Agile Methods and Virtual Distributed Teams

By Dr. David F. Rico, PMP, CSM

Are Agile Methods and virtual distributed teams compatible? Aren't Agile Methods and virtual distributed teams polar opposites? Aren't they incompatible? And, if they are compatible, what are the specific techniques for making Agile Methods work for virtual distributed teams?
What does all of this mean? What is this controversy surrounding Agile Methods and virtual distributed teams? Why wouldn't Agile Methods be compatible with virtual distributed teams?
Well, all of this is related to the principles and values of Agile Methods as defined by the Agile Manifesto (http://www.agilemanifesto.org/). The sixth of 12 major principles is as follows, "The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation." It relates to two of the four major values of Agile Methods: (1) individuals and interactions and (2) customer collaboration. So, taken at face-value, no pun intended, one would be omitting half or 50% of the values of Agile Methods if one didn't use face-to-face conversations with customers and team members. Or, would they?
Face-to-face communication is contextually-rich, and is the preferred method of communication in Agile Methods. In Traditional Methods, statements-of-work, requests for proposals, contracts, requirements, and designs are considered contextually rich. But, nothing beats good old face-to-face communication when it comes to interacting with customers and team members. The creators of Agile Methods realized this and etched face-to-face communication in stone as one of their 12 commandments.
Okay, now, so anyone who can read a book on Agile Methods knows that face-to-face practices are mandatory. That is, anyone except those who are trying to make money in the global software industry. The global software industry is all about connecting or automating the supply chain of goods and services using products from China, computer programming labor from India, project managers from North America, and researchers in Europe. Well, that's simple, just co-locate everyone. Not so fast, why can't everyone stay exactly where they are and use electronic means to communicate? Well, that would involve violating the principles and values of Agile Methods, wouldn't it? In fact, if a team is not face-to-face, it's using Traditional Methods, not Agile Methods. Or, is it?
The creators of Agile Methods had part of the equation correct. Face-to-face communication is contextually rich, and is therefore superior to virtual distributed communication or software documentation in certain circumstances. However, the North American creators of Agile Methods failed to anticipate or acknowledge that 95% of the world wasn't collocated with them, and that North America wasn't even the predominant computer programming market. Didn't they heed the warnings of Ed Yourdon who said that the Indian software market was skyrocketing or how about Michael Cusumano's warning that Japan's Software Factories were taking over the planet? Perhaps they were caught up in the euphoria of Microsoft's and Intel's instant success in the 1990s. Or, the Internet Gold Rush convinced them that North American information technology dominance was here to stay?
I think the only ones who didn't believe the creators of Agile Methods were the 70 or so other countries besides the United States, who benefited from the Personal Computer and Internet revolution as well (along with any enterprising capitalist who wanted to make a quick-buck interconnecting the global supply chain).
The problem is that 99% of the population who knows anything about Agile Methods believes that one isn't being Agile if one isn't using face-to-face communication and all of the associated trappings (e.g., onsite customers, pair programmers, daily standup meetings, etc.).
Well, hang on to your seats, because the world is changing as we speak, and virtual distributed teams for Agile Methods are here to stay. We all have the benefit of being on the leading edge of this phenomenon as part of the next phase of software engineering evolution. I bet most people who are delving into Agile Methods didn't even realize they were on the cutting-edge of software engineering when they endeavored to use Agile Methods? Let's take a look at some of the evidence.
The folks at British Telecom have devised a set of practices for making Agile Methods work with virtual distributed teams (Cannizzo, Marcionetti, & Moser, 2008). They've identified four major practices to help marry Agile Methods with virtual distributed teams: (1) maximize project status visibility to all stakeholders, (2) ruthlessly automate as many development and management processes as possible, (3) ensure effective communications to the maximum extent possible, and (4) provide immediate feedback on every task performed. They use Eclipse IDE for writing code, Fitnesse and Selenium for acceptance testing, CruiseControl with Ant as a build tool, Danube ScrumWorks for user stories, Subversion for version control, and Atlassian Confluence Wiki for document sharing. Other tools include Visual Studio, NetBeans, Capistrano, Live Meeting, Communicator, Meet Me, and a variety of team building tools.
