Agile in 'Work from Anywhere' Environment

Do you and your teams find yourself in 'Work from Anywhere'  Environment - also now known as 'Suddenly Remote' or 'Hyper-distributed '? In this article, we will be examining the impact of this change on Software Agile teams. Agile in essence is about 'responding to change' and we will see if and how Agile teams are responding to this change thrust on all of us.

Before we get into the weeds, let us set the stage on what are the typical characteristics of an agile team and the best practices followed by Agile teams.

Agile Teams: Characteristics and Best practices

• Agile teams are generally small cross-functional teams of 5-9 people having the skills required and collective responsibility of everything from planning to deploying software in production for the end-users.

For building better collaboration and trust, these teams are co-located. Collaboration and trust in the agile team lead to better productivity, quick decision making, and improved agility. In fact, one of the 12 Agile principles states 'The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation'

• Agile Ceremonies and Information Radiators ensure better transparency and visibility of the progress and quicker resolution of roadblocks.
• The Agile teams convert their work backlog into small batches and work on them in iterative and incremental sprints. They work on a common backlog of tasks ensuring visibility of among team members and better predictability of outcomes
• The Agile team works closely with the end-users or the product owner. This ensures the software is built inline with user expectations and reduces rework. This also provides early and continuous feedback.
• The Agile teams self organize themselves and are empowered to take their decisions aligned to the product vision. This leads to quicker decision making.
• The Agile teams use a high level of Automation through SDLC tooling to improve productivity and improve the quality of the software developed.

Has Covid changed the Agile way of working?

Though colocation in strong preference of Agile teams but agile practiced by distributed teams was much more common in precovid times than one might think.

In 2016, a Gartner survey showed that 60% of organizations that have implemented agile at scale also use remote teams.

2020 -“14th Annual State of Agile Survey” reported that 81% of respondents said their organization practices agile with team members not collocated.

Now after Covid, the level of distribution and dispersion has changed from co-location to distributed to now hyper-distributed where most if not everybody is working from home.

The impact of hyper-distribution has been in proportion to how familiar the teams were with remote working and distributed agile in precovid times. Teams used to distributed agile have taken to the hyper-distributed ways of working without much issues. The impact is also varied depending on what stage is the team was in wrt Forming, Norming, Storming, and Performing. Usually, teams that were still in Forming, Norming or Storming are finding it hard to work in a hyper-distributed environment whereas teams already in the Performing phase are relatively less impacted by remote working.

Agile Ways of Remote Working

Through my discussions with Industry Analysts, Coaches, Agile teams and practitioner, I look at the impact and evolving practices through these 4 lenses.

 1. Culture (Behaviour)

2. Ceremonies(Process)

3. Tools & Technology

4. Roles(People)

1.Culture (Behaviour)

 I want us to look at these findings of what remote employee managers are Most concerned and Least concerned. This is from the 'State of Remote Work' survey from OwlLabs. Please note this is the 2019 survey so it shows the state that existed precovid. It will be interesting to see how these stats changed now.

Remote employee managers are most concerned about reduced employee productivity (82%), reduced employee focus (82%), lower employee engagement and satisfaction (81%), and whether their remote employees are getting their work done (80%).

Remote employee managers are least concerned with employee loneliness (59%), the career implications of employees working remotely (65%), employees overworking (67%), and difficulty managing them (68%).

It is important to note that if the focus is on employee well being, it will also result in better productivity and engagement. True Agile teams and Agile leaders value individuals and interactions which this the first principle of the Agile Manifesto. The culture of collaboration, transparency and trust advocated and practiced by Agile teams become even more important where agile teams are working remotely.

Agile is all about Servant Leadership where the leaders serve their teams as opposed to control the teams. In a hyper-distributed setting, the scrum master is required to be a true servant leader to remove roadblocks, boost morale and keep the teams engaged. It is observed that scrum master who has command and control leadership style instead of a servant leadership mindset is getting exposed as they are micromanaging the teams. This is leading to high-stress levels and excessive burn of team members. High output because of long hours is being misconstrued as higher productivity in these teams. Its also observed that the quality of software developed by remote teams is also dwindling if they are not following the agile principles of software development.

What also helps the remote agile teams engaged is agile characteristics of Autonomy and Alignment. Alignment with overall product vision allows teams to be Autonomous in taking decisions at a team level without having to seek multiple approvals across the ranks in an organization. Autonomous Agile teams working in hyper-distributed environment can thus reduce hand-offs and improve agility.

