Best Practises| Best Practises with ADROITENT

Best Practices

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Best Practices

Adroitent has a lot of experience in executing large enterprise application on Agile, especially in distributed and extremely distributed environments.

Based on our experience, we have identified a list of best practices that will help implementing Agile in distributed environments.

When a distributed team is first formed, organize a fun team-building event or training session (if the team is new to Agile). Try to bring the full team, or at least as many people as possible, to a single location.
Use electronic community to encourage maximum collaboration.
1. High network bandwidth to allow video conferencing or desktop sharing
2. Ability to record and share all discussions (video and conference calls) easily
3. Digital camera to capture and share whiteboard discussions
4. Access to collaboration tools such as instant messaging, Skype, Google+, etc.
5. Access to Agile project management tools such as Rally, Version One, Mingle, etc., to help with managing electronic task boards, easy task status updates, and quick reporting
6. Access to online live discussion forum-type tools where real-time exchange of dialogue is easy to post, view, and edit

Spend some time doing pre-planning for future sprints. You don't need to create massive WBS or Gantt charts, but identifying interdependencies early in the phase would help in planning and collaboration down the line. Also schedule periodic backlog grooming sessions -- once a week, preferably.
Ensure maximum participation in all core Agile team meetings.
1. Avoid sprint planning, review, and retrospection sessions on weekend-hugging weekdays (Friday/Monday), especially when you have distributed teams with ten-plus hours of time zone difference.
2. Keep a list of public holidays for each geographical location handy on the bulletin board.
3. Add physical clock(s) to every Scrum room to account for time zone differences of people participating in the project. One clock should display the current time for each time zone.
4. Define core hours for everyone on the team, including the product owner. Everyone must commit to be available during the core hours.
5. Core hours should overlap, taking into consideration all time zones.
Maintain an information radiator in the form of a bulletin board or wiki page. Introduce each team member on the bulletin board and post their fun facts, pictures, etc.
All team members (including offshore members) should be coached continually to participate actively in core meetings and day-to-day sprint activities. Sometimes team members become accustomed to taking help from an assigned leader for clarifications. A self-sustaining team member must feel confident to work independently (while still being able to ask questions).
Trust each other but don't hesitate to play devil's advocate or express your concerns.
Build cross-functional, self-organizing teams in each location. Don't encourage location-based roles, e.g., all quality assurance resources in one location, etc.
Scrum Masters (whether onshore or offshore) must demonstrate servant-leadership skills. They shouldn't direct team members on what to do but should help by removing impediments that block a task's progress.
Learn and respect each other's cultural viewpoints. Celebrate each other's festivals, exchange greetings, and maybe learn few words in the native language of other team members.
Some distributed teams prefer to have proxy product owners / Scrum Master at each remote location. In such cases, the product owners/ Scrum master and their appointed representatives must meet daily. This enables proxy product owners to make decisions and verify information quickly.
Continuous integration and configuration management are key.
Last but certainly not least, encourage everyone to have lots of fun every day.