The folks at Yahoo! (Drummond & Unson, 2008) suggest mandatory meetings within time zones, periodic face-to-face meetings across time zones, overlapping virtual distributed meetings where possible, periodic synchronization between international Scrum Masters, the use of Wikis to share photographs of user stories on Post It notes, and ensuring that virtual distributed teams maintain the rank-ordering or priority of user stories. Furthermore, Yahoo! says to emphasize individuals and interactions over processes and tools as much as humanly possible, factor in the needs of the global workforce over individual practices of Agile Methods, and ensure that accurate information is shared in a timely fashion.
The folks in Canada (Robarts, 2008) say to have periodic face-to-face meetings as much as possible (especially during project kickoff), periodically send people back and forth from one country or location to another, ensure domain experts periodically visit one another, ensure delivery teams occasionally visit one another face-to-face, hold virtual distributed daily standup meetings between people in the same time zone, exchange informal notes such as PowerPoint presentations as meeting minutes, and ensure Wikis and other automated tool content is constantly up-to-date. The Canadians remind us to emphasize the use of Agile Methods practices like User Stories (instead of specifications), use video conferences as much as possible, and use portable information technologies such as laptops, cell phones, and personal digital assistants (e.g., BlackBerries). More importantly, proper schedule management is of utmost importance, especially when it comes to building in management reserve, accounting for international Holidays and unplanned events, and keeping the schedules current as well as communicating them. Interestingly enough, we're advised to allow enough latitude for differences in individual Agile Method practices across international boundaries.
The list goes on and on, as the Indians recommend automated dashboards and wikis (Shrinivasavadhani & Panicker, 2008). The Americans emphasize WebEx Meetings, periodic virtual distributed meetings between international Scrum Masters, and a variety of techniques such as balancing power, allowing for variation in practices, detailed User Stories, empowerment, sharing vision statements, executive commitment, and as much communication as possible (Therrien, 2008). Another Canadian team says to use nearshore resources, maintain strict communication plans, share electronic workspaces, use synchronous communications only in adjacent time zones, and use asynchronous retrospectives (Vax & Michaud, 2008). Finally, a group of Americans and Canadians recommend instant messaging, synchronous communication mechanisms, video conferencing, face-to-face virtual distributed meetings, virtual distributed standup meetings, and the list goes on and on (Young & Terashima, 2008). You don't want to skip this last paper, because it contained a lot of helpful advice.
So, what's the bottom line? The creators of Agile Methods had it right, face-to-face communication is contextually rich and face-to-face is the preferred method of communication. And, a lot of face-to-face communication is a key, if not the key, to project success. I speak from experience on this one, because one of the most difficult projects I've ever managed, was success due to frequent, unscheduled face-to-face communication to break down the barriers to personal trust. Once the barriers to trust had been breached through frequent personal interaction, then the project completed successfully. We were given an award by a customer who had never given an award to a consulting firm before. You just don't find that kind of advice in your typical textbook on Traditional Methods. So, how do we duplicate the benefits of face-to-face interaction in virtual distributed teams? Communicate, frequently and often! Outside of video teleconferencing, telephone calls have been one of the best forms of communication over the last century. It's the "unscheduled" telephone calls that provide the most return-on-investment (versus regularly scheduled telephone calls that just don’t seem to have the same effects). Ad hoc telephone calls help alleviate anxiety instantly, as opposed to scheduled phone calls. Intimate, personal communications break down barriers to trust and ensure project success almost every time.

REFERENCES

Cannizzo, F., Marcionetti, G., & Moser, P. (2008). Evolution of the tools and practices of a large distributed agile team. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 513-518.

Drummond, B. S., & Unson, J. F. (2008). Yahoo distributed agile: Notes from the world over. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 315-321.

Robarts, J. M. (2008). Practical considerations for distributed agile projects. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 327-332.

Shrinivasavadhani, J., & Panicker, V. (2008). Remote mentoring a distributed agile team. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 322-326.

Therrien, E. (2008). Overcoming the challenges of building a distributed agile organization. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 368-372.

Vax, M., & Michaud, S. (2008). Distributed agile: Growing a practice together. Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 310-314.

Young, C., & Terashima, H. (2008). How did we adapt agile processes to our distributed development? Proceedings of the Agile Conference (Agile 2008), Toronto, Canada, 304-309.