Digital Agile: How can you create teamwork with distant resources?

Over the past 30 years, rationalization of IT departments caused a massive outsourcing of jobs, tasks or even departments to offshore captive or external service providers. IT and Sourcing managers had to deal with a huge (and often underestimated) impact on the onsite workforce. And when a new balance finally seems to be found, voices arise nevertheless, stating that an Agile way of working is just not possible when dealing with offshore resources.

Of course, it is easier to work in an Agile way when all resources are located on site. However, if you are able to build real virtual teams, it becomes entirely feasible to combine the best of both worlds. Yet, a big challenge remains: how to establish a non-hierarchical communication and a common commitment towards the sprint deliverables.

Virtual team management is more than just offshoring

It is a fact: Agile and offshoring would be mutually exclusive if offshoring would not be able to address flexibility and human interactions.

Agile requires flexibility and empowerment and the most intense sense of teamwork. An effective Agile team can count on the following

• daily stand-up meetings push for open and non-hierarchical communication
• backlog prioritization asks for a close communication between product owner, scrum master and the individual team members taking the task
• poker planning enables initiative and empowerment
• And most importantly, a common commitment to deliver each sprint.

To compensate for the distance, the tooling available for scrum dashboards, teleconferencing, paired programming and even online social collaboration should not be seen as sufficient. In fact, the main question that each person should continuously bear in mind is: “Am I treating distant team members the same way I would treat the colleague sitting next to me ?”

Removing impediments for virtual teamwork

Virtual teamwork is thus a challenge. So how should organizations go about it?

• Working towards a common goal: A team, more than anything else, is a group of people dedicated towards the same objective. Needless to say, all members should thus be conscious of the business targets they are contributing to. Henry Ford explained this principle almost 100 years ago… long before distant relationships existed. However, this remains very true and should not be forgotten.
• Taking into account cultural differences: The Agile way of working, strongly built upon Western cultural common practices, may be disturbed by hierarchical communication. This aspect should be taken into account and tackled up front with the hierarchical offshore management.
• Enabling vendor relationships: Contracts with vendors could explicitly demand both one-on-one and many-to-many interactions with all offshore team members. Experience shows that, during the first weeks, communication will be far from smooth. Continuous inclusiveness during stand-ups and retrospective meetings will however stimulate interactions and eventually end up in a real team.
• Making the most of time differences: Distant teams are usually working in different time zones. What is often seen as a hurdle, could be handled as an opportunity. Continuous value delivery and continuous improvement could be taken to the maximum. A worldwide team can make swift progress and treat customer feedback that was given at the end of the day, before the start of the next working day. Nevertheless, it remains important to keep a common time slide for a daily stand-up call to align on status, risks and objectives.
• Sharing success and failure to build common commitment: Common commitment towards delivery is not only about being responsible and accountable for the product backlog item you took as owner. It is also about sharing success and failure. Often, hard work is shared between distant team members, however the successes (or failures) are only shared by client-facing resources. Agile is about continuous customer feedback and about embracing it as valuable input for future developments. It is therefore crucial to include the entire team in these feedback loops, and the related celebrations.
• Building relationships: If one element is key, it is the social aspect of teambuilding. Onsite team members share informal social interactions. That is what builds team spirit and encourages everyone to go the extra mile for each other. Offshore teams, if they are to be efficient, should be based on interpersonal relationships as well. People often tend to forget that being a virtual team does not prevent them from having “coffee corner like” chats about the weekend, holidays or sports events with their distant colleagues.

Of course, virtual teambuilding events and virtual success celebrations will require creativity. But given the benefits, why not give it a try?

Nobody said it would be easy

Making Agile software development work in virtual teams can only be achieved through removing impediments to open many-to-many communications. Successes and failures should be shared as a team, and no hierarchical pressure whatsoever should be put on any of the team members. As it appears, a methodology choice can eventually end up in an HR and Sourcing opportunity…