Webinar: Top 10 Tips for Scaling Distributed Agile
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Top 10 Tips for Scaling Distributed Agile: 1. Set the Terminology 2. Connect the Business to the Technology 3. Fix Level of Backlog Items & Estimation Systems 4. Get a Common Planning Cadence 5. Implement Dependency Management 6. Prioritize Facilitation as a Critical Skill Set 7. Video is Key to Subtle Communication 8. Treat Retrospectives with 2x Importance 9. Lead by Example in Creating Culture 10. Create a Toolset for Self-Organization
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Webinar: Top 10 Tips for Scaling Distributed Agile
- 1. Top 10 Tips for Scaling Agile with Distributed Teams #SococoLife Webinar
- 2. Welcome! Sococo is proud to present this webinar in partnership with AgileCraft, the world’s first scaled agile management platform. Our host today is Stephanie Bailey from AgileCraft.
- 3. Today’s Agenda ●Panelist Introductions ●Tips for Scaling Agile ●Tips for Distributed Teams ●Q & A
- 4. Introductions: Mandy Ross Mandy Ross is Director of Community and Agile Coach for Sococo. Her passion is helping distributed teams embrace agility as they embark on a path to high performance.
- 5. Introductions: Maggie Bullington Maggie brings 18 years of experience in software and professional services to the AgileCraft team, in both product and consulting organizations, as an executive, agile coach, and software engineer. Maggie has been passionate about Agile methodologies since she was first introduced to Extreme Programming (XP) as a software engineer in 2001. Throughout her career she has evangelized Agile methods and mentored others in their application, whether using Scrum, XP, Lean/Kanban, or Agile at Scale.
- 6. Tips for Scaling Agile Maggie Bullington of AgileCraft
- 7. Set the Terminology ● Agile is acronym rich and confusing for business people ● Terminology should be set across the enterprise to break down communication barriers ● AgileCraft can enforce a common terminology set
- 8. Connect the Business to the Technology ● The epic (similar to a project historically) links business to development ● Epics should include intake info, budget, approval, high level estimation, business case and link to corporate strategy ● By using epics in AgileCraft business units and portfolios are aligned
- 9. Fix the Level of Backlog Items & Estimation Methods ● A consistent level of backlog decomposition a common unit of estimation across all levels should be required ● A common structure is Strategy -> Theme -> Epic -> Feature -> Story ● AgileCraft assists in maintaining backlog standardization to improve predictability, visibility and communication across the enterprise
- 10. Get a Common Planning Cadence ● A common planning cadence is needed to drive consistency across teams, programs and portfolios ● Decoupling planning from delivery helps teams align risks, objectives and dependencies ● Quarterly planning is a common practice, and aligning sprint cadences further assists in coordination ● AgileCraft provides the guardrails to assist in cadenced planning
- 11. Implement Dependency Management ● A team to team dependency management process for all feature level delivery is required ● A firm commitment of dependencies from teams makes it possible for teams to commit to dates ● Analyze dependency clustering in AgileCraft and then optimize programs and teams to reduce the amount of dependencies
- 13. Tips for Distributed Teams Mandy Ross of Sococo
- 14. POLL: What’s the biggest challenge on your distributed Agile team?
- 15. Lead by example in creating culture ● Strong team culture of openness and transparency is critical on distributed Agile teams. ● Face to face conversations need to happen on a regular basis for overall engagement. ● Leadership is accountable for the culture in a company, so lead by example. ● Extra-proactive leadership is required to create a great culture for teams who aren’t physically co-located.
- 16. Prioritize facilitation as a critical skill set ● Great facilitation is critical on distributed Agile teams. ● People need more cues to follow during planning, standup and retrospective ceremonies ● Extroverted, talkative people tend to dominate the conversation. ● Losing the perspective of quiet team members will result in a skewed set of comments during your discussions.
- 17. Treat retrospectives with 2x importance ● The retrospective is the best way for leaders to keep their fingers on the team pulse when teams are not physically co-located ● Need for follow through and consistency are amplified on distributed teams. ● Keep the retrospective fresh by focusing on new techniques such as the 4 L’s (Liked, Lacked, Learned, Longed For), Mad Sad Glad, or Start Stop Continue.
