agile scrum with virtual teams
TRANSCRIPT
Agile Scrum with Virtual Teams
November, 2013
Luca Sturaro
SW Project Lead / Facilitator
Agile Manifesto
Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan
Agile GURUs:
“Agile with Virtual Teams is simply Agile”
IS IT TRUE?
Agenda
Project & Team composition
Sometimes
During sprints
Day by Day
Bug-fixing
Summary
Project & Team composition
Environment:
Desktop & Embedded System SW application for wireless TLC devices (Microwave Radio Links)
Team: Cross-Functional
1 Facilitator + 5 engineers (S&A, SW, I&V, SW Pre-Integration) in Italy
2 Java SW engineers in Bangalore (India)
Product Owner in Italy - iteration period: 2 weeks
Sometimes
Product Owner interactions & negotiation:
Conference calls & Emails: OK
Planning Activities
Planning Poker is OK but it is “off-balance”
Co-located team members' estimation is uniform
Different locations perturb team members' evaluations
Our action: Clarify among team members divergent estimations
During sprints
Sprint & Velocity:
Tasks are not performed at the same rate on both sides of the team
Communication is not immediate as to be in the same place
Bottlenecks during feature development
Our action: Re-planning & reduce throughput
Day by Day (1/2)
Kanban:
How do we manage Kanban?
Simple solution: Use a virtual one!
Most of them are free web based applications (trello, kanbanpad...)
My company policy does not allow it!
Patents, no requirements or user stories on the web
Our action: Temporarily using emails, excel sheets report
Day by Day (2/2)
Daily Scrum:
Daily scrum in conference call every day for 15 min?
Room availability for conference calls
Team members get bored
“common overhead” perception, not “agile”
What about lag? Bangalore: UTC/GMT +5:30 hours
Our action: reduce daily scrum frequency using conference calls (requested by team)
Bug-fixing
Bug-fixing during sprints:
Again: Bangalore: UTC/GMT +5:30 hours
Bug-fixing rate is not the same on both sides
In fact, GUI got more bugs than in previous releases
Our action: take bug-fixing “rythm” during an iteration. In our case, notify bugs in the evening, solution for the following day at noon.
Mitigation: reduced bugs in embedded software using test automation
Summary
Do “Agile” with virtual teams....
Company infrastructure ready:
Virtual Kanban, SW planning tools
Rooms for audio and/or video conferences
Agile is grounded on “communication”, it's more difficult with virtual teams
Take into account lag time evaluating time-zones
Thank you