Successful Collaboration in

Agile Software Teams

Martin Kropp & Magdalena Mateescu University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland

School of Engineering & School of Applied Psychology

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A Study Report

• Interviews in 11 agile IT companies

• 10 two-hour group interviews - group size of 3 to 5

• 3 one-hour individual interviews

• Total of 44 interviewed people

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Interview Methodology

• Development of interview guide

• Semi-structured interviews

• 10 Group interviews, 3 individual interviews - Two

interviewers

• All interviews were recorded and transcribed

• A coding system was developed accordingly to research

questions and the interviews were coded using

MAXQDA

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No successful agile project

without agile collaboration

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What is Agile Collaboration?

• Face-to-face

• Regular

• Often

• Informal

• Openly

• Under equals

• Focused

• Transparent

• Respectful

• Flexible

Agile Collaboration is …

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1. Put People Together

• Open work place

• not only for work

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… and distributed teams?

• Always a compromise

• Generates extra effort – think about if it’s worth it

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What you can do…

• Integrate into daily stand-up

• Use video-conferencing, skype, chat …

• Organize face-to-face work phases (3-5 days)

• fly them in or fly to them

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2. Make Team Self-Organized

• No “hidden” leader

• Can be difficult if the team leader is part of the agile

team

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3. Establish Continuity

• Apply “Standard” meetings – all

• Iteration planning, stand-ups, review, retro

• Keep them focused

• Keep them short

• Adapt as necessary

• Keep on with Retrospectives

• Also in long lasting projects

• Introduce variations (different locations, thematic retros)

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4. Foster Informal Meetings

• Technical meetings

• As needed architecture, design meetings

• Pair programming

• See 1.

• Others

• User Story Groomings

• Code Reviews (Git)

• Test competitions

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5. Make Information Transparent

• Use Boards

• Physical or digital

• Instant availability

• All-in-one view

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How about Agile Collab Tools?

Jeff Langr in Pragmatic

Programmer Magazine

http://pragprog.com/magazines

/2011-09/the-only-agile-tools-

youll-ever-need

Yes, but …

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The Agile Tool Set is more … General development Tools

Communication and collaboration

tools

Physical Tools

Agile Tools

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Role of Email

“…. however it is similar with the Email, frankly

spoken, you cannot sent any assignments per

email, it simply does not work. I must construe

it (the meaning of the message), there is no

feedback possible as to what and about the

accuracy. This is similar to Daily, one has to

interpret assets. I have to look the others in the

eye. This is extremely important.” I11:362

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The Agile Tool Set is more …

• Automation Infrastructure

CI, VCS, Automation, Test (unit and acceptance),

Deployment

• Collaboration Infrastructure

Issue Tracker, Collaboration Platforms (wiki, forums),

Instant messenger

In some things unbeatable

• Flexible

• Touchable

• Transparent

• All-in-one view

• Usually in the office

But…

• Not revisable

• Not persistent

• Not distributable

• No links to the digital

information

Physical boards

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How about Agile PM Tools?

• Used in combination with physical boards

• Always extra effort

• Think about benefit

• E.g. for accounting, needed persistency

• Master-Slave problem

• All variations applied

• Just make clear which way you go

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Digital Master

• Meetings with Beamer

• One “writer”

• Print out new US, tasks for physical board

• Print customized overviews

• Physical task board for detailed task planning

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Physical Master

• Team works with the physical board

• Changes are added to digital tools afterwards by one

person (mostly PO)

Pros

• Persistence

• Historization

• Distributed

• Traceability

• Concurrent editing

Cons

• Lack flexibility

• Lack haptic experience

• Not suited for team work

• Lack visibility

• Lack instant availability

• Lack easy overview

Pro- and Cons of digital Agile PM Tools

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The Future? Project SI-ATAM

“Agile Technologies for Agile Methods” http://www.fhnw.ch/technik/imvs/forschung/projekte/si-atam/si-atam

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Thanks for your attention!

martin.kropp@fhnw.ch

magdalena.mateescu@fhnw.ch

www.fhnw.ch