Co-locating distributed scrum teams
We're trying something called Agile Programming!
Several decades ago, the climax in a software company was moving towards agile methods removing bureaucracy that appears in occasionally leaving only the team with bunch of prioritized features waiting to burst out for the next shipment. Stir all the teams with the product owner to a room surrounded by whiteboards brings the best return on investment of a project. However, everybody being convinced on the need for diversified talents to move forward with pushed companies to broaden their horizons beyond borders resulting constant growth on outsource (and offshore) trend since late 90’s. Consequently distributed scrum teams lack efficiency and quality knocking out diligent teams for not being productive as when they were teamed up physically in a single room.
I have the worst case of jet lag ever. I’m still a baby in this time zone!
Work with a team in Elbonia while teaming up locally doesn’t digest well. If not, worse than tech-support for Dilbert’s mom over the phone to get her on Facebook. That sounded melodramatic to just set the real sensation for it. Thanks to contemptuous benefits of outsourcing agile has being more diversified and the teams are now being distributed. Three things to notice here: 1) People working in different time zones 2) Slipping productive hours 3) Disconnecting human interactions.
Once again, I’ve no idea what they want!
Working in different time zones also results slipping innumerous productive hours unnoticeably. The meetings are no longer impromptu. Planning and other scrum ceremonies keep delaying and deprioritizing rest of the work consequently. Discussions are more or less disconnected. Conversations are emailed believing it reduces waiting time and group interactions. In the meantime conclusive comments dragging for further round trips starting to increase stress levels paralyzing work across groups.
User experience is no longer in whiteboards and paper prototypes when teams are distributed. Scoping and coordinating cross-group dependencies are quite a challenge as well. They are emailed with lengthy specs followed by a sequel of phone calls explaining its behaviors and constraints pushing thresholds of frustration with lot of head banging on the wall.
Here is a picture of Thor, their field engineer!
Kudos to vendors who bought video conferencing and screen sharing tools that led cutting down many round trips of emails, IM’s, phone calls, and head banging too. Other than experimenting features, it comes very handy during design meetings and scrum ceremonies that requires physical interaction and brainstorming.
Thanks to JIRA emails are no longer carefully crafted. They are now moved to wiki conversations and pimped with user stories in backlog, code snippets from Gist, conversations on Yammer, and other intriguing plugins killing email clients. Meanwhile, working on a single feature limits the work-in-progress (WIP) isolating from teams being interdependent consequently reduced the cross-group interactions that can fit into a common time zone finally convinced everyone regarding the increase in quality of shipped features from end-to-end.
People only want real friends!
Whatever the future brings, social networks play a major role building something that will last: teams, tools, and the bond. The climactic moments and outbound experience during teams are now often shared in fan pages on Facebook giving opportunities for new conversations on Twitter and Yammer. These footprints on the social networks are essential to socially interacts distributed teams.
Though fascinating tools co-locate distributed teams, physical meet up that bond teams with human relationships are irreplaceable. Occasional visits to other distributed teams at least twice annually during appraisals and budgeting meetings; for training sessions and workshops; for couple of hardening sprints with planning poker; are wise choices to a long-lasting relationship. Billboards, live-size cutouts, and wall-hangings of teammates placed in meeting rooms, hallways, and lunch areas are quite effective to keep up the momentum of team bond.
More related quotes and stories from Dilbert.com:
Use agile programming methods
I'm outsourcing your job to India
You are in a different time zone, so you'll get the call in 3hrs
Email it to me, my day starts in 10hrs
I have the worst case of jet lag ever
My app does face recognition and search all social media
What were your key learnings from the trip?
