10/9/2012 - Agile Business Conference 1 – how to make ... Surrey, The World! Sleeping in Seattle, ... Roger Axtell: Gestures – the do’s and taboos of body language around the

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– how to make distributed teams work

Dorothy J Tudor –TCC Ltd. Cheshire, Surrey, The World!

Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall




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© TCC: Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall ABC 2012 S1-3

Dot Tudor

• TCC Technical Director

• Accredited Agile Coach, Scrum Master

• Agile Alliance, Agile Leadership Network

• Accredited Facilitator

• Agile Project Management Practitioner/Trainer/Examiner

• DSDM Advanced Practitioner/Trainer/Examiner/Co-Author

• PRINCE2 Accredited Practitioner/Trainer

• ITIL Service Manager

• BCS / ISEB Business Analyst

• Fellow of the British Computer Society (FBCS)


Who are We?

Founded 1981 (Sandbach, Cheshire; Guildford, Surrey)

Agile Coaches, Facilitators, Trainers

BCS Business Analysis Accredited

Agile, DSDM, Scrum

PRINCE2, ITIL Service Management

www.tcc-net.com

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Agile Teams across the world


Sleeping in Seattle – Wide-awake in Walsall

Walsall is 8 hours

ahead of Seattle:

So when the people of

Walsall are just having their

first “Costa” on the way to

work ...

The people in Seattle are

either still partying, or have

just gone to bed!

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Format of the Presentation

How to make distributed teams work:

• What is a distributed team?

• What does a team need to be effective?

• Recognising the blockers and problems

• Recognising the “up-side” of these

• Taking advantage of the time, space and cultural differences

• Having a checklist to help set up and support these teams

“

” © TCC: Sleeping in Seattle, Wide Awake in Walsall ABC 2012 S1-8

Michael E Kossler

Leading Dispersed Teams

2004

... A distributed or dispersed team has members who

are not located in the same place

... But what is a distributed team?

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“


Sharp, Giuffrida, Melnik: 2011

Information Flow within a dispersed agile team: a

distributed cognition perspective

Teams have to deal with distance: • temporal • geographical • socio-cultural

Resulting in difficulties with: • division of work • communications • knowledge management • project / process management • infrastructure

Types of distribution

“


Sharp et al,

• Some believe Agile emphasizes the challenges

• Yet others suggest that agile practices need to

be modified for success.

• Holmström et al. explored how agile practices

can actually reduce the three kinds of

“distance”:

- temporal,

- geographical,

- socio-cultural.

What about Agile distributed teams?

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How to make distributed teams work:

• What is a distributed team?

• What does a team need to be effective?

• Recognising the blockers and problems

• Recognising the “up-side” of these

• Taking advantage of the time and cultural differences

• Having a checklist to help set up and support these teams


What does a team need, to be effective?

The Red / Blue game:

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The “not the Red / Blue game” – “1 in 5”:



The team game:

• Form small teams.

• Find out about each

other in 2 minutes

• What do you need to

know to be effective

as a team?

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Ability to

communicate

effectively


A clear

objective

Belief /

Motivation

Right skills

Empowerment

/ responsibility

Trust

/Respect

Effective

process

Leadership

Strategic

alignment

“


Osmo Antero Wiio

Human communication usually fails ...

except by accident!

It’s often about communication ...

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Osmo Antero Wiio (s. 4. helmikuuta 1928)

• on suomalainen viestinnän professori emeritus,

toimittaja ja entinen kansanedustaja. Wiio on

tunnetuimpia suomalaisia organisaatioviestinnän

tutkijoita ja opettajia. Wiio on myös tullut tunnetuksi

tulevaisuudentutkijana, tieteen kansanomaistajana ja

käytännön viestinnän edistäjänä.

• Wiio valmistui Helsingin yliopistosta valtiotieteen

maisteriksi 1954, mutta suoritti lehdistöopin laudatur-

opinnot Yhteiskunnallisessa korkeakoulussa

Helsingissä. Yhteiskuntatieteiden tohtoriksi hän väitteli

Tampereen yliopistossa vuonna 1968.[1] Wiion

väitöskirja käsitteli tekstin ymmärrettävyyttä.


• Osmo Antero Wiio (born February 4, 1928)

Finnish professor emeritus of communication.

• Wiio graduated from the University of Helsinki

with a Master's degree in political science in

1954 University of Helsinki, Finland. He

defended his doctoral thesis at the University of

Tampere in 1968.

• This dealt with making text easier to read.

Osmo Antero Wiio (s. 4. helmikuuta 1928)

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Wiio’s Laws

• If communication can fail, it will.

• If a message can be understood in different ways,

it will be understood in just that way which does

the most harm.

• There is always somebody who knows better than

you what you meant by your message.

• The more communication there is, the more

difficult it is for communication to succeed.

Wiio’s “laws of communication” are the human

communications equivalent of Murphy’s Law.


There are 6 of you!!

• Who you think you are

• Who you think the other person is

• Who you think the other person thinks

you are

• Who the other person thinks he/she is

• Who the other person thinks you are

• Who the other person thinks you think

he/she is

Wiio observed that whenever there are two people conversing,

there are actually six people in the conversation:

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So get to know eachother! Understand eachother’s roles and skills!