- 18. Video is key to subtle communication ● The future is now: video chat is a critical part of communication in the digital age. ● Context provides the important nuances of human collaboration, ● Video amplifies understanding and connection by allowing facial cues to deepen discussion. ● Better human connection to greater efficiency, increased morale and higher performance in general.
- 19. Create a toolset for self-organization ● Distributed Agile teams require a digital workplace for easy and instant self- organization. ● Experiment with different tools and let your team decide what combination works best. ● There are four communication channels that have traditionally been critical: voice, video, chat, and screen sharing. ● At Sococo, we also think context is the Fifth Element of team communication - being able to know who is doing what, when and with whom.
- 20. Quick Demo The Sprint Review and the Five Channels of Online Communication
- 21. Top 10 Tips for Scaling Distributed Agile 1. Set the Terminology 2. Connect the Business to the Technology 3. Fix Level of Backlog Items & Estimation Systems 4. Get a Common Planning Cadence 5. Implement Dependency Management 6. Prioritize Facilitation as a Critical Skill Set 7. Video is Key to Subtle Communication 8. Treat Retrospectives with 2x Importance 9. Lead by Example in Creating Culture 10.Create a Toolset for Self-Organization
- 22. Q & A How can we help you learn more?
- 23. THANK YOU! For more information, visit our websites: http://www.agilecraft.com http://www.sococo.com
Hinweis der Redaktion
- Hi folks, I’m Mandy Ross with Sococo and I’m the Community Director as well as the company Agile coach. I’ve been working remotely since 2005, and have been practicing Agile as a ScrumMaster, coach, and transformation leader for nearly as long, so I’m happy to lend my unique perspective to this webinar with our friends at AgileCraft today. Maggie?
- Thanks Maggie! I always love seeing AgileCraft in action. For those of you who don’t know me, I’m Mandy Ross. I’m the Community Director and Agile Coach with Sococo. I’m really happy to be here today to share our best tips for creating high performance distributed scaled Agile teams. To kick things off today, I have a quick poll I’d like to find out more about the biggest challenge for your distributed team.
- <kick off poll> OK, the poll is now closed, and I’ll share results. <read results> Thanks to everyone who participated in that quick poll. Now, on to some tips that will help out with issues that distributed Agile teams may encounter as they start scaling Agile.
- To start off, I want to call out the most critical element of a successful, high performing Agile team. This is a healthy, robust vision of a transparent culture that leaders create, articulate and nurture with their team. I can’t stress enough how this seemingly simple thing is overlooked. I think it’s because humans self-organize naturally, so we’re used to physically co-located people just figuring out how to work together and a culture emerging from that without a lot of thought. It is not this simple for distributed teams. We’re still learning right now as a species how to connect with each other in the virtual online world. Because of this, leaders on distributed teams have to pay extra attention to how this develops and determine how to proactively build the kind of culture they want to see in their company when they commit to having a distributed team. And this is a commitment - it requires extra work and thought. One of our customers, who is a fully distributed Agile software team, is so passionate about their online company culture that they have actually created an ettiquette agreement for using Sococo and interact with each other online - things like not eating while on video, and being careful to make sure your avatar status is up today. They regularly revisit this agreement and update it with things they’ve learned which help shape their company culture. At the end of the day, the leadership is accountable for the culture that emerges in a company. My advice is to have a clear vision, take the reins, lead by example, and encourage others to do the same.
- Another important things that is often overlooked is having a person with excellent facilitation skills on the team. The reason for this is that much more than in person, people will need someone who can act as conductor during team discussions so that it’s more likely that everyone is able to participate. Agile teams are all about the entire team, not just the most outspoken members. If left unchecked, the more extroverted, talkative people will dominate the conversation. A really good distributed team facilitator can ensure that everyone has a chance to participate. Otherwise, you’ll lose the perspective of the quiet people in the room and end up with a skewed set of comments during your discussions.