Working Agreement between the team members -  Change in setting to remote working also brings in a change in working hours, the lines between professional and personal time is blurred. An important practice that Agile teams follow is that of creating a working agreement or team contract which specifies what each individual expects from the team at large and provides what the team should expect from him or her. This agreement would list goals, outcome expected, working hours, roles and skills, behaviors do and don'ts, communication tools/medium of communication, definition of done, operating model, etc

2. Ceremonies (Process)

Agile teams follow certain ceremonies(Daily standup, Backlog grooming, Retrospective, Sprint planning and reviews, user demos etc) which helps the teams to interact, find/resolve issues and make progress as highlighted in the 'Characteristics of Agile team' section above. Most of these ceremonies were designed to be done in a face to face setup because its considered the most rich and effective channels of communication.

This figure below shows the various mediums of communication and the effectiveness/richness of these communication channels.

Let us reflect on some observations in the hyper-distributed setting, with the interactions moving to online channels.

• Teams are finding hard to discuss and brainstorm on designing and working on complex topics (Lack of Whiteboarding or across the desk discussion)
• Access to product owners (PO) and their involvement has reduced in some cases and improved in others where the POs find more time to attend in the remote work setting
• Developers finding more time to focus and have been able to produce improved output.
• Number of meetings for the Agile ceremonies and other formal and informal meetings has increased. Communication channels have shifted more online.
• People are more punctual in remote meetings.
• Teams are losing the sense of camaraderie and belongingness.

Communication and Engagement - Its becomes vital that in the remote/hyper- distributed setting that we give special attention to communication and engagement within the team. So lets now examine some of the best practices that teams are following to communicate and engage with each other. This includes Agile ceremonies and other interactions.

1. Agile ceremonies are being tailored to ensure teams are familiar with the usage of these online channels and are effectively contributing.
2. Communities - Emphasis on Communities of Practice (COPs) . Communities are helping not only engage people outside their project work but also helping individuals learn best practices and hone their skills.
3. Non-work related - Many teams are designating time for Non-work related engagements. Some of these include setting up time like Virtual Watercooler, Dedicated Fun Fridays, Virtual Coffee/Lunch/Drinks,
4. Video is 2nd best - While video would be the next best choice of medium after a face to face in-person meeting, many teams are leaving it at the discretion of team members and their comfort levels.
5. Software development using Remote pair programming - developers are pairing with each other through remote screen sharing and development platforms to work on common software ina driver-navigator mode to improve the quality of software developed.

3. Tools and Technology

Collaboration tools and SDLC (Software Development Lifecycle) automation tools have been pivotal to the success of remotely working agile teams. While collaboration tools have helped to bring teams closer through communication and engagement, SDLC tools have made the teams more efficient, productive and agile. The use of collaboration tools has increased significantly but it should be noted that these tools are most effective when the agile culture and agile ceremonies (discussed as point 1 and 2 above section) are practiced in the right spirit.

I am listing down an indicative list of such tools categorized based on their recommended purpose. Needless to add there are more such tools that can be added to this list in each category.

These tools help tremendously as Information Radiators across locations and help in Visual Management of keeping everybody informed in a very transparent manner.

4. Roles (People)

Another wonderful characteristic of Agile teams is well-defined roles and a sense of collective responsibility among the agile roles. In hyper-distributed setup, agile teams are having the agile roles wear a few additional hats to serve the changing needs. I have tried to explain what are these additional responsibilities and challenges for the agile roles

Conclusion: The future of hyper-distributed agile teams

All said and done it is clear that hyper-distributed agile teams have handled the 'work from anywhere' environment well as opposed to the non-agile teams. Clearly defined roles, ceremonies, principles of agile have become even more valuable for teams working in a remote setup. Therefore there is a strong case for accelerated Agile Adoption in the future.

I believe some of the other things that possibly will change are listed as follows.

Sourcing and Location Strategy - Even if the 'WFH forced experiment' is moderately successful, it would mean that agile team members can essentially work from anywhere . This perhaps will encourage companies to look for cheaper offshore locations to hire and contract team members. Gig Economy will pick up to facilitate this increased need for cost optimization and demand-supply flexibility.

Software Delivery Models from service providers-- software service providers will be forced to think and innovate how efficiently and securely they can provide ODC (offshore development center) delivery when the teams are working from home. This will manifest into a variety of delivery models i.e. Virtual ODC. TCS has announced that by 2025, 75% of their team will WFH and they are going to offer what they call Secure Borderless Workplace. Virtusa has DTS ( Digital Transformation Studio) which helps clients solve complex problems through high performing remote agile teams.

Contracts and SOWs - In remote setup, there will be a greater demand for agile teams to be more predictable, show the outcomes every sprint, clear SLA, and KPIs. This will reflect in the way the contracts and SOWs are written.

Remote Coaching - Previously Agile coaching has been found effective when done in-person and closely working with the team. Many coaches I know are experimenting with remote coaching and seeing good results.

Please contribute through your suggestions and comments on how we can make things better