Co-located to remote – Can a distributed team achieve true agility
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How does a remote UX designer work with an agile team? This is the presentation deck I used for a ‘Tech Talk’ I did at the Pivotal Labs Sydney office. Co-located to remote – Can a distributed team achieve true agility? Read more on this post to learn more https://www.justinrob.com/can-remote-ux-designer-achieve-true-agility/
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Co-located to remote – Can a distributed team achieve true agility
- 1. Co-located to Remote Can a distributed team achieve true agility?
- 5. M E
- 6. M E THOMAS
- 7. Can a distributed team achieve true agility?
- 8. What is “True Agility”? TRUE AGILERIGID VARYING AGILITY
- 9. What is “True Agility”? ADAPTABILITY RESPONSIVNESS FLEXIBILITY SPEED STRENGTH
- 11. AGILE. LEAN. PAIRING. ITERATIONS. PROGRESSIVE ENHANCEMENT. STANDUPS. CONTINUOUS DESIGN. INNOVATION. VALIDATION. STYLE GUIDE DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT. DRANK LOTS OF COFFEE. EXTREME PROGRAMMING. RETROS. CONTINUOUS INTEGRATION. TEST DRIVEN DEVELOPMENT.
- 13. Design Develop
- 14. Delivery
- 15. Delivery
- 16. Balance
- 18. Are you ever going to answer the question?
- 25. But wait… what! What about the first principle of the Agile manifesto?
- 28. Challenges of remote working “CAN YOU HEAR ME?” UPFRONT DOCUMENTING LOST CONTEXT OVERLY STRUCTURED CONVERSATION LOST SPONTANEITY ONE WAY INFO FLOW UNDERSTANDING THE VISION
- 30. Access to skilled people outside of your geographic location Employee retention Reduced cost (office space, perks like meals, entertainment etc) Multi national teams with with a varied world view. Business benefits
- 31. More personal time. Not constrained by having to live near a big city. Reduced costs of travel and living. Opportunity for families going back to work. Personal benefits
- 32. A day in the life of me.
- 34. Hanging out with Owen :)
- 35. “At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and adjusts its behaviour accordingly.” – agilemanifesto.org
- 36. Can a distributed team achieve true agility?
- 37. I believe we can.
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Welcome, My name is Justin Roberts and i’m a designer. I live and work 100km north from here at Avoca Beach, Central Coast. As of 5 weeks ago I levelled up in life to being a dad. I’ve been back in Australia now for 3 months after living and working in Singapore for 2 years.
- I lead product and design I’ve been involved with the company from the start. Raised 23 million in funding and has grown to 130 employees in a year. We have 12 engineers, 1 other product manager (as well as the CEO) and me. I’m also the only product designer. - PatientPop solves a problem for healthcare providers in the US by taking care of all their digital marketing and back-office workflow. (appt bookings, patient registration, seo, ongoing patient communications, website)
- Working in Singapore from a shophouse in Tanjong Pagar for a company called Neo innovation. Neo is now Pivotal Labs Singapore. Similar working practices, mindset and culture.
- SO…. I came from a co-located agile team very similar to the mindset and culture of Pivotal Labs - to working remotely for a company on the other side of the Pacific Ocean. Different timezone, different team, different technology and different processes.
- The VP of engineering is also remote and based in Paris. Which adds another timezone to the mix. THIS IS OBVIOUSLY A BIG CHANGE.
- Let me come back to my original question of “Can a distributed team achieve true Agility?” I did’t really think about this when I came up with this title but when creating this content I thought… What the heck is true agility? Can it get any more buzzword’y….
- There are varying degrees of agility… Lets leave aside Agility in terms of software and think about the true meaning of the word. The most suitable opposing word I could come up with to ‘agile’ was ‘rigid’. Organisations fit somewhere along this line between being ‘Rigid’ and ‘Truely Agile’. Agile in terms of software is a set of guiding principles which give teams and individuals something to strive for.
- Here are some other words I associate with Agile: Adaptability, Responsiveness, Flexibility, Speed, Strength.
- Back at Neo… We did all the “Agile” things.
- The extent we used each of these things varied depending on the team, the problem we were solving and many other factors. We were consulting other organisation on how to be more “Agile”. These words are related to product, design and engineering and are mixed up. I don’t consider them as being different departments. The projects I was involved with were probably the closest to a truly agile, balanced team I’ve experienced.
- They’re all part of the “Agile” toolbox. We can use these tools with varying intensity and frequency depending on the problem at hand.
