10/9/2012 - Agile Business Conference 1 – how to make ... Surrey, The World! Sleeping in Seattle,...
Transcript of 10/9/2012 - Agile Business Conference 1 – how to make ... Surrey, The World! Sleeping in Seattle,...
10/9/2012
1
– how to make distributed teams work
Dorothy J Tudor –TCC Ltd. Cheshire, Surrey, The World!
Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall
– how to make distributed teams work
Dorothy J Tudor –TCC Ltd. Cheshire, Surrey, The World!
Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall
10/9/2012
2
© TCC: Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall ABC 2012 S1-3
Dot Tudor
• TCC Technical Director
• Accredited Agile Coach, Scrum Master
• Agile Alliance, Agile Leadership Network
• Accredited Facilitator
• Agile Project Management Practitioner/Trainer/Examiner
• DSDM Advanced Practitioner/Trainer/Examiner/Co-Author
• PRINCE2 Accredited Practitioner/Trainer
• ITIL Service Manager
• BCS / ISEB Business Analyst
• Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS)
© TCC: Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall ABC 2012 S1-4
Who are We?
Founded 1981 (Sandbach, Cheshire; Guildford, Surrey)
Agile Coaches, Facilitators, Trainers
BCS Business Analysis Accredited
Agile, DSDM, Scrum
PRINCE2, ITIL Service Management
www.tcc-net.com
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Agile Teams across the world
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Sleeping in Seattle – Wide-awake in Walsall
Walsall is 8 hours
ahead of Seattle:
So when the people of
Walsall are just having their
first “Costa” on the way to
work ...
The people in Seattle are
either still partying, or have
just gone to bed!
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Sleeping in Seattle – Wide-awake in Walsall
Format of the Presentation
How to make distributed teams work:
• What is a distributed team?
• What does a team need to be effective?
• Recognising the blockers and problems
• Recognising the “up-side” of these
• Taking advantage of the time, space and cultural differences
• Having a checklist to help set up and support these teams
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Michael E Kossler
Leading Dispersed Teams
2004
... A distributed or dispersed team has members who
are not located in the same place
... But what is a distributed team?
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Sharp, Giuffrida, Melnik: 2011
Information Flow within a dispersed agile team: a
distributed cognition perspective
Teams have to deal with distance: • temporal • geographical • socio-cultural
Resulting in difficulties with: • division of work • communications • knowledge management • project / process management • infrastructure
Types of distribution
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Sharp et al,
• Some believe Agile emphasizes the challenges
• Yet others suggest that agile practices need to
be modified for success.
• Holmström et al. explored how agile practices
can actually reduce the three kinds of
“distance”:
- temporal,
- geographical,
- socio-cultural.
What about Agile distributed teams?
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Sleeping in Seattle – Wide-awake in Walsall
How to make distributed teams work:
• What is a distributed team?
• What does a team need to be effective?
• Recognising the blockers and problems
• Recognising the “up-side” of these
• Taking advantage of the time and cultural differences
• Having a checklist to help set up and support these teams
© TCC: Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall ABC 2012 S1-12
What does a team need, to be effective?
The Red / Blue game:
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What does a team need, to be effective?
The “not the Red / Blue game” – “1 in 5”:
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What does a team need, to be effective?
The team game:
• Form small teams.
• Find out about each
other in 2 minutes
• What do you need to
know to be effective
as a team?
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Ability to
communicate
effectively
What does a team need, to be effective?
A clear
objective
Belief /
Motivation
Right skills
Empowerment
/ responsibility
Trust
/Respect
Effective
process
Leadership
Strategic
alignment
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Osmo Antero Wiio
Human communication usually fails ...
except by accident!
It’s often about communication ...
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Osmo Antero Wiio (s. 4. helmikuuta 1928)
• on suomalainen viestinnän professori emeritus,
toimittaja ja entinen kansanedustaja. Wiio on
tunnetuimpia suomalaisia organisaatioviestinnän
tutkijoita ja opettajia. Wiio on myös tullut tunnetuksi
tulevaisuudentutkijana, tieteen kansanomaistajana ja
käytännön viestinnän edistäjänä.
• Wiio valmistui Helsingin yliopistosta valtiotieteen
maisteriksi 1954, mutta suoritti lehdistöopin laudatur-
opinnot Yhteiskunnallisessa korkeakoulussa
Helsingissä. Yhteiskuntatieteiden tohtoriksi hän väitteli
Tampereen yliopistossa vuonna 1968.[1] Wiion
väitöskirja käsitteli tekstin ymmärrettävyyttä.
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• Osmo Antero Wiio (born February 4, 1928)
Finnish professor emeritus of communication.
• Wiio graduated from the University of Helsinki
with a Master's degree in political science in
1954 University of Helsinki, Finland. He
defended his doctoral thesis at the University of
Tampere in 1968.
• This dealt with making text easier to read.
Osmo Antero Wiio (s. 4. helmikuuta 1928)
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Wiio’s Laws
• If communication can fail, it will.
• If a message can be understood in different ways,
it will be understood in just that way which does
the most harm.
• There is always somebody who knows better than
you what you meant by your message.
• The more communication there is, the more
difficult it is for communication to succeed.
Wiio’s “laws of communication” are the human
communications equivalent of Murphy’s Law.
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There are 6 of you!!
