Virtual Teams THEN and NOW

How To keep Agile Teams Agile in a non-co-located environment

Nobody is a stranger to virtual teams nowadays, the virtual environment is now more common than ever. However, as we may think of it as a new uprising concept and way of life, it is actually not that new, it actually goes back to the Roman Empire to the Catholic church having their people dispersed across the globe or practically any army with a base deployed outside it’s home country; Other examples are like the Post office in 1970 having workers all over the united states and a practice adopted around the world with clear guidelines and procedures. Wells Fargo in 1888 when it became dispersed in 25 states under the same brand.

These names along with many more have been affected by considerable geographical dispersal, and since the so called modern era of the 1960s we have come a long way. In the early 90s we had no computers, no mobiles, and no web conferencing and the remote life was broadcasting radio and the telephone. Even working from home is not a new thing; Potters, farmers, shoemakers, dress makers, bakers and blacksmiths have always worked from their homes. It was the industrial revolution that pulled many workers out of their homes and into factories. In the early 20th century, widespread electricity and public transportation separated work and home even further by driving workers into offices equipped with telephones, telegraphs, and the typewriter.

Then came the Oil Crisis in the 1970s causing commuting to be expensive. This led Jack Nilles (The father of Teleworking) to look for ways to reduce the cost of commuting to work. He conducted the first formal tests of telecommuting and coined the term. In the 1980s, JC Penny one of the largest department stores today, began hiring home based call center agents. This led many large businesses to offer telecommuting till the year 1996 when the federal government in the United States confirmed its support of telecommuting.

The emergent exponential growth of international tradeoffs and globalization increasingly called out for virtual business models that can adopt values and principles that can govern employer branding at a scale without feeling the constraint of staying within their boarders. Nowadays, the word virtual is associated with technology, and all that helps ease our increasing communication and interaction needs under the slogan “bringing the world closer together”.

Throughout the 20th century we have been fueled by technology and innovation that sparked the telework and virtual teams empire. Today a PC and a Cell phone and an internet connection guarantees a functional workspace and a pool of opportunities. The question today is, is that enough to have a virtual business that keeps up with the changing markets? Is this Agile? Last we checked Agile was about having co-located teams to be effective?

So many questions about how can we stay agile while working remotely or being part of a virtual team, how can we keep the motivation and team connected “aka agile for that matter”; I am here to answer that for you in my five step method:

STEP1: BUILD TRUST AND BREAK THE SILOS

The fact that you have effective business goals being met in a virtual environment where your teams are performing, hitting deadlines and dependable enough to get the job done is your first initial step regardless the motive of them getting the Job done. But, what do you mean by regardless, what if it is working out of fear of losing their Job or because they have responsibilities so therefore cannot afford losing their jobs and work their heads off to make it happen; not a good start to talking about teams and agility huh !

The point here is that if they are getting the job done then they have the basic tools, and techniques and “ABILITY” to get the Job done. But, many organizations ask people to get things done without having the proper tools or techniques and actually some don’t have those tools and still get the job done” so what’s your point. My point is the ability to adapt and the ability to think of ways of getting the job done and in either scenario above, that fulfills the mission and challenges the performer. Once you adopt that mindset we can start thinking of Step 2.

STEP2: ENABLING THE VIRTUAL TEAM

Creating an Agile Virtual Team that can perform, share, and feel part of a team even though they are not co-located is a definite challenge. You see agile is not new either, the initiation of the adaptation of large businesses to telecommute/ telework was a form of agility building diverse organizations transforming us to what we are today. We just forgot how it all started and got too caught up in the extensive processes, deadlines and business objectives. The common word on the street is that

Agile works best when the teams are collocated, when teams share a workspace, it’s easy for teammates to ask questions, pair on program tasks, and solve problems without scheduling meetings, it’s actually one of the 12 principles. On the contrary, using technologies like web conferencing, group chats, and email just isn’t as effective as direct, person-to-person interactions; A fact that is debatable, from another perspective, Agile is best to help virtual teams leverage technology and digital tools to get their work done “The Agile Way”. In my book however, Agile works and is effective either way, it is how you use it and how you influence your teams to use it tailored to their needs, and not just adopting a methodology or two. It is all about the team and how the team sees it working not anyone else. That said, organizations can make agile methodologies excel with remote and distributed teams, but it takes some work and experimentation. Team members must find the optimal use of technologies and adjust to communication styles to ensure team productivity, collaboration, and quality.

With the outbreak of COVID-19, many agile teams must shift from working in offices to working remotely. This will be a new experience for many people who have not worked at home for a significant part of their careers, and for teams accustomed to in-person interactions. Furthermore, some team members may fall ill or face other hardships due to the growing pandemic, so agile teams must adjust to a new way of working. Discuss with your teams how they would like to play it out, and let them share the things that interest them during their remote working times. In many cases they may be a bit mellow and not have ideas of what to do or how it can be done. My go to strategy is always get a bit personal, and have everyone show you around where they are working and ask questions about their surroundings. Ask about their families and even have them bring them on the virtual meetings to meet one another and have that one meeting that just soothes out the stress and the work vibe. Get them to see something that they have never saw before being at the same location. Make the virtual experience different and unique in its own way, then have a retrospective to layout the pros and Cons before and after that meeting narrowed down to one question: how did this meeting feel?.

