18 Mar Tips for distributed working that will improve delivery

At this time of worldwide disruption and social distancing requirements, working from home arrangements are becoming essential. Is your business and team capable of working remotely and still being fully effective?

Luckily distributed Agile is not new and has many advantages when lead by strong Agile leadership. Here are our tips for how to succeed with distributed teams:

1. Everyone on the team needs good stable internet. Effective collaboration needs seamless interaction and internet access is the primary medium for this to occur. High bandwidth and low latency are critical.
2. Effective Voice & Video Communication tools. Clear high resolution Video Conference and telephony are essential. Communication by both video and voice is essential as the lack of physical interaction needs to be offset by higher quality forms of digital interaction. Sound Echo, lack of fidelity or low quality video is to be avoided at all cost. Encourage staff to use headsets so that digital interaction can happen simultaneously with verbal.
3. Insist on good English skills. Verbal and written communication becomes more critical than ever. When physically meeting there are other non verbal queues that aid us in effective communication and “filling in” understanding from non verbal queues. When operating digitally we rely 100% on the spoken or written word. It is essential each and every word is crystal clear for us to have effective remote communication. Be sure to supplement with visual communication (ie pictures) where ever possible.
4. Effective cloud based Collaboration tools. White boards and meeting handouts need to be replaced with effective digital alternatives. Hangouts/workspaces to allow and facilitate this are critical for distributed workforce to collaborate effectively. Desktop sharing and tools to co-create information/documents and instantly see changes/markup are essential. Examples include Confluence, Teams, Hopin, Smart Sheets, Airtable etc. Similarly all teams must have a common work management tool. Examples include: Jira, Airtable, Airfocus, Ravetree etc. Lastly don’t forget that some roles specifically need their own tools; eg Developers. What ever the tool it needs it needs to be cloud based or internet accessible and accessible by everyone.
5. Everyone should have a second computer screen. Walls, handouts and meeting room screens all are now replaced by what the remote user can see on their screen. More screen realestate is required. Visual communication is more critical than ever and only delivered if screen space is provided as the visual gateway to the shared digital mediums.
6. Form scrum/kanban working teams. People need to clearly know who they are working with and have absolute clarity of what is required of them. Bumping into people, corridor conversations, and working with the person next to you is no longer possible. Scrum/Kanban teams are ideal as they provide named individuals that form the team and a common framework for work and interaction. Agility Partners has exceptional delivery leaders that can help establish these.
7. Form teams by business outcome not by role or reporting line. Teams need to be cross functional so that they have the ingredients to deliver customer outcome and value. Focus on clarifying what “done” looks like for delivering the business value and what roles need to be part of this critical group. Resist doing business with yourself. Line managers need to be made aware of what teams their staff are part of and how they can support these teams and their staff without confusing their role as that of delegating the day to day work to their line reports. Their role as leader is enabling and removing roadblocks.
8. Don’t skimp on the Agile team lead. Technology collaboration tools alone are not enough. An excellent Scrum Master/Agile Lead is essential for each team. The lead will help coach the team, coordinate things and find optimal ways of working together. They are the lynch pin of productivity. This role requires even more skill and experience for distributed teams as is significantly more difficult than for a colocated teams. Agility Partners has exceptional delivery leaders that can establish and mature your teams delivery.
9. Be religious about continuous improvement. Given the inherent challenges with a distributed team, it is critical to be diligent about retrospectives and continuous improvement, not just with regard to regular Agile and team “stuff”, but to figure out what works for everyone to bridge the geographical gaps.
10. Utilise proven Agile patterns. Each scrum master should have a kit bag of proven techniques and patterns to draw from. These should be matched to the teams maturity and new techniques or practices be added as team maturity increases. Each team should not need to “make up” their way of working. The rythm of the organisation should continue to flow across all teams to allow deliverables to seamlessly come together. High performing and maturity teams take time and don’t exist day 1. Agility Partners has proven patterns and maturity assessment models that can ensure this success.
11. Ensure significant overlap of working hours. All core principles of Agile still apply – collaboration requires interaction and time together – even when virtual. Ensure your team knows when, and is committed to, all agile ceremonies. Ensure the team has a clear set of hours that the everyone is available. Agreeing regular recurring time slots for collaboration may be helpful, eg between 12 & 4 pm, for team activities.

For many company’s, working from home or a not having workforce in the company offices may seem crazy. But, significant business advantages can result.

• Healthy and happy staff. Obviously at the moment isolation for health is a big issue that is addressed, but for many staff, the flexibility that comes from working from home is equally beneficial. Work life balance is often improved, as is staff commitment to work outcomes.
• Productivity. Reduced work related distractions and the necessity to put in place stronger work practices often results in improved productivity. For teams to work remotely a heighten necessity on effective work patterns is essential and typically translates to improved productivity. If teams are not proactively setup and nurtured, then rarely will they be successful or long lived.
• Reduced operating costs. For most businesses office costs rank as one of their highest overheads. Adopting signifiant ongoing work from home arrangements can dramatically reduce the need for office space. Instead staff perks of free internet, or IT equipment can be offered. Resulting in improved staff loyalty and reduced operating expenses.
• Workforce flexibility and availability. Once workforce is distributed, working from the same city or location is non essential. This provides staff flexibility to work from where they want, but also company’s to draw from a global capability pool. With this flexibility of workforce many other benefits can result including, access to new skills pools, access to alternate time zones to extend operating hours, labour cost efficiencies.

Now is the time to use Agile delivery to ensure your business continues to deliver great customer service and outcomes. Contact us immediately should we be able to assist with any of the above.