Presentation delivered in Agile India 2015 conference

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Distributed Agile
Patterns
-ShriKant Vashishtha

2. ©2015 GlobalLogic Inc.
About Me!
• Agile Coach at Globallogic Noida
• 16+ years of IT experience
• Trainer on Agile, Agile Testing, Continuous
Delivery, Specification by Example or
BDD, Continuous Inspection
• Singer, counsellor, self-help thinker
• Twitter - @vashishthask

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Blogs on agilebuddha.com

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Distributed Agile Failure
Points
• Not actually doing “Basic” Scrum in the first place.
• Inadequate tools and governance mechanisms to
make asynchronous communication successful
• “We vs they” or “Vendor vs Customer” mindset
• Unbalanced distribution of work and ownership

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Distributed Agile
Success Factors

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Don’t Distribute in First Place
Scrum Team
Product
Owner
GEO1 GEO2
Scrum
Master
Sprint
Backlog
Function1
(e.g. Dev)
Function2
(e.g. Test)
Function
Lead

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Trust

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Courage to Change

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Innovation

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Communication

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Patterns Types
• Structural
• Implementation

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Structural Patterns

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Local Control, Distributed
Team
Scrum Team
Product
Owner
Function1
(e.g. Dev)
Function2
(e.g. Test)
GEO1 GEO2
Scrum
Master
Sprint
Backlog

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Local Control, Distributed
Team
• Most useful when
• Total team size is small:for example, a single team 4 to 8 person Scrum
team
• Team members are peers; little or no mentorship required
• Natural overlap of about 4 to 5 “core” working hours per day in all
timezones
• Continuous Communication channel open between all team members
during core hours
• Good tool support
• Frequent face to face contact between team members to maintain team
identity

15. ©2015 GlobalLogic Inc.
Local Control, Distributed
Team
• Problems to watch out for
• Non-peer developers or too large a team
• Limited face-to-face communication
• “Remote” team members will eventually start to feel
detached.
• Limited natural overlap in working hours
• Team members will get burned out
• Lack of good real-time tools and asynchronous communication
tools

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Remote Functional Team
Scrum Team
Product
Owner
GEO1 GEO2
Scrum
Master
Sprint
Backlog
Function1
(e.g. Dev)
Function2
(e.g. Test)
Function
Lead

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Remote Functional Teams
• Most useful when
• Strong functional expertise and ownership in
remote geography
• Disciplined Scrum implementation with artifacts
available globally in real-time

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Remote Functional Teams
• Problems to watch out for
• Remote team members cannot attend full kick-
offs, retrospectives and team meetings
• Remote team will be missing the context and
fall behind the on-shore team

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Remote Self-Contained
Teams
Self-
Contained
Scrum Team
(4 - 8 people)
Product
Owner
GEO1 GEO2
Scrum
Master
Sprint
Backlog
Self-
Contained
Scrum Team
(4 - 8 people)
Scrum
Master
Sprint
Backlog
Proxy
Product
Owner

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Remote Self Contained
Teams
• Most useful when
• Coupling between product components and interfaces is or
can be defined well enough that each can separately evolve.
• Domain and product expertise exists or can be developed in
the remote site(s)
• Frequent face-to-face visits between team members
• “High trust” culture exists or can grow
• Effective governance model in place so that cross-team,
cross-geography decisions can be made with full buy-in

21. ©2015 GlobalLogic Inc.
Remote Functional Teams
• Problems to watch out for
• Product components too tightly coupled, or no domain expertise
remotely
• Too much synchronous communication required to support full
effectiveness
• Lack of face-to-face visits, or “low-trust” culture in place
• One team may feel threatened by the other and attempt subtle
sabotage
• Lack of effective, inclusive governance model
• Remote team will become disempowered

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Implementation Patterns

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Implementation Patterns
For…
• Distributed Teams on two locations
• Distributed Teams on Two Locations with opposite
time-zones
• Fully Distributed Teams
• Distributed Teams on Multiple Location

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Distributed Collocated Teams

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Remote Pairing

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Virtual Collocation

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Local Retrospective

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Pseudo Product Owner and
Specs By Example

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Acceptance Criteria
(Executable Spec)
Customer who buys 2 albums gets an album free
Number of Albums Gets Free Album
1 No
2 Yes

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Nut-Bolt Pattern

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Backlog Grooming and
Definition of READY
source: http://www.solutionsiq.com/images/definition-of-ready.gif

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Definition of Ready

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PO Kanban Board

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One Team Multiple ProjectsTime/StoryPoints
0
20
40
60
80
Time
Week 1 Week 2 Week 3 Week 4 Week 5 Week 6 Week 7 Week 8 Week 9 Week 10Week 11
No work available
Work Available

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Distributed Collocated Teams with
Opposite Time-zones

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One Team
Communication
Shared Vision
Active
Participation
Shared Goals
Shared
Ownership

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Create Overlap

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No Local Meetings in
Overlap Hours

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Scrum Meetings Attended
by Whole Team
source: http://www.infoq.com/resource/articles/dutch-railway-scrum/en/resources/image2.jpg

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Continuous Backlog
Grooming