced wait time Collective ownership Build knowledge Understand challenges Evolve Design guidelines Code standards People Build trust

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Option 3 – Dependency planning Identify and plan for dependencies User story mapping Release planning
Usage
Criticality
Release 1.0
Release 1.1

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Option 3 – Dependency planning 2 Involve all POs Cross team collaboration Scrum of Scrums Mock Definition of Done Inspect and adapt

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Communities

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Finally
Having right structure and tools is important
But…
How you practice Agile values is critical

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