Practical Tips for Distributed Agile Teams

Distributed Agile teams are here to stay — like it or not. According to CollabNet/VersionOne’s 12thState of Agile survey, 79% of respondents had at least some distributed teams practicing Agile. I myself was taught early on that Agile teams had to be co-located and should sit in the same area in order to facilitate high-bandwidth osmotic communication. And while that is still a very effective way of working, in today’s workplace we see more and more distributed Agile teams.

For the sake of this post, I will focus on team members distributed geographically across the country or globe, less on people in adjacent buildings or on different floors. I will cover:

• Why distributed teams are becoming more and more popular
• Challenges of distributed teams
• 10 tips to make them more successful

So let’s dive in!

Why Distributed Teams

So why would one disrupt the ideal collocated team and have the members spread out geographically? There are many potential reasons:

• The area where the company is located does not have a sufficient pool of available employees with the requisite skills.
• A company’s facilities are too small and expansion is not a viable option.