Comments on: You’re Not Agile If Your Team Is Dispersed? Yeah, Right!

By: wmpnj

wmpnj — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:45:55 +0000

My point exactly!

By: wmpnj

wmpnj — Sat, 05 Mar 2011 02:39:14 +0000

My team’s current spread is 3 hours so it’s not as tough as when we were spread 11. During that time, we had to plan very carefully for those activities that did require the entire team be present. We prepared well in advance (i.e. read ahead material), set an agenda and a time box the meeting. We split the time difference and met in the middle. I would estimate we were able to complete 90% of the activities with careful planning. As much as possible, we coordinated such that the team on one continent would not impeded the other; we documented everything (we’re now using Confluence to achieve this) and I made certan that every team member knew everything there was to know about the project. We had some working ETL with Java, others working a front-end with J2EE, some working an Oracle backend, but I made sure everyone knew who was doing what, when and why. If someone from one continent needed something from the other, they could reach out to anyone and get what they needed. Now that we’re 3 hours apart, we all scrum together late morning Pacific. I make sure to spend time after the scrum answering any questions but also asking questions to be sure people understand where things stand. Geographically dispersed teams require greater effort on the part of all team members, but agile methodologies certainly ease that effort, IMHO. I wouldn’t want to do it any other way.

By: Rasmus

Rasmus — Thu, 03 Mar 2011 13:48:17 +0000

Interesting article. We have a bit similar situation, with individual developers and project managers living in three different countries and three different cultures, with up to six (6) hours of time difference. How do you see the need for all persons in team to be online and available same time during project? How did you arrange it with time differences and people working/being in different rhythms? We have some challenges in this and would love to hear your experiences on it.

By: Warehouse Management Systems

Warehouse Management Systems — Mon, 31 May 2010 09:06:06 +0000

You’re not agile if your team is dispersed….. this manifiesto greatly depends on what kind of company your business is into. Agility can still be present even with spread out employees as long as communication are all circulated to one person. With the technology today, distance is a no problem to communcation. In fact any person can be in touch even if they are both located at both ends of the earth and they can still be agile in their work.