- One of the Agile ceremonies where great facilitation is critical is the retrospective, which I’m also really passionate about, so I wanted to dig in on this a bit. Leaders can keep their fingers on the pulse of the team by being attentive to the outcomes of team retrospectives and the initiatives the team chooses for self improvement. This is because not only is the team having an important discussion, they are making decisions about tactical things to do for team improvement. However, the discussion and actions mean nothing without follow through. When the team is not physically co-located, it’s easy to let this slide, so this is where a strong facilitator can really help. One of my teams had a guy on it who was really intelligent, but painfully shy. So I spent time with him behind the scenes, talking to him about things that were happening on the team and figured out a few questions I could ask in the retro that only he would know the answer to. Because I knew he already had an answer, he felt confident enough to speak up and make himself heard instead of me making him heard. He also grew in confidence when he spoke up and got props from his peers. So, it takes extra work but it pays off in more ways than one. One little bonus tip is to make sure you keep it fresh. I’ve worked with teams who have been together for years, so the retro can end up being repetitive and not productive. Make sure you change it up - there are all sorts of great tools out there that can help. At Sococo, our favorite is Retrium, which can be found at retrium.com. we’ll send a link to it in the electronic goody bag we are sending out on Monday as a follow up to this event.
- Next I want to call out the importance of video chat as a means of communication on distributed teams. People have historically shied away from video due to shyness, or some other bias. But I’m here to tell you, this is no longer the stuff of Star Trek. The future is now, folks, and it’s becoming increasingly commonplace, if not expected, for people to use video in everyday communication. On distributed Agile teams, face to face conversations are critical, and video simply makes this possible. Keep in mind that online, video use is different depending on the size of the group, and everyone’s available bandwidth. We have found that everyone having video on is useful in meetings up to 12 people. After that, it’s best for only the meeting host and whomever is speaking to keep video on. At Sococo, using video is standard - if someone is in a discussion and doesn’t turn on video, our CEO will ask, “would you go into the office with a bag over your head? No? Ok, great, so turn on your camera.” Science has long proven that cameras will not steal your soul.
- My last tip for you is about the nuts and bolts of running a distributed Agile team. When you commit to having a distributed team that relies on the internet to work together, you need a set of internet based tools to make that happen. There have traditionally been four primary communication channels people need for an online team: voice, video, chat and screen sharing. At Sococo, we recognize that there is a fifth element, if you will, of online communication, which is context. That’s the ability to see who’s around, if they’re available, what they’re up to and who they are with. This is actually why we developed this platform, because it connects Agile teams in a way that’s natural and intuitive, and enables spontaneous self-organization. One other thing - one size does not fit all. Each team has unique needs, and with the tremendous focus on the upswing in online work and a resulting expanding market here, there are plenty of tools out there to get your team moving. At Sococo, we of course love Sococo as our primary platform for daily interaction, and also love Slack, JIRA and Retrium and Google, and Trello, and so many others. In the digital goody bag that you’ll receive in email as a follow up to this webinar, we’ll include a link to a collection of our favorites.
- Now I’m going to dig into how we use the 5 elements of online communication to run a Sprint review with Sococo and AgileCraft. For those of you not familiar with the Sococo platform, this is a place to get online work done for distributed Agile teams. What you see is a map layout divided into offices, open work spaces and conference rooms. Each person is represented by a little colored avatar on the map. These avatars are part of the 5th element - context - of online communication. Right now, you see myself and Maggie in our Sprint Review room. I’ve named the room Sprint Review so others in the Sococo space know what we’re up to. I’ll zoom into the room now to see what’s going on. We’ve got voice and video going. The green dot indicates video is in use, and the headset and mic mean that the person can both hear you and talk. You can see our thumbnails up at top, and you can see a full screen view of a person in the room by clicking on their thumbnail. Now let’s check out screen sharing. Maggie is sharing AgileCraft in her window, and we’re looking at the end of sprint review. You can tell Maggie is the one sharing because of the little screen icon attached to her avatar. The screen share is accessible through the thumbnails. Here’s our chat panel, which we can use in the review to paste in links or other information that people in the meeting might need. Sococo is integrated with Slack, so you can see how all my Slack channels are also available. All of this rolls up to the fifth element of communication, which is context. Context is the ability to broadcast to others visually and intuitively what you’re doing, what’s going on, who you’re working with and when you’re availble, and for others to be able to respond and adjust their behavior accordingly. In Sococo we do this with our avatars and our visual map - it’s a real time, always on set of information about your team. When you have this amplified sense of your team’s presence in a single online place, people can have better meetings and remain more engaged. Maggie, can you give our guests a quick story of what it’s like to conduct a Sprint review with AgileCraft in Sococo?
- OK folks, that’s it for today’s presentation. Lets do a quick recap of the top 10 tips we’ve reviewed today. And that’s it! I’m going to hand it back over to our MC Stephanie from AgileCraft for some Q&A