This is one of the second presentation that was given by Narinder Kumar @IndicThreads Conference in Pune.

1. Experiences of Fully Distributed Scrum
Narinder Kumar
www.xebiaindia.com

2. Linear Scalability of Production between
San Francisco and India

3. Agenda
➢ Overview of Scrum
➢ Types of Scrum in Distributed Development
➢ Project Context
➢ Challenges & Solutions
➢ Agile Toolkit for Java Developer
➢ Discussion

5. Scrum process

6. Scrum Terms
Roles Artifacts
Scrum Master Product backlog
Product owner Sprint backlog
Team Impediment list
Meetings Burn-down chart
Sprint Planning
Daily Scrum
Sprint Review
Sprint Retrospective

7. Plan – Act - Study

8. Why Distributed Scrum ?
➢ Reduced Costs
➢ Availability of Talent
➢ Scaling up/Down with Knowledge Retention
and without local layoffs
We count this as successful only if quality and
productivity match those locally

9. Agile and Distributed : Oil and
Water ?
➢ Good Hyperproductive
Agile Teams are
➢ Co-located
with
➢ Shared Ownership
➢ Shared Responsibility
➢ High Interaction

10. Typical Problems in Distribution
➢ Time-Zones
➢ Culture
➢ Language
➢ Different Standards
➢ No Shared Ownership
➢ Us - Them

11. Distributed Scrum Styles
Isolated
Scrums
Distributed Scrum of
Scrums
Fully Distributed
Scrums
© Jeff Sutherland 1993-2007

12. Isolated Scrums
➢ Works when you have local PO (Separate Project)
➢ May be doing Waterfall with an iterative development
team
➢ Results in classic Integration problems and code
ownership
➢ Still large degree of us / them
Isolated
Scrums

13. Scrum of Scrums
➢ Recommended by Scrum Alliance
➢ Recognizes the link
➢ Does not give us rich communication to close the gap
➢ Still accepts the problem of distance as Given !

14. Fully Distributed Scrum

15. Case Study : TBD.com
➢ Social Networking WebSite based out of SF,
California
➢ Started Sep 2006, Live March 2007
➢ April 2008 : Looking for an off-shore partner to
increase development capacity
➢ Goal : Grow Member base and Create a niche
in yet to be tapped market segment

16. Getting to Know Each Other
software development
done right

17. Technology Stack
YUI
Spring Web MVC
JSP 2.0

18. Critical Success Factors
➢ Shared Resources
➢ Regular Communication
➢ Initial Co-location and Regular Travel
➢ Easy Access to Product Owner

19. Acknowledgement of Challenges

20. Kick-Off
➢ One week Co-location
➢ Product Owner and Scrum Master in India
➢ Knowledge Transfer and Set-Up
➢ Norming & Chartering Session
➢ Success Criterias
➢
Initial Distributed Team of 7 People

21. Norming & Chartering Session
➢ Common Code Base
➢ Common Backlog
➢ Shared Definition of Done
➢ Communication Modes

22. Success Criterias
➢ Productivity
➢ Knowledge Build-Up of India Team
➢ Quality
➢ General Team Dynamics
6 week pilot was initiated

23. Modified Scrum Sprint in Action
➢ Daily Scrum
➢
End of Day Status Updates
➢ Weekly Team Meetings

24. Modified Scrum Sprint in Action
contd...
➢ Pre-Planning and Planning Meeting
➢
Sprint Review and Updates
➢ Retrospectives

25. Tools at Our help
➢ Skype Video/Audio Conference
➢ Adobe Acrobat Connect
➢ Pivotal Tracker
➢ Confluence, Jira, SVN, Staging Environment..

26. Results

27. One Team

28. Business Value
Member Growth Monthly Visits
Monthly Visits Monthly Page Views
80,000 3,50,000 60,00,000
350,000
January January January
70,000 January
February 3,00,000
300,000 February 50,00,000 February
Number of page views
February
60,000 March March March
Number of Visits
Total Members
2,50,000
250,000
April March 40,00,000
50,000 April April
May 200,000
2,00,000 April
May May
40,000 June 30,00,000
June
May June
150,000
1,50,000
30,000 July July July
June
August 100,000 August 20,00,000
20,000 1,00,000 August
July
10,000 50,000
50,000 10,00,000
August
- 0
0 0
Time Time
Time Time
Monthly Page View per visit
20.00
Number of page views per visit
18.00 January
16.00 February
March
14.00
April
12.00
May
10.00
June
8.00 July
6.00 August
4.00
2.00
0.00
Time

29. Productivity & Quality
Improvements
Average Per Person Velocity
12
10
8
Story Points
6
4
2
0
Iterations

30. Project Review in India by Mary &
Tom Poppendieck

31. Collaboration Summary
➢ 8 Months Distributed project
➢ Team Extension in India
➢ 24/7 support by development team
Because of Fully Distributed Scrum TBD.com
got maximum benefits of off-shoring

32. Success Factors
➢ Same level of Talent on both sides
➢ Rich Experience in Agile
➢ Transparency on Business Drivers by
TBD.com
➢ Evaluation System sets clear expectations

33. Difficulties Faced
➢ Limited Travel possible
➢ Distributed Demos
➢ Distributed Design
➢ Some work still remains local

34. Guiding Principles
➢ One Team
➢
Shared Goal and Ownership
➢ Shared Agile Value System

35. Agile Toolkit for Java Developer

36. Build Tools
➢ Easy Build
➢ Maven / Ant (max 10 minutes)
➢ Continuos Integration
➢ Bamboo / Cruise Control / Hudson
➢ Automated Quality Statistics
➢ Code Coverage (Clover / Cobertura)
➢ Code Quality (JDepend, PMD, CheckStyle)

37. Test Tools
➢ Unit Testing Frameworks
➢ JUnit
➢ DBUnit
➢ Mocking Frameworks
➢ HttpUnit
➢
Integration Testing Frameworks
➢ Fitnesse
➢ Selenium

38. ?
Narinder Kumar Linear Scalability of Production between
nkumar@xebia.com
San Francisco and India

39. References
Articles and Presentations on Distributed Scrum with No time overlap
➢ http://www.agile2009.org//node/1528
➢ http://blog.xebia.com/2009/08/26/fully-distributed-scrum-agile2009/
➢ http://www.infoq.com/presentations/fully-distributed-scrum
➢ http://www.computer.org/portal/web/csdl/doi/10.1109/AGILE.2009.27
Articles and Presentations on Distributed Scrum with Time-Overlap
➢ http://submissions.agile2008.org/node/1442
➢ http://blog.xebia.com/2008/08/21/agile2008-fully-distributed-scrum/
➢ http://www.infoq.com/articles/dutch-railway-scrum
General Articles about Java EE Technology and Agile Methodologies
➢ http://xebee.xebia.in
➢ http://blog.xebia.com
➢