STEP 3: CHOOSING THE PROPER TOOLS and TECHNIQUES

If you’re going to be working remotely, then make sure you have a setup that works for you, your company, and your team. Think of it like an office move and invest the time up front to evaluate the options and make sure you have everything you need to be productive, comfortable, and in a space where you are least likely to be distracted. Moreover, make sure your company supports it and does it like it means itJ

Below is a list of things that should be made equally available for remote workers, and if not make available for yourself, they go a long way. These 9 things that have worked for me and my clients and could work for you too:

1- The Mindset: Working remotely requires a different mindset and discipline from working in the office. When working remotely, it is easy to think about things like grabbing a snack, doing any king of chores or taking a break to run an errand. It is important to establish a clear work ethic just like you would in the office. I should note that working remotely can be very challenging for many in this respect. It is the job of the team manager and the organization to coach them through it and see what is missing or what can be done to adapt to the circumstances.

2- Workspace: Create a dedicated workspace where you go to do the work. Some place away from temptations and away from your comfort area or living room. Preferably facing a wall or an open space that is soothing to the eyes and mind if feasible. Don’t face a TV or the open space where everyone at home is moving around and doing stuff. It would be preferrable if it is a closed room if that is an option.

3- Collaboration Tools: This is the most important point. The tools you will use to track your activities and host your meetings and keep the team alive. There are so many digital tools online some of which are free and others that are paid with many features to choose from. They work for projects, or standard team facilitation and brainstorming. Just type collaboration tools in google and thank me later.

4- Reliable Phone Services: Have clear phone lines, and connectivity. Using soft phones may sometimes fail us if connections flap, and cause the disconnecting of voice in many occasions, accordingly having good VOIP (voice over IP) phone services are highly recommended for international calls and conferencing as they will guarantee clear and stable voice connectivity. There are many solutions out there to choose from.

5- Video Conferencing: As an integral part of the team’s arsenal it is seeing each other and not just relying on the vocal factor, as the communication process is only effective through the 55% visual aspect availability. The most popular, and actually the ones I have used extensively are WebEx, Microsoft Teams and Zoom as major examples.

6- Headset: It is very important having clear noise cancelling headsets with clear microphones that are available to everyone to ensure clarity on what they hear and what they say.

7- Webcam: Clear quality Webcams with the same quality for all rather than using the normal laptop CAMs in case people are not using the same computer models.

8- External Monitor/ Keyboard/ Mouse: The normal setup at offices are having two monitors or having your laptop mirrored to your desktop monitor. This helps with the visual aspect a lot and not looking through the laptop screen, it also helps with the multitasking in case you choose to use both the laptop screen and the monitor

9- High-Speed Internet: Help out your people with internet connections that are adequate in case they do not have the highspeed connections. Those could be achieved through controlled MiFi’s or USB sticks as part of the home office package.

STEP 4: Pre-set frequent Meet-ups

A pre-set frequent meeting schedule needs to be set. So many practices in place here, some may say daily standups and others request daily meetings and others are pro the weekly meetings and others just do monthly ones. My recommendation is daily 15 mins maximum LEAN coffee meet-ups and a long meeting by end of the week. Another practice is having two short 15 mins meet-ups per day, one in the morning and another end of the day, of course all dependent on your team and activities, but both these approaches have worked well for me and many of my clients. That being said, you need to tailor to your team and activities. Agile teams succeed by balancing the time devoted to collaboration with the time devoted to the concentrated efforts required for individual tasks and other development and transversal activities. In the office, it’s a little easier to see a teammate’s focus, and disciplined agile teams find ways to avoid distractions and context switching.

When working remotely, teams have to be online but also share their availability. Tools like Slack and Microsoft Teams allow you to set availability status while other collaboration tools enable you to mute notifications. Using the status settings is critically important when teams are open to flexible working hours.

Agile teams must schedule time for formal collaboration sessions and to do the work to complete user stories, but team members should also engage in small talk. People respond differently to times of stress, and to working remotely, so it’s essential to check in with one another. Also, people have different communication styles online versus in person, and there’s a new opportunity to get more people involved in online conversations.

Managers, Team Leads, technical leads, and product owners should regularly ask the team questions about their level of understanding around requirements, blockers to their progress, and if there’s anything they need to improve their productivity and happiness. Those can be achieved through the weekly meet-ups as the short meet- ups are reserved for quick roundups and touch-base.

Lastly, Transversal Managers from multiple teams should be in regular contact with each other. Their experiences and issues managing their remote teams are probably not unique. Sharing any learnings on how they are getting their agile teams to collaborate remotely would undoubtedly benefit the whole group.

STEP 5: Role and Story Mapping for realistic team and individual assignments

Agile teams shifting to remote collaboration shouldn’t have to redesign their process and disrupt everything they do. But going remote may require Team mangers to rethink how to conduct the meeting, depending on the size of the team and the available or chosen collaboration tools.

Build clear Role mapping boards that display everyone’s role; in addition, the role of hosting the meetups needs to be a rotational role that becomes everyone’s responsibility to come up with something new. That creates a sense of ownership as the role shifts, it helps everyone engage in the action and understand the challenges and better collaborate and emphasize on the team collaboration and facilitation and efforts distributed and ensure that they are not just doing their assigned Job, but also taking on a transversal role that will give them a feel of progression and leadership.

Story mapping is clearly writing clear tasks to which the team will undertake. The stories should ensure that everyone confirms on the acceptance criteria of each story and that everyone understands what is to be accomplished. Note here, this is not for projects only but also can be applied for operational teams, sales teams, marketing, HR, etc...

These 5 Steps when done effectively and coached through, create an effective and comfortable environment for everyone to operate while at the convenience of their home. They will later enter meetings relaxed and not having to look their best. They will speak freely and share their thoughts; they will better work together and support each other. The major challenge that will be faced will be, while they work better together and achieving better results as a team and as individuals, how will you evaluate their performances and conduct performance reviews! That will be discussed in another article, so stay tuned for that.

Written By: Khalid Rabie – Agile Business Development Architect and Consultant

Kr~