- Design and development are symbiotic when it comes to software. One can not exist without the other. This is ‘Software delivery’ as this term encompasses everything.
- Worked closely with other disciplines - particularly engineers. It’s just part of what I do. It’s how I “design” stuff… For me to be able to do my job to the best of my ability I need to understand all aspects which could effect the delivery of the solution to the original problem we are trying to solve.
- I need to work closely with people who *understand the things I don’t*. I mean anyone from a varied range of disciplines. Customers being being number 1, Sales, Customer Success/Service, business people, execs and of course engineers. a key part of a designers role is to take often contradicting ideas, assumptions and goals from these varying backgrounds and bring clarity to the problem being solved.
- Software delivery takes an balance of different people with cognitive diversity and behavioural attributes. The different thinking style should compliment each other. This gives us access to the entire problem solving toolbox Avoiding the concept of 'Maslows Hammer’. “If the only tool you have is a hammer, you'd treat everything as if it were a nail.” If only designer are solving a problem they will look at it from a engineering perspective. A term now for this is a ‘Balanced Team’… check out balancedteam.com for more info or talk to Pam. She’s done some great thinking on this.
- So that’s a brief overview of what “True Agility” is… almost. It’s a balance of the right team and the right tools to iteratively solve a problem (problems) in the most effective and efficient way possible. (You may have differing thinking on this so please let me know afterwards if you do. Happy to chat).
- I haven’t answered the original question yet which I’d expect you’re all busting to get an answer on. I’ll get to it, I promise. There is a method to my madness here. (The late show Steven Colbert)
- We’ve assumed we have the perfect team and the perfect tools. Let’s think about what makes a perfect team outside of what we’ve discussed. Can someone give me a single word which describes a “Perfect Team”?
- These are the three I liked… Communication, Coordination, and Culture. Can anyone think of anything else? Great! So we agree that, for a team to be balanced and reach true agility it must have these three aspects nailed.
- So how does being remote affect these… In order for remote work to be successful, companies (and teams within them) must create clear *processes and tools* that support each of these principles.
- Here we have our co-located team and our distributed team. We spoke about the *Agile toolbox* which applies to co-located and distributed teams. Most of us probably know what tools are in the Agile toolbox. Remember… a tool is any item that can be used to achieve a goal. So what tools facilitate and enable the three principles of an effective Agile team? *Communication, Coordination, and Culture*
- In our co-located team these *principles happen organically* if your team if functioning well. These happen in the form of micro interactions and *basic human connection* on a sub conscious, psychological level. Natural conversation, hanging by the water cooler, drinks after work. All these things enable you to connect on a more personal level with your colleagues. You gain a deeper understanding of the way they think. You’ll be aware of things like their personal strengths, weaknesses, anxieties. When their having a good day, bad day… When to interrupt and when to listen.
- This understanding is hard to replicate when remote working. A remote team needs to work much harder at this. These micro moments can happen organically but with *much less intensity and frequency*. This is where we need to rely on more tools and structured processes to enable this team balance.
- What about the first principle of the Agile manifesto? “Individuals and interactions over processes and tools.” This is where it gets interesting and why a distributed team may have issues reaching “true agility”.
- What are the issues with remote? What has technology not solved yet? This image on the left in an attempt at solving a remote working issue. You can buy this on Amazon for around $2000 btw.
- We all know remote work and a distributed team comes with challenges. I’ll go through a few of the challenges i’ve come across.
- Tech difficulties… (earphone example) More upfront thinking and documents Lost context Overly structured conversation Lost spontaneity, One way information flow Understanding the vision Direction pig picture thinking.
- So there are obviously many who are for and many against remote working. Lets look at some of the broad benefits outside of the end result.
- What does a day look like for me. I’ll try and give you some insight to how i’m working. Mornings are busy… Over lap with timezones.
- Team standup Project standups Use Slack a lot Hardly ever use email Sketch, take photos, Collaborate on docs, screen share a lot. Trello (for all the things) Challenges come with a growing team.
- This to me is one of the most important aspects within the Agile manifesto principles. I don’t know why it is the very last point. It is very hard to achieve “true agility” but there is no reason we should not all be striving for it.
- There is no reason a distributed team can not achieve true agility. We’ve acknowledged there are challenges which come with it. A distributed team may not be as effective based on the limitations we highlighted but there is no reason why we should not strive for the same principles which make up an effective team. If I the team I work with was co-located would I get better results…. Probably… but I think I’m still able to offer considerable value being remote. Can a distributed team achieve true agility?