Scrum ideals call for a team to be colocated, and with members in close proximity to each other. However, the reality is that many teams and organizations already have, and continue to have, a distributed component, with the team members partially or permanently located apart from each other. How to make this arrangement work? Is it still Scrum? Silvana Wasitova

1. xpday.ch
2009
2010
Genève 2011
9 mai
« Overcoming Distances: Scrum with
Distributed Teams »
Silvana Wasitova
- C1 -

2. Overcoming Distances:
Scrum with Distributed Teams
! Service ! Knowledge ! Result
9 May 2011
Silvana Wasitova

3. To Do Doing Done
Intro
Case
Study,
Result
Best
Practices
?
2

4. A little bit about me
Waterfall
Scrum

5. At
4

6. Scrum Framework Summary
! Product Owner ! Product Backlog ! Product Planning
! Team ! Sprint Backlog ! Sprint Planning
! Scrum Master ! Potentialy ! Scrum
Shippable Product ! Sprint Review
! Burndown Charts ! Retrospective
Cardinal Rule:
Work on the highest priority item first
5

7. Scrum Framework
6

8. www.projectcartoon.com

9. Communication Modes
http://www.agilemodeling.com/essays/communication.htm
8

10. ©
Silvana
Wasitova

11. VersionOne Survey 2009
Ref: http://www.versionone.com/pdf/2009_State_of_Agile_Development_Survey_Results.pdf

12. 64% implemented features are
rarely or never used
Focusing on customer needs ensures:
! the right features are built
! not wasting effort (and resources)
on features that are not needed
While the figures may vary by
company, principle remains:
Only build the features that the
client/users need
Ref: Jim Johnson, Chairman of Standish Group, quoted in 2006 in:
http://www.infoq.com/articles/Interview-Johnson-Standish-CHAOS
Sample: government and commercial organizations, no vendors, suppliers or consultants
11 © Itecor all rights reserved

13. To Do Doing Done
Intro
Case
Study,
Result
Best
Practices
?
12

14. Case Study
London 4 Munich 4
Paris 11
Milan 1
Grenoble 4
Madrid 1 India
US, Ireland

15. Schedule Highlights
TDF
Euro
Paris-Dakar Tour de France
January February March April May June
Rugby 6 Nations Rolland Garros Wimbledon
FOOT: Moto GP Boxing
Olympic Games qualifiers Golf, Athletics, Cycling Horse Racing
World Cup qualifiers Basketball Snooker
Hockey

16. Challenges
! Team Size
! Geographic Distribution
! Timezone difference
! Keen stakeholders
! Agressive deliverables schedule
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17. To Do Doing Done
Intro
Case
Study,
Result
Best
Practices
?
16

18. Phone, Chat, Email
Can you
Phone
• eadset; Mute button, full duplex
H hear me
• peaker phone, satellite microphones
S
now?
• eal time, informal, up-to-date status notes
R
Chat • lways on, always monitored at each location
A
• ebcam, Video Conferencing
W
Video • ow-res is better than nothing
L
Minimum
Screen Sharing • o you see what I see
D delays!
• ollaborative site, actively used
C
Wiki • nfo radiator and repository
I
Use several modes

19. Planes, Trains and Automobiles
As much as budget &
time allows: meet in person
! Release Planning
! Product Backlog
! Sprint Planning
18

20. Telephone, Tele-presence
“Off-site” persons get priority:
speaking, bringing up concerns
! Easy to “lose connection” with
persons off-site
! Easy to hand-signal those on-site
! If unsure, ask to repeat/clarify
Photo courtesy J. Vonlanthen
Tell – a - person
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21. Scrum Best Practice
! Daily Standup: 15 minute limit
! With this setup,
and this many people?
Salut
Bonjour
Hello Konichiwa
Hola
Gruβ
Dobry den Bongiorno
Hiyya
Guten tag Good Morning Everybody
20

22. Building Trust
! Spend time getting to know each other
! Do what you say
! Go the extra mile
! Be “their” advocate,
act on “their” behalf
! Teamwork
21