• Who you think you are
• Who you think the other person is
• Who you think the other person thinks
you are
• Who the other person thinks he/she is
• Who the other person thinks you are
• Who the other person thinks you think
he/she is
Wiio observed that whenever there are two people conversing,
there are actually six people in the conversation:
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So get to know eachother! Understand eachother’s roles and skills!
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Distributed Teams -Blockers and Problems
• Different time zones
• Different languages
• Different geographical cultures
• Different skills cultures
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Distributed Teams -Advantages
• Different time zones
• Different languages
• Different geographical cultures
• Different skills cultures
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Different Time Zones
• While they are sleeping in Seattle,
they’re working in Walsall – this can
improve velocity by lessening wait-
time
• Interleaving work-times can improve
team motivation and responsibility
• Time difference can give space to
work uninterrupted
• Is it always the same people
who have to work late?
• Hard to find time to meet?
• Tiredness affects motivation?
• Share the “pain” around!
• Let the team decide!
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Different Languages
http://randmacivor.blogspot.co.uk
• Don’t think because we all
speak English, we all speak
English!
• Give time for comprehension.
Text and diagrams are
sometimes better offline
• If the product is international,
testing is better – fewer “gaffes”
• We at least take less for
granted in understanding
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Different Geographical Cultures
Showing this
American Football
sign is a jail-able
offence in Italy!
When your diving buddy
does this,
should you sink them or
save them?
Hitchhiker?
Nice one, son
... Or is it?
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Don’t do it! It may be illegal!
Roger Axtell: Gestures – the do’s and taboos of body language around the world
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You gotta be sooo careful ...
Bono has won numerous awards with U2,
including 22 Grammy awards and the
2003 Golden Globe award for best original
song, "The Hands That Built America",
for the film Gangs of New York.
During the live broadcast of the ceremony,
Bono called the award "really, really f***ing
brilliant!" In response, the Parents
Television Council condemned Bono for his
profanity and started a campaign for its
members to file complaints with the
Federal Communication Commission
(FCC). Bono's use of "f***" violated FCC
indecency standards.
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Take advantage of distribution!
• Use the time difference – longer working hours overall,
not per individual.
• Use the language differences – simpler explanation.
Pictures. Prototypes
• Use the geographical cultural differences – variety of
ideas. Better more diverse testing.
• Use the skill-based cultural similarities - (developers
talk easily to developers across the globe!)
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Communication
• Visual See it
• Auditory Hear it / read it
• Kinaesthetic feel, do, touch, smell
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An illustration!
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Information: Data in context
What do you think this means?
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Information: Data in context (2)
What do you think this means?
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It ain’t what you say….. it’s the way that you say it!
• How do we communicate?
– With words 7%
– With the tone of our voice 38%
– With body language 55%
(After Albert Mehrabian 1939 - )
The relative importance of verbal and non-verbal messages
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It ain’t what you say….. it’s the way that you say it!
... but at most 45%
of the message is
getting through?
I see a reluctance
to use web cams
However, have you
noticed where you
spend the time
looking ...
Your
picture
here
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Ability to
communicate
effectively
What does a team need to be effective?
A clear
objective
Belief /
Motivation
Right skills
Empowerment
/ responsibility
Trust
/Respect
Effective
process
Leadership
Strategic
alignment
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Mo - tivation
What are the team’s targets?
How is every individual’s performance measured?
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Australian Politician
If you’re going to bet, my son,
bet on the horse called “Self-Interest”
What motivates us?
It’ll be the only one trying!
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Carl Rogers
(1902-1987)
... for a person to "grow", they need an
environment that provides them with:
- genuineness (openness, self-disclosure)
- acceptance (unconditional positive regard)
- empathy (being listened to and understood)
Motivation
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In summary, then ...
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Sharp, Giuffrida, Melnik: 2011
Information Flow within a dispersed agile team: a
distributed cognition perspective
Teams have to deal with distance:
• temporal
• geographical
• socio-cultural
Resulting in difficulties with:
• division of work
• communications
• knowledge management
• project / process management
• infrastructure
Types of distribution (Reprise)
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A few guidelines
• division of work – go for small, feature-based teams
• communications
- set up the tools, but discuss the protocols.
- have facilitation for events
• knowledge management – make sure the information
has effective ways to flow and be shared
• project / process management – empower the teams
• infrastructure – ensure it is doesn’t get in the way
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5 Top “Hard” Tips for distributed teams
• Clarify roles and objective
• With meetings, think “short,
small and active”
• Visibility of plans and work to all
(“push” not “pull” information)
• Right tools
• Have “Ground rules” for
meetings, and behave!!
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5 Top “Soft” Tips for distributed teams
• Meet face to face very early,
and again when you “feel the
need”!
• Allow the teams to meet the
strategists
• Use visual, auditory and
kinaesthetic communication
• Bring key resources “on-
shore” as link-people
• Dedicate resources – limit the
multi-tasking!
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Mike Cohn
Succeeding with Agile: 2011
The best way to stop [too much] multitasking is to
stop ... cold turkey!
Dedicated resources
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... And finally ...
• MONTREAL
• WALSALL, WEST MIDLANDS
• SEATTLE, AMERICA
• ROME, ITALY
• AMSTERDAM
• WESTON-SUPER-MARE
What do these have in common ...?
M
A
E
T
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And remember ...
• A champion team will always beat a team of
champions!
Any Questions?
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– how to make distributed teams work
Dorothy J Tudor –TCC Ltd. Cheshire, Surrey, The World!
Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall