Tough Lessons in

distributed-multinational

environment

Lukas Simokaitis

Content

• Background

• About the project

• Agile in the project

• Strengths

• Hot Issues

• Summary

My Agile Background

• VU MIF – Software Engineering (bachelor)

• Tieto (www.tieto.com)

• ERP (www.erp.eu)

About the project

• Government sector – eCustoms for Tajikistan

• People working – Over 50

• Project lasted ~ 2 years

• Distributed over 5 countries and 6 cities

Architecture

• SOA based architecture

– ESB as integration platform

– Over 3 internal systems + 1 main business

orchestration system

– Over 8 self-sufficient supplementary systems

– Over 5 external systems

– And many common services for all systems

Initial plans

• All teams will use Scrum

• Scrum of Scrums

• Iteration 2 weeks long

• Active and often communication with client

• One Backlog with priorities

What did we do?

• Scrum - step by step

• Workshops for all teams

• Presented our vision about the

architecture

What did we do?

• Agile tools

What did we do?

• Backlog & priorities

What did we do?

• Progress Visualization

What did we do?

• Working Software

Communication

TJ Business team AZ Hardware Team

KZ dev team

2 systems

KZ dev teamLT lead team

6 systems +

commons

LT dev team

1 system

BY analytical team

BY integration

dev team

2 systems +

integration platform

Results

• Only 1 Team successfully using Scrum

• Collaboration between teams’ representatives

• Client communication from very poor to good

• Iterations for one Scrum team

• Milestones for others

• Backlog wasn’t for everyone

• Chaotic priorities

• From misbalanced to normal teams

• Successful project finish

Some didn’t make it

Some didn’t make it

TJ Business team AZ Hardware Team

KZ dev team

KZ dev teamLT lead team

LT dev team

BY analytical team

BY integration

dev team

PictureStrengths

what we

benefited

from

Strengths

• Good communication

in teams

Strengths

• Competent team representatives

Strengths

• Reusable solutions for the future

Strengths

• Minimized waste

Strengths

• Right tools

Strengths

• More fun, Happy Scrum Team, belief in success

Hot

Issueswhat we

frustrated

from

Hot Issues

Distributed teams

Hot Issues

Cultural Aspects

Hot Issues

Tight schedule

Hot Issues

• Too much time spent on One Vision propagation

Hot Issues

• Collaborative requirements engineering

• Rather light weight development standards,

instructions and guidelines

Summary

• Focus on intensive communication

• Find the key persons for distributed-teams

communication

• Prepare you knowledge bag (do homework)

beforehand and share it with others

• Collaborate with your client

– You’ll eliminate waste

• Think about reusability, modularity and

automation

• Get support and trust from all teams and their

management

Thank You!