Newbie: How do you suggest distributed teams to manage the scrum process without any tool? Where will they stick their sticky notes?
Early Adopters: You don't understand agile process. Agile works well in non-distributed environments.
Newbie: But my team is fairly distributed what do I do?
Early Adopters: Talk to your management. Why do they need to distribute?
Newbie: I already talked to them but there are valid reasons for team distribution.
Early Adopters: Ask "why" 5 times. I don't think distribution solves any problems.
Newbie gets irritated by the fact that these early adopters can't empathize with the real life scenario and just want to push their limited knowledge that may have worked on their projects. This conversation leaves behind 2 questions:
1. Does Agile (Scrum) work in a distributed environment?
2. Do agile tools help in making agile adoption easier?
I am managing distributed teams over a decade. I can definitely vouch that Agile works in distributed team. Having a local team is an ideal solution but it is not always feasible to have a local team in the current global economic environment. With a good planning you can make Agile working effectively in a distributed environment. My first agile implementation had a really tough time with the distributed teams until we adopted a good agile tool. Agile tool had a magic effect to promote and implement agile concepts. Teams loved the idea of sticking their sticky notes on the cloud. They don't have to worry about sharing physical walls across the geographies. It was a great feeling to get rid of a "wall of inefficiency".
I can't imagine how distributed team can really work without a good tool to manage the process. To maximize value from an agile deployment, here are few things you should consider to choose proper tool:
- Simplicity: Like agile development, the more simple the tool the better. Most importantly, tools should never replace the benefits achieved by using the Agile practices - an Agile lifecycle management tool is only as good as the process it facilitates and the people that use it.
- Communication: Use tools to facilitates communication and collaboration
- Encourage accountability by clearly assigning ownership using tools
- Change management for new agile teams: Agile tools give teams a map or a guide for what tasks they need to complete and integrate into this new way of approaching development projects.
- Manages Iterations, Feature-driven Development
- Integrated Lifecycle Management: Tracking project information in multiple tools can inhibit accurate, real-time visibility.
- Cross-Functional Teams: True support for cross-functional teams means consolidating and facilitating the project planning and tracking needs of customers, product management, project management, programmers, testers, etc. in a single environment for improved collaboration and consistency.
Remember that physical offices are slowly disappearing. Don't you consider work from home (WFH) as an additional perk that many employers offer?
In a nutshell, learn to stick your sticky notes on the cloud so that anyone can access those anytime. iCloud is also on the way. Choose proper clouds to brighten up your life. Embrace change and take advantage of amazing free or commercial agile tools available in the market. These tools work really well even for non-distributed teams. Give it a TRY!
Author: Yogesh Kumar
