©2013 Kerika, Inc. Here Be Dragons The Terra Incognita of Distributed Agile Arun Kumar [email protected]
May 08, 2015
©2013 Kerika, Inc.
Here Be Dragons The Terra Incognita of Distributed Agile
Arun Kumar
©2013 Kerika, Inc.
Summary • Teams everywhere are becoming distributed – Private sector, public sector, nonprofit
• Teams everywhere want to be more agile – Small “a” agile, not big “A” Agile
• TradiLonal Scrum thinking doesn’t help. – (Go agile or go distributed, you can’t do both)
• We need to develop new best pracLces – Arun presents lessons learned over many years.
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Distributed teams in Private Sector
Google is here
Google’s CIO is here
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Because no room is roomy enough
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Distributed Teams in Public Sector • Embracing the Lean Government model – Flat budgets, as far as the eye can see
• Increased use of field teams – 75% of WA State Auditor’s Office is not in Olympia
• Need to collaborate across mulLple locaLons – Only the Lniest agencies are collocated
• Need to develop partnerships – Across agencies, and to outsource civic services
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Distributed Teams in Nonprofit Sector • Sectors is basically a co\age industry – 55,000 nonprofits in Washington State – 80% with assets/income < $100K
• Nonprofits are service delivery organizaLons – Contracted to deliver civic services – (Why Planned Parenthood is funded everywhere)
• MulLple, transient partnerships – This is how nonprofits increase their leverage
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Social collaboraLon: You Are Here
You are a member of mulLple, agile collaboraLon networks
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Small “a” agile, not large “A” Agile • Be pragmaLc, not dogmaLc – Learn, adopt, adapt
• Agile has many sources, many variaLons – Kanban, Scrum, Scrumban, Lean, Kaizen, ROK…
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The intersecLon of distributed & agile
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3 Strategies for Distributed Agile There are three generic strategies you can try
• Divide by locaLon
• Divide by funcLon
• Divide by module
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Divide by locaLon • One project, with teams in mulLple locaLons – Each team has full complement of skills – A single Sprint cycle across mulLple locaLons – A single Daily Standup across mulLple locaLons – Implicit or explicit pairing of staff across locaLons
• What you think you will get: – ConLnuous development, around the clock – “Pass the book” at the end of the day
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Does this work? • Huge overhead of communicaLons – Daily/endless phone calls – Huge volume of emails – Significant staff turnover
• More PMs, more travel than anLcipated – Destroys economics of offshoring
• Not really Agile, not very agile – A bunch of mini-‐waterfalls
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Divide by funcLon • Segregate funcLons by locaLon – Typical: all development in US, all QA in India – Single Sprint cycle across locaLons
• What you think you will get: – Cool stuff gets done locally – Crappy work gets done offshore – ConLnuous QA
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Does this work? Yes, if… • Each team must be truly self-‐sufficient • You can manage mulLple overlapping Sprints – E.g. Design Team works one Sprint ahead – Requirements and hand-‐offs are very explicit
• Teams and processes are already tuned – You cannot distribute a process that you are sLll evolving!
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Divide by component • Each locaLon builds one component – Or, divide by experLse: front-‐end vs. back-‐end
• One super-‐team integrates – Or, it somehow comes together in the end
• What you think you will get: – ComparaLve advantage: the best of all worlds
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Does this work? You get Distributed, you give up Agile • Sprints are invariably much longer – You are doing mini-‐waterfalls
• Concept of user story is lost – Without stories, are you sLll Agile? – Teams cannot recognize value delivered – Product owners get lost
• Obamacare integraLon model
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So, what does work? • ConLnuous updates are criLcal – Daily Standup doesn’t scale or distribute – Status is a waste of a phone call
• Tools must support asynchronous work – “Catch me up”
• Lightweight tools help adopLon – Keep paradigms simple across cultures
• Make processes explicit & visual – Show, don’t tell
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Kerika example See this at h\ps://kerika.com/m/H51M
©2013 Kerika, Inc.