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hennahsugumaran | 5 May 2011 16:54
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Agile challenges

Hello guys,

I wanted to know the Challenges that the agile developers face in the dispersed environment (i.e. when the
developers in a team is spread across the various places). The real time challenges.

Hennah.
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Ron Jeffries | 6 May 2011 02:14
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Re: Agile challenges

Hello, hennahsugumaran.  On Thursday, May 5, 2011, at 10:54:45 AM,
you wrote:

> I wanted to know the Challenges that the agile developers face in
> the dispersed environment (i.e. when the developers in a team is
> spread across the various places). The real time challenges.

Have you thought about this much? Have you worked in both
situations? What did you conclude in your thinking? What did you
experience in your practice?

Ron Jeffries
www.XProgramming.com
Talent determines how fast you get good, not how good you get.
  -- Richard Gabriel
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Patrice Petit | 6 May 2011 07:14
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Call for candidate cities in the Agile Tour 2011

*Call for candidate cities in the Agile Tour 2011*

*Do you want to bring and to organize the biggest Agile event in your own
city?
*
Agile Tour, a series of non-profit events over several cities throughout
October and November 2011. Last year's edition of the Agile Tour attracted
over 7500 participants in 44 cities around the world. New countries
appeared. New Agile ambassadors and leaders appeared. Some old local
communities have been re-dynamized. Some interesting new properties of Agile
through some different cultures have been discovered around this tour and
around the world.

To build on the success of our last tour, we are calling upon you to join
you to this great gathering on Agile and create your own local AgileTour
conference in the last quarter of 2011 to make this great "massive
communication" together. You will receive all the support of our
international teams who organized the previous Agile Tour. This year,
AgileTour will be bigger than ever and we are counting on your local
presence to make it happen.

After our passage, you will change the country mindset on this topic.

*Objectives    *
The main objectives of the Agile Tour are constantly evolving, but are
currently:

   - *Massively promote Agile   *
   Our primary mission is to conduct a 'Mass Communication' about our
   development practices throughout the month of October. We want to
(Continue reading)

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Tim Ottinger | 6 May 2011 16:14
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Re: Agile challenges

Five rules:
1) Don't 
2) Dont' treat remotes as locals.
3) Don't treat locals as remotes
4) Latitude hurts, longitude kills
5) Don't always be remote

Take the first with a grain of salt. I'm once again a remote member of a team, 
so I see value in having remote members.  We have to have special 
considerations, like skype, webex or yuuguu or teamviewer, distributed version 
control helps, phone numbers for when something bad happens, interoffice text 
chat, extra email conversations, etc.

The second is dead serious. Remember that the remote is unable to move through 
the room, unable to eavesdrop on conversations in the bullpen, unable to see the 
signage and charts, and has limited visual range. It's like a handicap of sorts, 
but great people can overcome such things.

The third is dead serious. Don't turn all your local people into remotes. Don't 
eliminate physical charts, card walls, and conversations. Ignore what you hear 
about agile tools being as good as physical presence, because it's not true. 
 Keep your locals working like locals, and pair them with the remotes working as 
remotes.

Fourth one is dead serious. Time zones suck. It's almost nice if you are 
centrally located to have peers one or two time zones earlier and some one or 
two time zones later, but a lack of "common hours" really screws up the pairing 
work.

Fifth one is a joy.  You want your remotes to come visit sometimes. It
(Continue reading)

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Jeff Langr | 6 May 2011 16:48
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Re: Agile challenges

Someone should put that on a card or something. (hint, hint, Tim!)

Seriously, this is a great list. On #3 ("don't turn your local people into
remotes") absolutely, don't insist that everyone deal with the
far-less-effective agile PM tools to accommodate all the remote folks.
But I'll also suggest that it's probably very useful to have the locals to
experience the perspective and disadvantage of being remote.

Teleconferences are interesting: of course it's far more effective for
everyone to be chatting in the same room, face-to-face, but I'd say the next
most effective is *everyone* online. I've seen mixes where half the people
are in a room and the rest are on the phone go sour too often (usually one
of these halves dominates).

Jeff

ps--Well, perhaps there is still a bit of life to beat out of this horse.

Langr Software Solutions
http://langrsoft.com
http://agileinaflash.com <http://agileinaflash.com-->

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 8:14 AM, Tim Ottinger <linux_tim <at> yahoo.com> wrote:

> Five rules:
> 1) Don't
> 2) Dont' treat remotes as locals.
> 3) Don't treat locals as remotes
> 4) Latitude hurts, longitude kills
> 5) Don't always be remote
(Continue reading)

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Dave Rooney | 6 May 2011 16:57
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Re: Agile challenges

On 2011-05-06, at 10:48 AM, Jeff Langr <jeff <at> langrsoft.com> wrote:

> Someone should put that on a card or something. (hint, hint, Tim!)

