Scrum on a distance

Question

We are setting up a project with at very distributed nature. Half of the dev team will be in one location and half in another. The business representative will be in a third location. Any advice on how we should handle this? Good software to ease things up (in a ddition to scrum software we need whiteboards etc.)? How to do the scrum meetings over phone or other communication?

Answer 1

This site may be of interest, it allows the game of planning poker to be played online.

I would suggest the use of video conferencing software for the morning stand up meeting, though some people I know just submit emails to the scrum master. I prefer the face time factor. I've also used TeamSpeak to some degree of success in the past where video was not an option.

Ultimately though, you do need to find time to come together for a team at some point; it is imperative that the product owner to be as accessible as possible. Being able to liase with domain experts easily, without 'logistical friction' is something I place very highly also. However this depends on the considerations of the team. The end of each sprint might suit as a regular time to get together, however this really depends on how easy it is to do so.

I can only really recommend Scrum for TFS as a software product, as it is the only one I've seen/used, but it is very mature.

Answer 2

cmcrossroads.com have a lot of stuff about Agile and distributed Agile

Develop Globally, Manage Centrally.

Developing software with distributed teams is cost-effective and gets products to market faster. Learn how to avoid potential roadblocks to geographically distributed development, build business agility and save costs by utilizing data from a single repository. Keeping distributed teams in sync needn’t be costly or complex. Find out how you can get instant collaboration while reducing hardware, software and management costs with the Borland approach to geographically distributed development. http://www.cmcrossroads.com/content/view/10287/248/

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How to build agility and collaborate effectively within distributed SOA testing and development teams

http://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/eventRegistrationServlet?eventid=118512&sessionid=1&key=FC8CD8F3DC383A8D39028C036D7777C9&referrer=

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Video: Scalable Agile Development

Whether your team is small, large, or distributed across the globe – to scale agile development your team needs to seamlessly communicate and adapt to changes quickly, while still having enough process to give managers the control they require. Agility without slowing down processes or creating overhead is essential. Watch the recorded demo to see how your company can implement scalable agile software development.

[Watch Video] http://cmcx4.net/dbm83/l.php?187861&348373

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Creating an Effective Agile Workplace for Distributed SCCM.

Best Practices in Support of Agile Distributed Development https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=117629&sessionid=1&key=CD8ED216CE67E71E50F5297D2126B0E6&sourcepage=register

Answer 3

I've written a series of blog posts on this topic. You can find them here:

http://www.ademiller.com/blogs/tech/tag/distributed-teams/

The best on to start with is the summary of a workshop on distributed teams I attended at Agile 2008 this year:

http://www.ademiller.com/blogs/tech/2008/08/agile-2008-distributed-agile/

I'm actually writing a white paper on this which should be published in the next couple of weeks. When it is I'll post an update here. It's basically a distillation of a lot of the posts from my blog.

Answer 4

Incidentally in your specific situation having the customer/business representative on their own in a separate location is a significant risk. Asymetric distribution of the team (where most people are together and one person is on their own) is a very hard situation to make work.

The lone person misses side conversations in the hallway etc and it's very hard for them to be kept upto date. Given that this person is the customer in your case I think I'd recommend having someone who is in your main location (where the most people are) assigned to be their buddy or proxy. Their proxy is reponsible for making sure they don't miss anything and are kept upto date.