Remote Agile – does it work?

One of the fundamental success factors of Agile used to be the close environment teams work in. These days, with companies outsourcing projects and offshoring whole departments to cut costs, *Cough cough Brexit*, it’s interesting to find out just how Agile can still work, and if it’s something that can become the new Agile if you like. We chatted to one of our Xpertise candidates, who is in the middle of a project working in this new remote agile environment at the moment, interested to find out just how it’s going...

Hi Tim, good to see you again, care to tell us a little bit about the team you’re currently working with and the project?

My current team comprises of two people in Nottingham and two offshore in Bangalore. We’re working on replacing an existing archiving solution, so these early stages are focusing on gaining knowledge from the offshore team members.

Good communication is so important in any team, especially in a complex task like software development. Agile methods rely heavily on efficient and effective communication, replacing stacks of functional specs, blueprints and test scripts with discussion and collaboration; which are challenged by a team split across locations and time zones. It’s easy for the small daily discussions in a co-located team to be taken for granted; it’s only when they are made more difficult by a distributed team that their true value becomes obvious.

What tools do you use to maintain an effective line of communication?

We use various tools like skype, slack and gotomeeting, and while they help, they’re not a perfect substitute for face-to-face communication. This video shows a humorous take on their drawbacks https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ So much communication is non-verbal, and this is difficult if not impossible to replace with remote working. I’ve found using video rather than audio calls to be beneficial (assuming bandwidth allows it!). 

Another key aspect to effective teamwork is building trust between the team members, which takes time and effort. This should definitely not be overlooked with remote workers. 

What are the main challenges faced in this new environment and how did you overcome them?

Many agile teams use whiteboarding extensively to sketch ideas and facilitate discussion; I’ve found this to be perhaps the most difficult element to replace in a distributed team. Certain collaborative tools like realtimeboard and stormboard help, but as with the comms tools mentioned earlier, they aren’t a perfect replacement. 

A further logistical challenge faced by remote teams is not having working patterns aligned. This can be overcome by having one or other team shift their working hours, but shouldn’t be overlooked. 

So, taking all of this into account - what are your thoughts on offshore Agile – does it have a future?

It’s critical that processes and conversations can flow without undue cognitive load, leaving people free to focus on the actual problems. A good scrum-master can and should facilitate the processes and work to remove any impediments the team faces. 

Having worked with remote teams in both waterfall and agile environments, my view is that the challenges are felt more keenly in the latter, where communication and quick decisions are so important. 

While remote teams may deliver initial cost savings, the benefits for the teams performing the delivery are less tangible, and there is debate about whether the softer costs (delays, less efficient working, drop in service to end users) may even outweigh the hard cost savings. 

This is all really interesting to us to hear, especially when thinking about the future of recruiting for these types of roles, and the types of skills and personalities to look out for. For us in the recruitment world, I can’t see it taking off with my team. I have built a really efficient driven team using Agile methodology here at Xpertise. The reason why this works so well is that we’re working in such close proximity, there are no delays and we can easily bounce ideas off each other and quickly learn. Being able to operate in an agile manner is a lot harder to achieve when the team is spread out across different locations. I mean, have you ever tried to set up a video conference between more than two people before…