Contrary to common belief, (fully) distributed team can actually make it easier to adapt an agile approach to software development. Compared with the co-located group, a distributed team experiences what I call a shift in visibility. The hours spent in the office no longer count, therefore more focus is placed on actual work done and business value delivered. If your team suffers from poor communication or endless meetings, working remotely will make this even more conspicuous. See also: https://softwaremill.com/visibility-shift-in-distributed-teams

1. Visibility Shift In
Distributed Teams
Paweł Wrzeszcz
SoftwareMill

2. Distributed Agile is Hard
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3. Visibility Shift
More visible in distributed
setup:
•Value
•Communication
•Trust
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4. Like Scrum
“Scrum does not solve your
problems.
It makes them more
visible.”
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5. Visibility
Is The First Step
Towards
Improvement
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6. Remote vs. Distributed
http://bob.mcwhirter.org/blog/2010/09/13/remote-worker-distributed-team/
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7. My Context
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8. My Context
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9. Distributed
Setup is
Different
than co-located,
not worse or better
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10. Value vs. Presence
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11. Presence at
work is not
that visible
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12. Value Delivered
More important (and visible!)
than where, how and working
time.
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13. Focus On Value – In Practice
• Notifications
• Recent changes
• Continuous
Deployment
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14. Communication Challenges
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15. Meetings
Distributed meetings
are extremely boring
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16. |

17. Communication Challenges
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18. Narrow channel
requires fine-tuned
communication
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19. Communication Flexibility
• Sync vs. async
• Chat, Call, Push-To-Talk
Flexible => improve constantly
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20. Example: Daily Company Meeting
Technical -> Social
•At first: standard Scrum
•Now: moods
•“4-th question”
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21. Trust Issues
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22. Trust issues
“They’d be browsing
Facebook”
“I have to go in person”
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23. Impossible without trust
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24. Trust issues
Painfully visible in
distributed environment
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25. Building Trust
• F2F team meetings
• “4-th question”
• Retrospectives
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26. All in All
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27. Visibility Shift
More visible in distributed
setup:
•Value
•Communication
•Trust
|

28. Visibility Shift
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29. Images
http://www.flickr.com/photos/slackpics/4261060942/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/35764264@N00/413103429/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jenniferwoodardmaderazo/2129336572/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/stressedtechy/4688073554/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/28676221@N08/6131096126
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Van_Gogh_Self-Portrait_with_Straw_Hat_1887-Metropolitan.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Vincent_Willem_van_Gogh_127.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/foxypar4/1852428153/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thematthewknot/8718351122/
http://www.flickr.com/photos/wwarby/4915772994/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Apollo_CSM_lunar_orbit.jpg
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mission_control_center.jpg
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jerryjohn/63351338
http://www.flickr.com/photos/westm/4690323994/
Photo from Berlin – Maciej Biłas
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30. Thank you
@pawelwrzeszcz
pawel@softwaremill.com
softwaremill.com
/visibility-shift-in-distributed-teams