Agile Network India | Techniques to handle large distributed teams | Milind Rumade

Distributed Agile Software Development
Essentials for success
June 29, 2019
milind@pm-powerconsulting.com

Copyright © PM Power Consulting Pvt. Ltd. 2
About PM Power Consulting
• We help organizations achieve agility in design and delivery of software and
services.
• We attain this through transformational consulting and coaching delivered by
expert practitioners with decades of experience.
• Our Consultants are expert practitioners with experience in building high
performance organizations
• We embed ourselves in to customer’s problem context and guide the participants
to find the right solutions to their challenges
• Our customers get access to our accumulated knowledge distilled from varied
engagements, adapted to their context
• We think deeply about and explore the future of our disciplines and strive to add to
the body of knowledge. We are always happy sharing our thought leadership with
our customers
• Our customers include Siemens, Tech Mahindra, Societe General, Volvo, HCL,
Unisys, Novell etc. to name a few.

About myself (Milind Rumade)
• Over 35 years of experience in software development and leading software delivery
organizations
• Worked in senior positions at TCS, Tech Mahindra, Accenture, CMC, Digital Tools Inc., etc.
• Currently working as Principal Consultant in PM Power Consulting, as a consultant for Agile
Transformation.
• Was a key player in agile transformation of a major business Unit of a major Indian MNC.
Coached teams in adoption of agile practices in letter and spirit, changing culture from
traditional command and control to facilitating leadership.
• Worked as a Delivery Lead/Program Manager responsible for delivery of complex
transformational programs for domestic and international customers.
• In one of my assignments I led the Intellectual Property Management initiative wherein I
designed and deployed a process for Product Lifecycle Management – from Ideation through
development to market launch and support.
• For a California based product company built a product development capability in Mumbai that
turned a shrink wrap project management software into an enterprise product for the fortune
1000 market and supported it from India
3Copyright © PM Power Consulting Pvt. Ltd.

Root cause of challenges in
Distributed Software Development
and ways to address it

Drivers for Distributed Software Development
• Cost advantage
– Manage with lower budget
– Get more done without increasing budget
• Time to market
– Get more done in a short time
– Follow the sun for quicker progress
• Access to skilled resources
• Access to customers
• BCP/DR Considerations

Software development life cycle
Copyright © PM Power Consulting Pvt. Ltd.
6
Requirements
Test
Development
Design
Deploy
Feedback
Agile Software
Development
External Inputs
Communication is the key to carry out
all lifecycle activities

One of the Agile Principles (#6)
The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face conversation.

Why face to face conversation?
• Normal human communication (Face to Face) has three
components
– Verbal (7%)
– Auditory (38%)
– Visual (55%)
• What you say is much less important than how you say it
• Non-verbal communication is very powerful

Challenges in distributed set up
• Communication is a challenge
– Visual component (55%) may be absent
– Auditory component may not be feasible (timezones)
– Written communication is highly inadequate
• Team morale (key component of agile) takes a hit
• Productivity/Resource utilization suffers
• Cultural issues
• Knowledge Management
• Chances of success go down

Addressing the communication issue
• Encourage travel so that people can meet in person
• Use technology to bridge the physical distance
– To promote more complete communication use Video
• Telepresence
• Video conferencing
• Webcams on individual PCs
– Create connection through easy access to audio
• Phones
• Group chats
• Keep communication at optimum level
– Avoid too much, too less

Pre-empt miscommunication
• A little more documentation
– User stories need more elaboration than what could be
accepted by a collocated team
• Inspect and Adapt
– Informal Reviews
• Proactive approaches
– Test Driven Development
• Encourage lateral communication

Leadership
• More is needed from leaders in a distributed set up
• Promote culture that
– Demonstrates openness, accessibility
– Encourages collaboration
– Appreciates small achievements, good work
– Fosters commitment to deadlines
– Creates sense of being together
– Encourages self organization
– Remove impediments
• Create Team Wi-ki site for sharing knowledge
• Communicate progress frequently

Getting the team to perform in
Distributed Agile Software Development

Distributed teams
• How to distribute?
• How to create coherence?
• How to make meetings effective?

