www.luxoft.com
Managing Communication Barriers in
Geographically Dispersed Teams
Luxoft Agile Practice Webinar
By Vyacheslav Moskalenko
11 Mar 2016
www.luxoft.com
Introduction
Slava Moskalenko
Agile Coach at Luxoft
Professional Scrum Trainer at scrum.org
https://ua.linkedin.com/in/slavamoskalenko
www.luxoft.com
Session Plan
What are the common problems and bad habits of the dispersed teams?
Principles to overcome communication barriers?
What are the tools we can use for better communication?
How to setup Scrum meetings in the dispersed teams
Materials for further reading and watching
ICAgile session attendance code
Q/A
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What is Dispersed Project Team
Stakeholders in San-Francisco
Product Owner in New York
Java Developers in Krakow
QA Engineers in Bangalore
Business, management and development team in different locations
Support in Philippine
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First Recommendation
Minimize number of locations as much as it possible
Business and development team in one location is rarely possible
Achievable target: Entire business (decision centre) in the first location Entire engineering (development) in the second location
www.luxoft.com
Communication Barriers
Paper documentation is the weakest channel for knowledge sharing
Interactive tools
can break communication barriers
when face-to-face conversations
are not possible
Poor communication channels create communication barriers
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Real Story
Developers from Kyiv
Product Owner from New York
Project Manager from London
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Same Story One Month Before
Development Team was spending most of its time to read paper specification
The used e-mail conversation to ask questions
In some rare cases they used phone when E-mail conversation was getting so HOT or when business escalated project setup dissatisfaction
For entire month project team was not able to start meaningful work !!!
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Project Setup With Dispersed Scrum Team
Find the cheapest way to gather all Scrum Team Members in one location for a week
Use collaborative techniques to create Product Vision, Product Backlog, Definition of Done and Release Roadmap
Create working agreements
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All Scrum Meetings should be interactive
Use video conference calls
Use GoogleDocs, Lync\Skype screen sharing WebEx conferences Trello for voting Interactive MindMaps
Interactive demo sessions
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Interactive Sprint Review Session for Stakeholders
Direct feedback
Value for end users VS
Acceptance criteria
Business value
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Communication Slowly Deteriorates …
Audio channel should be high quality
Long audio calls should be Interactive and supported with Screen sharing
Every minute check that the person on the other end is not falling asleep
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Collaborative Origami Game
Rich feedback and real collaboration speed-up development process
Emulates: audio, Video/screen sharing, Face-to- face communication
You can find this game: http://tastycupcakes.org/2009/06/collaborative-origami/
This game can be facilitated by anyone
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Collaborative Origami Insights
Face-to-face collaboration and pair work 5-6 minutes to achieve the goal Interactive cooperation takes 10 minutes to achieve the goal
Communication over the phone rarely helps to achieve the goal in 10 minutes: • Describing initial goal in simple words • Having some practical experience with business domain • Every 5 seconds developer explains what he did and how the current state is looking
www.luxoft.com
Communication Barriers Strengthened By …
Don’t use it for negative feedback
Confirm decisions are made on the collaborative meetings (MoM)
Document some issues which can be a part for the next collaborative meeting
CC entire team
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Communication Barriers Start With …
Belief that documentation is the best way to preserve project information
Team blog post
JIRA
Avoid 100 + pages
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Agile Communication Channels
Channel usage in ideal world
Channel usage in dispersed teams
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Recommended Materials
Collaborative Origami - http://tastycupcakes.org/2009/06/collaborative-origami/
www.luxoft.com
Available Trainings and Workshops of Luxoft Agile Practice
ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Fundamentals https://icagile.com/icagile-certified-professional
ICAgile Certified Professional - Business Value Analysis https://icagile.com/icp-business-value-analysis
ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Team Facilitation https://icagile.com/icp-agile-team-facilitation
Professional Scrum Master https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Master
Management 3.0 https://management30.com/events/two-day-course/
Custom Workshops:
• Coaching and self-coaching;
• Agile project management;
• Agile project metrics;
• Motivation models;
• Feedback gathering;
• etc.
www.luxoft.com
Way Forward – ICAgile Certified Professional
ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Fundamentals
Details - https://icagile.com/icagile-certified-professional
Registration
For Luxoft employees
https://inthr.luxoft.com/IntHRWebApp/aspx_PTC/CreateRequestInternal.aspx?Course=SDP-031
For non-Luxoft – http://www.luxoft.com/agile/icagile-certified-professional-icp/#request
www.luxoft.com
More Information
http://www.luxoft.com/agile
http://blog.luxoft.com/agile
https://sentinel2.luxoft.com/sen/wiki/display/AGLP/About+Us (Luxoft employees only)
http://www.luxoft.com/agile-lean-webinars-schedule
My personal contacts:
https://ua.linkedin.com/in/slavamoskalenko
www.luxoft.com
Next Events
18.03.2016 15-16 MSK Svetlana Mukhina Team Coaching
03.30.2016 16-17 MSK Svetlana Mukhina Как мотивировать себя и свою команду
(часть 2)
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