Distributed Teams -Blockers and Problems

• Different time zones

• Different languages

• Different geographical cultures

• Different skills cultures

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Distributed Teams -Advantages

• Different time zones

• Different languages

• Different geographical cultures

• Different skills cultures


Different Time Zones

• While they are sleeping in Seattle,

they’re working in Walsall – this can

improve velocity by lessening wait-

time

• Interleaving work-times can improve

team motivation and responsibility

• Time difference can give space to

work uninterrupted

• Is it always the same people

who have to work late?

• Hard to find time to meet?

• Tiredness affects motivation?

• Share the “pain” around!

• Let the team decide!

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Different Languages

http://randmacivor.blogspot.co.uk

• Don’t think because we all

speak English, we all speak

English!

• Give time for comprehension.

Text and diagrams are

sometimes better offline

• If the product is international,

testing is better – fewer “gaffes”

• We at least take less for

granted in understanding


Different Geographical Cultures

Showing this

American Football

sign is a jail-able

offence in Italy!

When your diving buddy

does this,

should you sink them or

save them?

Hitchhiker?

Nice one, son

... Or is it?

http://randmacivor.blogspot.co.uk/

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Don’t do it! It may be illegal!

Roger Axtell: Gestures – the do’s and taboos of body language around the world


You gotta be sooo careful ...

Bono has won numerous awards with U2,

including 22 Grammy awards and the

2003 Golden Globe award for best original

song, "The Hands That Built America",

for the film Gangs of New York.

During the live broadcast of the ceremony,

Bono called the award "really, really f***ing

brilliant!" In response, the Parents

Television Council condemned Bono for his

profanity and started a campaign for its

members to file complaints with the

Federal Communication Commission

(FCC). Bono's use of "f***" violated FCC

indecency standards.

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Take advantage of distribution!

• Use the time difference – longer working hours overall,

not per individual.

• Use the language differences – simpler explanation.

Pictures. Prototypes

• Use the geographical cultural differences – variety of

ideas. Better more diverse testing.

• Use the skill-based cultural similarities - (developers

talk easily to developers across the globe!)


Communication

• Visual See it

• Auditory Hear it / read it

• Kinaesthetic feel, do, touch, smell

http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/for-identification-lend-me-your-ears/

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An illustration!


Information: Data in context

What do you think this means?

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Information: Data in context (2)

What do you think this means?


It ain’t what you say….. it’s the way that you say it!

• How do we communicate?

– With words 7%

– With the tone of our voice 38%

– With body language 55%

(After Albert Mehrabian 1939 - )

The relative importance of verbal and non-verbal messages

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It ain’t what you say….. it’s the way that you say it!

... but at most 45%

of the message is

getting through?

I see a reluctance

to use web cams

However, have you

noticed where you

spend the time

looking ...

Your

picture

here


Ability to

communicate

effectively

What does a team need to be effective?

A clear

objective

Belief /

Motivation

Right skills

Empowerment

/ responsibility

Trust

/Respect

Effective

process

Leadership

Strategic

alignment

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Mo - tivation

What are the team’s targets?

How is every individual’s performance measured?

“


Australian Politician

If you’re going to bet, my son,

bet on the horse called “Self-Interest”

What motivates us?

It’ll be the only one trying!

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“


Carl Rogers

(1902-1987)

... for a person to "grow", they need an

environment that provides them with:

- genuineness (openness, self-disclosure)

- acceptance (unconditional positive regard)

- empathy (being listened to and understood)

Motivation

“


In summary, then ...

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“


Sharp, Giuffrida, Melnik: 2011

Information Flow within a dispersed agile team: a

distributed cognition perspective

Teams have to deal with distance:

• temporal

• geographical

• socio-cultural

Resulting in difficulties with:

• division of work

• communications

• knowledge management

• project / process management

• infrastructure

Types of distribution (Reprise)


A few guidelines

• division of work – go for small, feature-based teams

• communications

- set up the tools, but discuss the protocols.

- have facilitation for events

• knowledge management – make sure the information

has effective ways to flow and be shared

• project / process management – empower the teams

• infrastructure – ensure it is doesn’t get in the way

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5 Top “Hard” Tips for distributed teams

• Clarify roles and objective

• With meetings, think “short,

small and active”

• Visibility of plans and work to all

(“push” not “pull” information)

• Right tools

• Have “Ground rules” for

meetings, and behave!!


5 Top “Soft” Tips for distributed teams

• Meet face to face very early,

and again when you “feel the

need”!

• Allow the teams to meet the

strategists

• Use visual, auditory and

kinaesthetic communication

• Bring key resources “on-

shore” as link-people

• Dedicate resources – limit the

multi-tasking!

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“


Mike Cohn

Succeeding with Agile: 2011

The best way to stop [too much] multitasking is to

stop ... cold turkey!

Dedicated resources


... And finally ...

• MONTREAL

• WALSALL, WEST MIDLANDS

• SEATTLE, AMERICA

• ROME, ITALY

• AMSTERDAM

• WESTON-SUPER-MARE

What do these have in common ...?

M

A

E

T

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And remember ...

• A champion team will always beat a team of

champions!

Any Questions?


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Documents

10/9/2012 - Agile Business Conference 1 – how to make ... Surrey, The World! Sleeping in Seattle, ... Roger Axtell: Gestures – the do’s and taboos of body language around the