Polontech has a long experience with managing Agile teams remotely with two international offices, consultants working on sites with our clients all over the world providing the necessary support and guidance. With this in mind, we would like to share our tips on building and managing a great distributed truly Agile team.
1) Structure a perfect Global team
Structure your team in a Modular design way, i. e. each part of the team should be able to develop a single piece of technology. By promoting self-sufficiency, you can minimize the amount of collaboration necessary with the team from different time zones.
Code reviews is a great way to arrange effective teamwork. In case of some production issue, a team in different time zone can step in and tackle the issue. It is important if client support and communication plays an essential role in your business model (which make up 80% of any business).
Another great way to structure your team in accordance with the Agile practices is to ensure continuous mentoring and shared skill sets. Mentoring is a great way to build gradually a superstar team which can take you everywhere. It ensures trust, loyalty and great results. In addition to that it forms a shared skill sets that gives your team certain flexibility.
2) Ensure the basis for team’s development
Now it is great time to make use of Tuckman’s 4 stages of Agile development:
At the performing phase, things are going great, the trust is built alongside with mutual understanding. What is more, the members of the team understand how to optimize the way they build software.
By all means, it take a lot of discipline to keep the team agile. For example, it is crucial to remember that the team is reversed back to the Forming stage after any change (new hire or employment termination).
The basis of any Agile team are such practices as code reviews (once again), task branching, continuous integration and reporting. You can’t avoid those fundamental practices on the way to your ideal Agile.
3) Overcome language, time zone and cultural barriers
In the global working environment we see endless possibilities for business growth, however it is also presents some challenges. When your teams are working in different time zones even overlapping working hours and daily meetings do not mitigate the situation enough without additional guidance. To keep situation under control the teams should exchange information about code changes during the overlaps and notify about possible challenges.
However, it is almost impossible to do if your teams are not on the same page speaking different languages. Besides, C++, Java or Ruby on Rails they all need to speak good English and it is managers’ work to put an ideal team together. Ideal in terms of both proficiency and communication.
By arranging a meet up that gathers all teams together at least once a year you can keep up the team spirit and help tackle all the cultural differences that might arise.
4) Build effective communication
Being Agile in spite of core principles of person-to-person communication is obviously not easy. In order to establish effective communication channels, some additional training might be necessary as well as some technical tools. Daily meetings and reports, watching one’s tone and intonation of there’s no video during such meetings or trying to catch up on each other’s progress – those are only some of the things to bear in mind.
5) Use Agile tools to be Agile
Last but not the least: to build great software – use great software. Atlassian tools might be a great help in building your agile team wherever the team members are located. JIRA Software and Bitbucket will allow your developers to build the products together, communicate clearly and be as productive as you might expect of any true Agile team
Top tips:
– Arrange face-to-face interactions
– Choose the right tools and training
– Arrange frequent demos and retrospectives
– Cultivate orientation to quality and delivery
