Distributed Agile in Large Scale Teams

John Okoro (Auspicious Agile) &Hugo Messer (Ekipa.co) &Savita Pahuja

Agenda

• Kahoot: test your knowledge

• Introduction to our Distributed Agile Approach

• Using Agile Scaling Approaches with Distributed Teams

• How leadership impacts distributed Enterprise Agile teams

What is Distributed

What is Distributed

Test Your Distributed Knowledge!

Facilitated by Savita Pahuja

Introduction to the Distributed Agile Approach

• Making distributed agile work is a ‘balancing act’, pushing the right buttons at the right time

• There is no ‘path to success’ • Our Approach gives guidance for all levels

Our Distributed Agile Approach

Within each bubble, we provide:

Questions: analyze your pain points Virtues: spread the right behavior

Practices: implement stuff

Introduction to the Distributed Agile Method

Questions • Do we have an 'us versus them' paradigm?

• How does each culture perceive hierarchy?

• How much 'self organisation' do we expect?

Culture: Questions

US versus THEM

Us versus Them

Self organisation

Culture: Virtues

• Empathy: accept differences, 'jam' with them

• Openness: discussing the impact of cultural differences

• Awareness: becoming aware of the differences

Culture: Practices

Empathy Plan

The culture Canvas

Distributed Agile Scaling

• There are many Agile scaling methods today

• LESS, SAFe, Disciplined Agile 2, RAGE, NEXUS, SoS, …

• They do a good job of teaching us approaches to use Agile in the enterprise

• What they don’t teach us is how to work as a distributed team

• In the most recent State of Agile survey 86% said they had at least some distributed Agile teams

Shu Ha Ri & Distributed Agile @ Scale

• When using an Agile Scaling Framework with distributed teams the framework should be “Shu”

• The framework should provide guidance, but the organization should evolve beyond the guidance

Selecting a Framework that works distributed

Organization Virtues to Consider

Virtues Agility: keeping an open mind in respect to models; avoid bureaucracy

Self organization: let teams figure out stuff

Collocated teams are simpler

Direct access to stakeholders: avoid the middle man (a product owner facilitates team-user interaction instead of being 'in between', no team leads, no hierarchy)

wiki is key; sharing knowledge, visions, feedback using the right tools

Cross-functional teams at different locations

Aligned agile transformation vision at different locations

Some Examples from a SAFe Case Study

• Accenture SAFe Case Study gives some good examples of how one might distribute teams at scale

might be good to not call it case study, so we leave in the middle whether we were involved in this or not. I think it would be strongest to have a case that we were part of, but unfortunately I

Some Examples from a SAFe Case Study

Virtue - Cross-functional teams at different locations

iS there a way for us to link our virtues or practices on leadership directly to the case study? Otherwise people might not see the connection between our story and the case?

Good idea - I will add some virtues

Some Examples from a SAFe Case Study

Virtue: Collocated teams are simpler Virtue - Self organization: let teams figure out stuff

Some Examples from a SAFe Case Study

Virtue: Direct access to stakeholders: avoid the middle man

Some Examples from a SAFe Case Study

Virtue: Agility: keeping an open mind in respect to models; avoid bureaucracy

Leadership and the Distributed Agile Team

Leadership and the Distributed Agile Team

Leadership and the Distributed Agile Team

Leadership and the Distributed Agile Team

Questions

• Is there a common leadership team / structure across the different team locations?

• Does the leadership culture reward and value collaboration?

• Is decision making delegated to the lowest practical level in the distributed Agile organization?

• Is leadership empowering and encouraging of distributed Agile teams?

• Do Agile teams trust their organizational leaders and believe that they say what they mean and mean what they say?

• Does the organization’s leadership cast a clear vision and strategic themes / imperatives that are shared with and known by all team members in all locations?

Leadership and the Distributed Agile Team

Practices

• A Lean / Agile servant leadership approach

• Empower distributed Agile teams to deliver value

• Allow those close to the work to make relevant decisions about their day to day work

• Cast clear organizational and product vision for Agile teams, so that teams can enjoy a high level of alignment and autonomy

• Funding and allocating budgets to distributed Agile teams to "spend" on their product backlogs

• When there are multiple Product Owners across locations use a Product Management Group or Chief Product Owner and "Delegate Product Owner" structure to align them

Distributed Agile Scaling

Virtues • Empowerment: motivate people to self-organize and take decisions • Servant leadership: mentor and coach instead of control • Share: openly share vision and strategy across locations • Trust: Make mutual trust between distributed teams and leaders a

centrepiece of the working relationship (no “us” vs “them”) • Evaluate and Reward: Team progress and contribution toward

organizational goals across all distributed Agile team locations • Growth Mindset instead of Fixed Mindset: Ability to lead distributed

Agile teams and empower the teams to continuously learn

Thanks!

Check out our GitBook at and provide your comments and input- gitbook.com/book/hugomesser/distributed-agile-how-teams-work-across-the-globe/details

Hugo Messer - Ekipa http://ekipa.co

John Okoro - Auspicious Agile @AuspiciousAgile (Twitter) www.auspiciousagile.com https://www.facebook.com/AuspiciousAgile/

Arjan Franzen

Savita Pahuja

Appendix

Distributed Agile Scaling

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Questions • How does 'team' relate to 'organogram/hierarchy'?

• What's the DNA of our team (why, what, how)?

• Are we doing retrospectives?

Virtues • learning oriented organization, (not power or truth (bureaucratic))

• management coaches teams, does not direct them

• Retrospect

• Good connection between team members

Practices