Lessons Learned About Successful Distributed Agile Teams (4 Years and Counting…)

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Johanna Rothman https://mastodon.sdf.org/ www.jrothman.com Lessons Learned About Successful Distributed Agile Teams (4 Years and Counting…) Mark Kilby markkilby.com/bio

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby How much control do you have over your work? • Work Space (and Tools) • Hours of Overlap • Communications (and backchannel) • Team Affiliation and Collaboration • Flow of the work through the team • Visualizations of Work 6

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Resource Efficiency vs Flow Efficiency • Resource efficiency looks efficient • But, everything takes longer because of the delays between people • Exposes management's desire for control • Agile teams work best in flow efficiency 8

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Focus on These Principles for Hybrid • Establish acceptable hours of overlap. • Create transparency at all levels. • Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments. • Practice pervasive communication at all levels. • Assume good intention. • Create a project rhythm. • Create a culture of resilience. • Default to collaborative work. 9

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby 1. Establish Acceptable Hours of Overlap • Visualize “when” people can collaborate • Fewer than four hours and agile approaches might not work for your team • Chart has hours—your team might need to work in 20-30 minute blocks 10

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Hybrid Resilience Takes Many Forms • Who is in which locations which days? • When the in-person people can't find a conference room • When anyone's visuals or audio goes down • Network connection issues • Tool access • In-person only-conversations • (what else have you seen?) 15 Photo by Michael Dziedzic on Unsplash

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Hybrid Can Succeed... • Clarify your working agreements about: • Hours of overlap • How you will communicate • Create a team that's sufficiently autonomous and collaborative • Focus on the flow of work through the team, not what any one person does 23

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby All the Principles 1. Establish acceptable hours of overlap. 2. Create transparency at all levels. 3. Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments. 4. Practice pervasive communication at all levels. 5. Assume good intention. 6. Create a project rhythm. 7. Create a culture of resilience. 8. Default to collaborative work. 24

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© 2024 Johanna Rothman & Mark Kilby Let’s Stay in Touch • The book: https:// jrothman.com/SDAT • Johanna’s Pragmatic Manager newsletter: www.jrothman.com/ pragmaticmanager • Please link with Johanna on LinkedIn 25 • Hours of Overlap including Chart: https://markkilby.com/Hours-of-Overlap • Hybrid Remote Resources - https://markkilby.com/hybrid-remote/ • Subscribe to Mark’s Differability newsletter - https://markkilby.com/news • Reach out to Mark at https:// markkilby.com/contact-me/