Communication is Multidimensional.
Our caveman instincts will always favor the subtle symbolic communication offered by face to face encounters. Face to face is the reason we have been able to survive thousands of years, knowing in a matter of seconds if our reaction should be “fight or flight.” Co-located teams benefit from this dimension of visual communication clues.
The Business World is Profit-Driven.
If there is a cheaper way to do things, the business will always favor this approach. Just as automation impacts the bottom line, so too Distributed or Remote teams quite often satisfy this requirement with lower location cost and are the future transformation of the white-collar workforce.
Two secondary drivers are also pushing the workforce in this direction. Companies are becoming increasingly global, and the best-skilled talent is not often living in the same zip code, yet this distributed workforce must cohesively work together.
These three compelling reasons combined have forced many companies to look beyond the agile methodology, which focuses on putting the best talent (development team) in the same room with the business (a Product Owner) and a whiteboard to make things happen.
I know that Agile is more complex than this. I do love Scrum version of the Agile methodology, and Pluralsight ranks me as being in the 97% percentile of Agile expertise. I have played both the Scrum Master and Product Owner roles.
Co-located team members and a whiteboard is an exaggerated and dumb-down version of what Agile is, and we know that is it can work with remote or distributed teams. Still, it is just much more challenging as it relies heavily on communication-oriented ceremonies.
Virtualization Evolution
No one can argue that co-location has been working since the corporation’s dawn, but we are here now to seek the best practices in this changing geographically distributed landscape.
Email, phone, facetime or some similar IP oriented video app, instant messaging on the desktop and mobile devices have provided new channels and new opportunities to do work that was impossible in 1995.
One push of a button and my colleague can be reading my message in India before I can say to him on the phone, “did you get my message.” better yet, during a screen share, I was once told, “I saw the message arrive in your inbox” before I even knew he sent it.
This fast technology will forever miss the final touch of face-to-face presence. However, it’s power cannot be underestimated.
HOW PEOPLE PERFORM CORRELATES TO HOW SITUATIONS OCCUR TO THEM – STEVE ZAFFRON & DAVE LOGAN, THREE LAWS OF PERFORMANCE
Agile focuses strongly on communication via co-location.
Making software is a complex process, and real-time human communication will always be the optimum way to work, but technology is changing the way we work every day.
If we are still seeking the silver bullet of “Agile Methodology” in 2017 to solve co-located or even remote (working from home) team performance issues, then maybe we are asking the wrong question.
We are just buying time now until the next instance of Agile that focuses on global business operations. When that arrives, then scrum, which has about 65% market share of the agile practice, may shift to a new instance of Agile in favor of the changing need for distributed and remote teams that must satisfy the new global enterprise. It might sound something like “Cloud Distributed Development” Agile Methodology.
HIGH-PERFORMANCE TEAMS ARE TEAMS THAT DOES WHAT NEEDS TO GET DONE; WHEN IT NEEDS TO BE DONE, THE BEST IT CAN BE DONE EVERY TIME THEY DO IT. – STEPHEN CHOO QUAN
No matter the methodology of choice, the goal remains the same. Make the best software as fast as possible to solve the current business issues. The process needs to deliver high business value, making new money, optimizing current savings, or protecting its assets against the competition.
4 Best Practices for High Performance Distributed or Remote Teams to deliver on such sentiments:
- Time must be organized for maximum Human Interaction. Each team member is driven by company policy and personal agenda that overlays time zone differences for distributed teams. It is essential to go beyond cultural diversity and get emotional empathy. This caring bonds the team and makes each member want to work together for high performance. A parent who can pick up their children from the school will give their hearts in ways that companies cannot demand or buy, which must be given freely. This flexibility in the schedule must be organized to overlap each team member’s time most effectively and engagingly, but the commitment will bring performance orders in return. Setting an agenda before meetings can save 7 mins per appointment, after meeting having an action items list and being clear about who will execute each task and when it can be done. An agenda will make meetings very productive and leave no room for misunderstanding.
- Early Engagement must focus on building personal bonds: When projects get going, project friction and the lubricant of personal trust needed are between team members. It does not matter if you are face to face or not. Some vulnerability only accomplishes real bonding making with some everyday life situation. It is up to the team leaders to facilitate an open atmosphere that allows team members to talk and share. Over time team members will begin to trust each other if they honor and appreciate each other. If they care for and seek their colleagues’ best interest, this will unite the team and have stunning agility in turning bad moments into remarkable results.
- Heightened Communication: The same way a blind person gets hearing to compensate for the lack of sight, the distributed team must communicate using non-standard and flexible communication. Emails, instant messages, and phone calls must all work together in a personal and professional manner to ensure the news is not only transmitted but, more importantly, received by the intended audience with enough reaction time. Recipients need to become better at sensing intonation in voices and experts at vocal stress detection. Equally important is that the language used must foster respect and warmth, especially if members share private contact info for work. Daily communication must always be on the lookout for unsaid items that can damage timeline deliverables and, more importantly, erode the team’s relationships. No matter how smart or insightful people are, we are all prone to being hijacked by what is unsaid, so leaders must master the conversational environment.
- Skills and commitment are the cornerstones for getting selected for a team. Each member is expected to deliver some value. Each location must be given valuable work. Each member should pick their work, factoring in the client rapport, the skills needed to be successful, and the time to deliver as they make the fully engaged commitment. All locations must be treated as equals and have knowledgeable leadership to help guide members on any given site. These leaders must know the standards of operation and coding standards to support any member of that location. As the work is presented, we must continue to discuss until people align to tasks. When members say, “this future speaks for me,” and they commit to it, alignment has occurred.
Each person must be able to commit and stick to see that commitment through. Leaders have a say and give others a voice in how situations occur. The language in the team needs to be COMMITTED to action. If anyone cannot contribute, then shrinking the group is a better option than supporting an unreliable or wavering member. Leaders need to be T shaped with depth and breadth of understanding. These leaders are ideally co-located and directly facing the business clients but are good at translating this too technical specs. Developers need to be hyper-focused experts at their craft IMHO who can take up these specs and bang them out quickly.
The litmus test that all distributed teams boil down to a straightforward question. “what if I could pick my manager and my project? Would I pick this one?” If the answer is not yes, then it’s time to go over the 4 points above and work toward a high-performance team, and then you can practice any methodology of software development you want and get astounding results.
I have been following Jason Fried is co-founder of Basecamp, for some time as his company is a poster child for software as a Service (SaaS). His thinking speaks to the direction of organizations and the way that work will be distributed. It also questions the way we should be thinking.
See Why Face-To-Face Meetings Are Overrated, and another favorite Working From Home Boosts The Quality Of The Work.
Who am I to be talking about leading distributed teams?
I have been leading distributed teams for over 20+ years, delivering software solutions. These teams have been a mix of employees and consultants across multiple locations and various time zones.
- Lead a team of 8 nearshore developers in Barbados while co-located in USA 1998-2004
- Lead a team of 4 offshore developers in India while co-located in USA 2005- 2010
- Lead a team of 6 offshore and nearshore developers across four different time zones while co-located in USA 2011- 2017
As you can see, the distances have grown, and the combinations of locations and time zones have become increasingly complex over time.
Stephen Choo Quan
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