How to distribute
• Collocated independent teams in different areas
• Deliberately distributed teams

Collocated independent teams in different areas
• Having collocated teams working independently
– Each team has all needed skills
– Teams in different locations work independently but
collaborate to coordinate their work
– Easier for teams to work together
Team 1
Team 2

Deliberately distributed teams
• We chose to have a team with members from different
locations
• Done to create one integrated team and avoid
geographical silos
Team 1
Team 2

Coherence
• Coherence – The situation where the parts of something
fit together in a natural or reasonable way (Cambridge Dictionary)
• We need the team to function as a well oiled machinery
• Establish a shared vision
• Establish working agreements
• Encourage team subcultures
• Understand the cultural differences and adjust
• Create track record with early success

Coherence
• Tools for better integration
– MS Team
– Mural
– Slack
• Practices for team bonding
– Virtual coffee and doughnut
– Encourage people from different geographies to help each other
– Celebrate success, emphasize team effort
– When the team faces a problem, keep all members informed and
invite participation from all in resolution

Useful tips for all meetings
• Prefer meeting where people can see each other
• Include time for small talk
• Share the pain
– One team should not be always inconvenienced
• Everyone should know everyone else in a meeting

Challenges Specific to Distributed Agile
Software Development

Challenges in distributed Agile
• Dependencies across teams (One Team)
• Program Level Planning (One View)
• Coordinating teams (One Way of working)
• Challenges in scrum events

Addressing Dependencies
• Release Planning - Identify and address dependencies
• Lookahead Planning
– When doing sprint planning for sprint X, also have a high level
view of sprinr X+1 and X+2
– Check if sprints X+1 and X+2 have any dependency
– Communicate the dependency to the relevant team and get it
in their backlog for next sprint
– Dependency is addressed when your sprint delivery is ready

Addressing Dependencies
• Interface Requirements may not get addressed till too late
– Unattended interfaces
– Unidentified interfaces
• Integration team
– Ensures that unattended interfaces are attended
– Looks out for unidentified interfaces
– Examines results of nightly integration testing
– Could be a virtual team for small projects but Larger projects will
need a full time team
– Needs better performing team members

Program Level Planning
• If possible, get all people together in one hall or get
them together in a virtual room
• Communicate big picture
– progress
– challenges
– goals
• Assign targets for next quarter/release
• Team to work on their plans and group to review them

Coordinate teams
• Encourage formation of “community of practice”
– Group of like-minded or like-skilled individuals
• UI Community, Testing Community, Scrum Master community
– Could be formal or informal
– Self organizing
– Can span across projects
– Needs a coordinator

Coordinate Teams
Daily Scrums
Scrum of Scrums
2-3 times a week
Scrum of Scrum
of Scrums
Once a week
Application 1 Application 2 Application 3

Agenda for coordination meetings
• Three questions (15 minutes max)
– What has my team done since last meeting that might affect
other teams?
– What will my team do before we meet again that might affect
other teams?
– What problems my team is having that other teams could help
with?
• Discussion (as long as needed)
– Open issues

Challenges in execution of scrum events

Sprint Planning
• It is preferred to have one sprint planning meeting with all
members
– Some members bear the inconvenience of attending meeting at
non working time
• When one meeting is not feasible, split it in two parts
– Product owner briefs entire team on sprint goal
– Local team continues, does its part and communicates to all
– Other team picks up when they come to office, do their part and
communicate to all
– Follow up call by PO to complete the sprint planning

Daily Scrum Meeting
• Preferred – all members in the call/meeting
• This is similar to DSM of a collocated team and would have same
advantages
• However, this could be inconvenient to some or all because of
timezone differences
• Not sustainable if people need to work outside work hours every
day
• In this case, have regional meetings and share the summary with
other team.
• Alternatively, have one person from each region attend the DSM of
the other region

Thank You
In Case of questions, write to
milind@pm-powerconsulting.com

Agile Network India | Techniques to handle large distributed teams | Milind Rumade

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