23. Team Dynamics
Four stages of
team formation:
Forming, Storming,
Norming, Performing
Awareness of Motivation, Personalities
! Maslow hierarchy of needs
! Theory X and Y
! Myers-Briggs - MBTI
! INTJ – Don’t change *my plan*, there will be consequences!
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24. Remote “Team Building” and “Having Fun”
Alternatives to lunch or
bowling together:
! Arrive early at conf. calls
! Get (a bit) personal
! Share pictures
! Joke and tease
Treat all equally well
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25. Build Rapport
! Be approachable
make it your job to
build the bridge of rapport
! Care about them
spend time talking about
their interests and activities
! Support them in things that
don’t directly benefit you
time to hang out,
without “talking shop”
! Ask them what they think
24
Initiate the conversation

26. You’re only talking about
Communication!
! Risk #1 for software projects is: communication
! People working large distances/timezones away:
More challenges to communication
! Different languages, different cultures
! Absence of continuous face-to-face communication
Yes, Virginia, there is a
communication-clause
25 © Itecor all rights reserved

27. Apply Distribution to Scrum Teams?
VersionOne “State of Agile Development”, 2008 Survey, n=3061
! 57% respondents work with distributed teams
! 41% respondents currently, or plan to,
do agile with outsourced development.
! The agile ideal of co-locating the entire team in a single
room is at odds with what’s actually going on within a
large part of the software development community.
! Success rate for co-located team (in same room) is
over 20% higher than for geographically distributed team
26

28. Why use Distributed Teams?
! Development Cost
! Talent Availability
! 24/7 around the globe
! Closer to customer
! Market Opportunity
! Flex-time
50% of US workforce can be mobile on any given day.
Total Employee Mobility® Benchmarking Report, Runzheimer International, October 2008
27 © Itecor all rights reserved

29. Why use Agile Philosphy?
• Frequent product delivery
• Transparency: daily standup
• Collaboration: developers and
customers
• Regular reviews with Customer & PO
• Strip-off non-essentials
• Retrospective: Continuous improvement
Adapt to Change
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30. Hyper-productive Distributed team
Extreme Success
Jeff Sutherland re. Xebia:
1. “Home Team” start scrum: 3 wks prep, 2 x 2wk sprints
2. Collocate home and off-shore team, 3 x 2wk sprints
3. Achieve co-located hyperproductivity
4. Achieve hyperproductivity from two locations;
one Product Backlog fed 4 Sprint Backlogs
Xebia delivers 7x Function Points over industry average waterfall teams
http://jeffsutherland.com/SutherlandFullyDistributedScrumXebiaAgile2008.pdf
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31. Visual Tools:
information sharing in distributed environment
! Skype
! Acrobat Connect
! MS Communicator
! myATT / Interwise
! Time-lapse pictures
! Video-streaming; “Always On” (within legal limits)
30 © Itecor all rights reserved

32. What is a Distributed Team?
31 © Itecor all rights reserved

33. Agile in 3D
You just knew this was next…
Virtual World Interaction
Agile in 3D worlds brings teams closer to face-to-face
Aug 2010 – Lessons from Second Life Avatars -
http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-
quality/agile-in-3d-worlds-brings-teams-closer-to-face-to-
face/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxOT1fEB8U
TELEPLACE or AgileZen (Rally)
32 © Itecor all rights reserved

36. Passionate team members, driven by common purpose
can overcome any obstacles
35

38. Build Trust
! Spend time getting to know each other
! Do what you say
! Go the extra mile
! Be “their” advocate,
act on “their” behalf
! Work as a team
37

39. How much do you trust each other?

40. Silvana Wasitova, PMP, CSM, CSP
Itecor.com
Vevey, Switzerland
s.wasitova@itecor.com
+41 79 558 05 09
slideshare.com/wasitova
39

