Over the past few weeks we have been finding out from a number of agile teams how things have changed since March. What has worked better? What have been the pain points? Thanks to everyone who responded. Here are some of the main themes:
Importance of establishing a working agreement
Everyone I spoke to said their team used the first few days to either draft or re-draft how their team was going to work together. Who was in a house share, who had their own office? Who had family responsibilities, whose working hours needed changing? Who needed vital IT equipment like monitors, keyboards, mice? What tools were people going to use to communicate?
Daily stand-up gets mixed with social chat
Some teams who were used to a stand-up first thing found the time it took got longer as the start contained more social catching-up as you would do naturally in a office. One team ditched the stand-up preferring a short update via Slack first thing. Another established a separate Whatsapp group purely for exchanging work-related banter.
Team demo
Several correspondents reported these worked better after moving to work remotely. Rather than moving people around the room and plugging laptops into a screen, the screen was shared on Zoom and everything moved much quicker.
Retrospectives
A couple of teams struggled to recreate the same experience remotely as in-person. Feedback was not as open and tended to be dominated by just a couple of people. Changing things up and putting retro sessions into smaller groups had a more positive effect.
Workshops and stakeholders
A number of teams who were working on discovery phases highlighting difficulties with arranging workshops online. One had to interview a lot of stakeholders at once, and found the experience pretty wooden and artificial compared to being together in a room. Inline canvases are not considered as valuable as standing round a whiteboard with pens discussing architectural options.
Zoom and Microsoft Teams fatigue
Any silences on Zoom or Teams are felt awkward with the louder voices tempted to fill the gaps. Meeting new people online and establishing working relationships was felt to be hard. Enforcing a camera-always-on policy was seen as controversial with people focusing on backgrounds rather than what the person was saying.
Trust
Every team I spoke to reported an increase in empowerment based on being given more flexibility and trust.
If your organisation and teams need some help tackling these sort of issues give me a shout!