Agile teams typically excel when their members are co-located. Agile teams can be a source of competitive advantage as such teams are well suited to periods of disruption. They can adapt to fast-changing business priorities, disruptive technology, and digitization.
But the sudden shift to remote work has challenged the typical approach to managing agile teams. Typically agile teams thrive when they are co-located, all working in the same place, frequent in-person contact, building trust, simplifies problem-solving, instant communication, and fast decision making. The sudden transition to remote working can reduce cohesion and increase inefficiency.
However, much of what leads the agile team to lose productivity when they go remote can easily be addressed. If the necessary technology is in place the remote team can deliver just as much value as co-located teams.
Sustaining the culture of a remote agile team.
Remote access to agile teams requires a considerable shift t the work culture. Without frequent in-person meets, chats it becomes difficult to develop friendship and trust among members.
Teams already operating remotely before the epidemic are less likely to struggle as they have larnt to focus on outcomes over processes.
But many teams that switched to remote due to epidemic would require revisiting team norms, cultivating morale, and adapting a team's approach to coaching.
Revisit normas and ground rules for team interaction: Virtual whiteboards, instant chat, video conferencing tools can boost collaboration and promote participation. Some challenges may require members to adjust to the tools, members should be generous with one another in offering support on navigating virtual tools. Teams should quickly get used to virtual whiteboard, visual presentation tools, and modify established routines into virtual routines. New rules for communication may be required to keep people from talking over one another.
Every team member needs to be responsible for capturing spontaneous ideas. When using whiteboards, teams must make the extra effort to capture the collective view. This will avoid ambiguity and confusion on individual priorities.
Teams should put a premium on personal productivity and they must make a conscious effort to have more personal interactions. Again, teams must be respectful of personal choices. Working from home blurs the lines between personal and official lives and they may feel additional stress about the impression they create on video, because of interruption at the home front from children or even family members sharing the same workspace. teams should accept these graciously and team members should be allowed to their boundaries around the use of video during meetings.
Cultivating bonding and morale: Many activities like casual lunches, coffee breaks, social gatherings are not possible remotely. Instead, members should be encouraged to introduce their family, pets, and show around the house or any significant items in their working space. Teams need to make more forts in being polite, courteous, social, and tactful to ensure everyone feels equally safe contributing in remote as they did in-person.
Agile teams may require a more deliberate focus on empathy, openness, and respect. team members must remind themselves to create and receive communications with a collaborative mindset and always the best possible motivation from their colleagues. this is particularly important for remote teams as messages can easily be misunderstood.
Adapt coaching and development: While coaching, agile teams should aspire to model everything they would have done in person but more frequently. Encourage everyone to turn on the video and monitor their body language during group meetings.
Recalibrating remote agile process
The challenge for the teams is that they will try to replicate whatever worked during in-person meetings. They need to realize that this may not work in a virtual setting. The trick is to work backward - stat with outcomes and modify your meetings as appropriate, adapt to the situation rather than sticking to a procedure.
Teams working remotely will have to consider a different approach to documenting their discussion and producing a single document that can be stored in a shared location. The approach to standup meetings will have to be team specific depending on their maturity and norms.
Most agile teams find that the importance of keeping their backlog clean increases when working remotely. A user story left active would cause team members to work on it for hours before getting an alert that it should have been closed.
Adjust to asynchronous collaboration: Asynchronous communications, like a chat, messaging boards can be an effective means to coordinate agile teams working remotely. This allows team members to raise the red flag at any point during the day and serves as a registry of concerns raised and addressed.
However, the chat boards have to be used with discretion. When the members become too reliant on the boards it may lead to the members feeling isolated and trust may suffer.
Keep teams engaged during long ceremonies: Remote working creates new challenges for keeping the team motivated and avoid burnouts. working in isolation is bad for any team specifically when you are used to in-person engagements. Multi-tasking and home distractions also take a toll. For longer meetings organize a short 10-15 minute breaks in between sessions and organize some interactive games/ exercises to get the team members to interact with each other.
Adapting leadership approach: Leaders need to be more deliberate when engaging with customers and teams, especially when you have limited in-person interaction. Working remotely they need to be more proactive and closer to the team guiding the members.
They also need to be purposeful engaging customers and stakeholders, being transparent about teams, and reassuring the performance and objectives. Leaders must show in their tone and approach that they are in this together. It is also important to make sure they feel heard without overwhelming them further.
Teams can reinforce productivity by taking a purposeful approach to sustaining an agile culture and by recalibrating processes to support agile objectives while working remotely.
Revisiting agile teams after an abrupt shift to remote
by Santiago Comella-Dorda, Lavkesh Garg, Suman Thareja, and Belkis Vasquez-McCall Mckinsey 202005
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