Scott Duncan
Sep 6, 2018 · 4 min read

From my experience with hundreds of teams over the past 10 years, let me explain what I have seen and felt worked or had to be dealt with (and this doesn’t have to apply only to Agile teams):

1 — I would agree that your first suggestion about time zones would help, but that would eliminate any North, Central, or South American (or the most past) location from interacting with any location not in the Americas. In the past decade, every company I have coached/trained/worked for has had time zone differences that went beyond 3 hours by 3 to 8 hours. Perhaps they were wrong for doing so, but that’s what is very likely to have to be dealt with.

2 — No question that this is a must.

3 — I have heard people complain many times about the difficulty they have understanding off-shore teams. When I have been in the physical presence of such people, I have had no trouble understanding them. The problem is the communication medium: a lone Polycom-like device in the middle of a table. I have had a hard time understanding folks when that is the case. The clipped bandwidth of the sound, the echoing, etc. make it a strain.

4 — Agreed and connected to my comment above…The answer most of the time has been to have video, not just audio. I have literally had people claim they understand others better when they can see them a they speak. Same sound coming from the Polycom-like device and nobody took lip-reading lessons. It’s also true from lots of research that more is communicated non-verbally than through words. There is no excuse not to use real-time video for distributed meetings.

5(a) — This would be nice, but my answer to #1 is what is more likely the case. And, by the way, a fully remote team is, therefore, colocated. Having “remote” people feel “disconnected and out of the loop” has to be prevented. And, by the way, who is remote from whom? This may depend on where the majority of people on the team are located or who is at the come HQ versus elsewhere, regardless of numbers. So don’t fail to make sure people are informed about things. This takes extra effort compared to just giving up and falling back on sending text around (electronically or on paper).

5(b) — As part of the team, they should be colocated with at least some of the team. I did work with a team once where the PO was in Denmark, a developer was on the East Coast of the US, a developer and a QA person was on the West Coast, 3 other developers and 2 other QA people were in India, and the Scrum Master was all by himself in Singapore. The worst distribution situation I’ve ever had to be a part of, but one of the best teams because the SM went out of his way to keep people informed despite the fact that we had to have two daily meetings each day: Denmark and the US about 8 am West Coast US time and India at 10PM West Coast US time. (The the SM and I were on each call.)

6 — As my answer above indicated, totally agree. Two other colocated teams didn’t do as well because the SMs had been told the SM role would help them move into management. They did not like the servant leader expectations of the SM role compared to the management authority they were expecting.

7 — True whether distributed or not. Some additional agreement elements when distributed, but still something any team should have.

8 — Good ideas that are probably rarely employed from what I have seen and encouraged.

9 — Absolutely. The cost of doing this for an iteration or two and/or sending a person from each team to spend time in the other location(s) can easily be shown as expenses, but the benefit from having done this, especially right at the outset and then periodically, cannot be overestimated based on the experiences people have had that I have seen. Getting team members from outside the US to come to the US can be much harder (i.e., Visa approvals) than getting US folks to travel to the other locations, however. If the PO is not located with the team (or the team is distributed itself and the PO is only with one part of the team), them they should travel to spend time with the other members of the team.

10 — Again, totally agree, but, of course, not just when teams are distributed.

I will say that I have seen distributed teams work just fine with Skype, Slack, etc. But then the members made sure they went out of their way to include everyone and showed great visibility and collaborative spirit to make this effective.

    Scott Duncan

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