LOL!  I thought it was! :)

Dave Rooney
Agile Coach & Co-founder
Westboro Systems
http://www.westborosystems.com
dave.rooney <at> westborosystems.com

> 
> Seriously, this is a great list. On #3 ("don't turn your local people into
> remotes") absolutely, don't insist that everyone deal with the
> far-less-effective agile PM tools to accommodate all the remote folks.
> But I'll also suggest that it's probably very useful to have the locals to
> experience the perspective and disadvantage of being remote.
> 
> Teleconferences are interesting: of course it's far more effective for
> everyone to be chatting in the same room, face-to-face, but I'd say the next
> most effective is *everyone* online. I've seen mixes where half the people
> are in a room and the rest are on the phone go sour too often (usually one
> of these halves dominates).
> 
> Jeff
> 
> ps--Well, perhaps there is still a bit of life to beat out of this horse.
> 
> Langr Software Solutions
(Continue reading)

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Keith Ray | 6 May 2011 20:13
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Re: Agile challenges

I noticed in Naomi Karten's book on presentations, she found out that 3 of
the "remote" workers of the team she was presenting to, who were "present
via webex" were only a few blocks away. They could have been physically
present but chose not do -- and thus missed facial expressions and body
language of both the presenter AND other members of their team.

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 7:14 AM, Tim Ottinger <linux_tim <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
...
>
> The third is dead serious. Don't turn all your local people into remotes.
> Don't
> eliminate physical charts, card walls, and conversations. Ignore what you
> hear
> about agile tools being as good as physical presence, because it's not
> true.
>  Keep your locals working like locals, and pair them with the remotes
> working as
> remotes.
> --

C. Keith Ray

Coach, Trainer, and Developer at Industrial logic, Inc.
http://industriallogic.com  "Amplify Your Agility"
Coaching and Live- and Web-based Training

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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Kim Gräsman | 6 May 2011 20:27
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Re: Agile challenges

Hi Tim,

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 16:14, Tim Ottinger <linux_tim <at> yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> The third is dead serious. Don't turn all your local people into remotes. Don't
> eliminate physical charts, card walls, and conversations. Ignore what you hear
> about agile tools being as good as physical presence, because it's not true.
>  Keep your locals working like locals, and pair them with the remotes working as
> remotes.

For team meetings, I think there's value in everybody being on the
lowest common denominator as far as communication medium, e.g. if one
team member can only attend the daily stand-up on Skype, then do it
over skype for everybody, always.

This sounds counter-intuitive, but I think it's good for two reasons;

1) Everybody needs to make an effort to be understood over the
low-bandwidth medium. There's no "cheating", where local team members
pick things up from body language, but remotes don't get the joke
2) It's a sign of respect for the remote team member(s) -- they're on
the team, and they're not punished because they happen to be remote.

I picked this up from Jutta Eckstein's Agile Software Development with
Distributed Teams:
http://www.jeckstein.com/distributed-teams/

I like that book because it says "distributed/dispersed teams are
really hard to get working, but if you have to, here's how to build
your solutions on agile values".
(Continue reading)

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Buddha Buck | 6 May 2011 22:42
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Re: Agile challenges

On Fri, May 6, 2011 at 2:27 PM, Kim Gräsman <kim.grasman <at> gmail.com> wrote:
>
> For team meetings, I think there's value in everybody being on the
> lowest common denominator as far as communication medium, e.g. if one
> team member can only attend the daily stand-up on Skype, then do it
> over skype for everybody, always.

> This sounds counter-intuitive, but I think it's good for two reasons;
>
> 1) Everybody needs to make an effort to be understood over the
> low-bandwidth medium. There's no "cheating", where local team members
> pick things up from body language, but remotes don't get the joke
> 2) It's a sign of respect for the remote team member(s) -- they're on
> the team, and they're not punished because they happen to be remote.
>

Hmmm, we have 5 guys in Ithaca, working in an open-plan office, and 1 guy in
Philly.  Hows that gonna work?

When we had 4 guys and one moved to Portland, everyone skyping in required
headsets to prevent horrible feedback and echo.  Even with the headsets we
could hear the local people both directly and over skype.

[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
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George Dinwiddie | 7 May 2011 02:09
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Re: Agile challenges

Tim,

On 5/6/11 10:14 AM, Tim Ottinger wrote:
> Five rules:
> 1) Don't
>
> Take the first with a grain of salt. I'm once again a remote member of a team,
> so I see value in having remote members.  We have to have special
> considerations, like skype, webex or yuuguu or teamviewer, distributed version
> control helps, phone numbers for when something bad happens, interoffice text
> chat, extra email conversations, etc.

What about a group trying to learn Agile?  I've not had as much 
distributed experience as you, probably, but I've found it unlikely for 
a team to learn Agile development when dispersed.  People who already 
have an understanding can notice when and what they need to do to 
compensate for the distance.

  - George

--

-- 
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
   * George Dinwiddie *                      http://blog.gdinwiddie.com
   Software Development                    http://www.idiacomputing.com
   Consultant and Coach                    http://www.agilemaryland.org
  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
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Gmane