41. To Do Doing Done
Intro
Case
Study,
Result
Best
Practices
?
40

42. 41

43. References
! Guido Schoonheim and Jeff Sutherland - Aug 2010 – “Mind the Gap! Principles of Hyperproductive fully Distributed
Scrum”
! Jeff Sutherland - SirsiDynix - Agile with Outsourced Teams 2007 - http://jeffsutherland.com/
SutherlandFullyDistributedScrumSirsiDynixHICSS2007
! Jeff Sutherland - Xebia - Agile 2008 - http://jeffsutherland.com/SutherlandFullyDistributedScrumXebiaAgile2008.pdf
! Yves Hanoulle, http://www.hanoulle.be/2009/10/how-to-work-with-a-whiteboard-with-a-distributed-team/
! Henrik Kniberg, “Scrum and XP From the Trenches”
! Cory Foy, Aug 2010 Distributed Teams Tools and Techniques:
Blog: http://blog.coryfoy.com/2010/08/technically-distributed-tools-and-techniques-for-distributed-teams/ ,
Slides http://www.slideshare.net/CoryFoy/technically-distributed-tools-and-techniques-for-distributed-teams
! Scott Ambler – The Distributed Team, Oct 2007
http://searchsoftwarequality.techtarget.com/news/article/0,289142,sid92_gci1277064,00.html
! Chris Christensen, Managing Virtual Projects, 2006 - http://www.camcinc.com/library/Managing%20Virtual
%20Projects.pdf
! “The State of Agile Development” 2008 Survey by VersionOne http://www.versionone.com/pdf/
3rdAnnualStateOfAgile_FullDataReport.pdf
! Employee Mobility® Benchmarking Report, Runzheimer International, 2008
! Alistair Cockburn, Agile Software Development
! A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum, IBM Agile Community - http://www.distributedscrum.com
! IBM – Using Scrum to Complement Organizational Transformation
http://www.distributedscrum.com/downloads/Transformation20100810.pdf
! Microsoft, Ade Miller, Distributed Agile Development at Microsoft, October 2008
! Craig Larman & Bas Vodde, Scaling Lean & Agile Development: Successful Large, Multisite & Offshore Products with
Large-Scale Scrum, Addison-Wesley Professional, ISBN 0321480961
! Mobile Companies Finish First – Why Being Out Is In, Runzheimer International, November 2008
42 ! http://www.scrumalliance.org/articles/165-scrum-success-in-a-distributed-team-environment

44. More References
! Elizabeth Woodward, IBM - A Practical Guide to Distributed Scrum
Video Interview: http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/elizabeth-woodward-face-to-face-
communication-is-biggest-challenge-with-distributed-scrum/
! Mike Cohn http://blog.mountaingoatsoftware.com/build-trust-between-teams-with-ambassadors
! Salesforce - Kerievsky & Dourambeis, Large Scale & Distributed Agile http://agile2010.agilealliance.org/distributed
! Bland, 7 Ways to Humanize Distributed Teams, Aug 2010, http://agile.dzone.com/news/7-ways-humanize-distributed
! Bland, Distributed ScrumMasters and the art of digital facilitation, Aug 2010, http://www.slideshare.net/7thpixel/
distributed-scrum-masters-d-bland-agile2010
! Agile in 3D – Aug 2010:
! Bill Krebs – Virtual Worlds - Lessons from “Second Life” Avatars - http://itknowledgeexchange.techtarget.com/software-quality/agile-in-3d-worlds-brings-teams-closer-
to-face-to-face/
! http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WZxOT1fEB8U
! Todd Olson, Visualization Tool: AgileZen (from Rally Software) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcMEphXdwnY
! Virtual World using Teleplace - http://www.teleplace.com/products/index.php
! http://www.agile2010.org/scale.html
! Kent Beck, Tools for Agility, http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AE7E07E8-0872-47C4-
B1E7-2C1DE7FACF96
! Thushara Wijewardena Aug 2010, “Why You Suck at Offshoring, Even with Agile – View from the Other Side”
Video of interview With Dave Prior – 17 mins - http://www.blip.tv/file/3273357?utm_source=player_embedded
! Scaling Agile in distributed environment - http://www.agileindia.org/scalingdistributedagilebythomas
! The Drexler Sibbet Team Performance Model
! http://www.grove.com/site/ourwk_gm_tp.html
! http://www.robertmcneil.com/pages/pages/dsmodel.html
! The Four Agreements – Don Miguel Ruiz http://intjforum.com/showthread.php?t=22045
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45. Photo Credits
p.7 Flickr, Yahoo team; Flickr, by blackdood
p.18 Beijing Olympics Stadium, Clive Rose, Getty Images
p.21 Beer: psdgraphics.com, Working Lunch, Silvana Wasitova
p.22 Jonas vonLanthen, used with permission
p.32 SecondLife.com
p.36 Rowing team: J.D. Photography
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46. 45 © Itecor all rights reserved