A Simple Recipe for Effective Fully Distributed (Agile) Teams

With lockdowns being the norm these days due to the Covid-19 pandemic, companies and teams are all of a sudden forced to work from home (WFH). For most, this is the first time they’re even working from home. Whether we like it or not an overwhelming majority has in the last few days and weeks been thrust into a fully-distributed team. I would imagine that many find themselves ill-prepared in this situation.

As this might go on for the mid-term at least, I’d like to share what works for us with the aim that others could leverage and tweak it to fit their setting. We’re using this in the context of our already running Agile teams setup. I believe non-Agile teams and hopefully those already considering going Agile (pre-Agile teams) can benefit from these emerging best practices. And while most of us have been *forced* to cook once more in the comfort of our homes instead of eating out, I’m going to try to share our best practice in a somewhat recipe-ish format. Here goes…

Ingredients:

1 team (or group of teams)

Your agile framework of choice (or a group of identified agile frameworks that work together)

A mindset that is willing to collaborate and improve

A dash of kindness and understanding

A little bit of fun and playful banter (to taste)

Photo taken from www.123rf.com.

Caveat: Take the above ingredients and the below procedure, tweak as needed to make a sumptuous agile distributed team.

Procedure:

1.  Get your team (or group of teams), forcibly chop them up, separate individual members and set aside for the time being.

2.  It’s a good idea to include now the fermented team members whom you have no contact for at least overnight. These would add some welcome umami flavor to our final dish.

3.  Virtually mix the chopped-up team by using whatever collaboration tool is currently available. This is the time to use online visual tools even more to enable the team members to understand how we are doing as a team and focus on work progress and cooperation.

*There are a lot of tools available. If you're still not using any online visual tools, you can take a look at MS Teams, Trello, Miro, and FunRetro.io to get started.

4.  Continue implementing your daily ceremonies as scheduled. For the uninitiated, these are the regular daily meetings. It is suggested to continue to schedule those at the same usual times each day.

5. Do your best and encourage everyone to turn up on time. Working from home surprisingly creates unexpected surprises in our day that sometimes make it a challenge to keep to schedule. It takes a while to get used to this new reality. This varies from person to person and team to team.

A Pomodoro timer.

Photo taken from carousell.com.

Another Agile technique we can take a look further at a future article.

6. Collaboratively create team agreements and review your agreements regularly. During this time that everyone is adjusting, it’s a good idea that everyone is on the same page on what is expected of everyone else. We also need to regularly examine if these working agreements are working and adjust those when needed.

7.  During your meetings, turn on your video whenever applicable and possible.

     *This is when we’d most likely require for the some of the understanding ingredient that we’ve set aside earlier. Not everyone is equipped with the internet bandwidth to handle the strain of sharing live video during meetings. We need to understand when this is the case and be sensitive. With some companies going international and being fully distributed across the globe, some find themselves with team members not ready enough in this regard given the short time to prepare. Also, finding a corner or spot in your home where you are comfortable to show what is behind may be a challenge for some. Although some of the tools have a blur or change background feature that may appeal to some, the same guidance applies here.

8. Sprinkle your conversations with a bit of fun and playful banter when appropriate. As long as it doesn’t negatively affect the schedule of our meetings, keeping things light and somewhat a bit more jolly that usual helps in these challenging times.

8.   Some have suggested to keep the ceremonies at 1 hour at most. Others have suggested inserting breaks between 1-hour blocks for longer scheduled meetings. We noticed that some meetings take a little bit longer than the usual, at least initially. I suggest that as long as teams are engaged and productive, we can keep to the usual and agreed upon time-box schedules and then make adjust as we go along.

9.  Finally, I’d recommend that we all reach out to our colleagues every now and then. Conversations don’t have to be all focused on work. Keep in touch to make sure your team mates are ok. This is the time to feel more closer and connected amidst the physical separation we’re all experiencing. Everybody could use that virtual-hug every now and then.

10. Repeat and serve warm. ??

Photo taken from www.thespruceeats.com

You may feel the above recipe does not work for you. Feel free to tweak and share your changes.

Stay safe. Agile on!

About the author: Chris is a movie fan who happens to be a new dad. Now that his daughter has turned two, he hopes to get more movie time (when this pandemic blows over), enjoy the story and glean insights about Agile and life in general. When he's not busy watching a movie, he's working as an Agile Coach. He has been coaching since 2013 -- mentoring & training teams, fellow Scrum Masters and companies become more Lean and Agile. On top of his regular work duties on project teams that span the United States, Australia, UK, India and Bangladesh, he has on shore Scrum and Agile coaching experience in the following countries and territories: Philippines, Taiwan, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia and Hong Kong.

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