I recently wrote about agile and how I am seeing more of our Wealth Management clients adopt this way of working. As we move along the agile spectrum, a more advanced form that clients are keen to adopt is “distributed agile”, which allows for even greater potential benefits when implemented correctly.
Lowering costs while increasing the pace of business is no easy task—we all have experience trying to solve that puzzle. Mastering it requires maximizing the full 24 hours in each day. A possible way to do this successfully is by utilizing agile offshore teams, in addition to onshore employees located in various sites. Distributed agile teams—while requiring more frequent touchpoints and communication—can bring productivity and speed to bear in a way traditional teams simply cannot. When you use distributed agile teams, because they work in more than one location—offshore/onshore or different sites in the same city/country—the world clock becomes your friend.
I’ve seen teams cut app development time by up to a third, shaving three months to two, using distributed agile teams. Business communication, project management approaches and planning tools have improved by leaps and bounds over the past several years, which means distributed teams struggle less with collaboration and consistency. The plethora of rich communication channels now available minimizes the downside of less face-to-face interaction. More frequent deliverables over the course of a project have replaced the now outdated “long haul” final deadline/one deliverable model.
Be sure to agree on a software tool (i.e., Kanban, etc.) that allows for collaboration. Despite being miles apart, every member of the team should see the same scrum board. And, when possible, in-person visits by key team members to various team sites can have a very positive impact, especially during longer projects. I have done this as a “roadshow” and it really improved our collaborative approach to working in a distributed agile environment.
At each sprint’s end, insist on a retrospective, a sprint ceremony where team members review lessons learned. It is one of the few reliable ways you can continually improve how your best and brightest work in different locations.
If the distributed agile approach is something you’ve been thinking about but not acting upon, email me, Kendra Thompson. I’d be happy to make the time to have a more in-depth conversation.