Best Practices for Agile Remote Working

Agile Methodology is driving the current era. Organizations worldwide are finding ways to improve their software development lifecycle and delivery process. The original iteration of Agile Methodology was founded, imagining that a cluster of teams would be present physically in a designated location and work together in the ecosystem. Before we explore the best practices for remote agile teams, let's explore how Agile remote working concerning Scrum has changed the business landscape globally!

Agile Methodology is deemed the most efficient and effective method of developing software. The concept of Agile revolves around the practice that conversation and communication offer the best way to convey any form of information in an organization. The methodology has been practiced for many years. Earlier teams used to work together in each other's presence. Nevertheless, the work culture in the post-pandemic era supersedes the conventional norm that requires people to sit together and collaborate.

Scrum after the pandemic provides individuals with the ability to innovate together, irrespective of whether they're sitting in an office space or not. As an Agile methodology, Scrum makes teams exponentially efficient and productive. People in office space used to work together like a cluster; sometimes, it can be cross-functional teams.

With WFH and Hybrid office setup, distributed teams in organizations have started to take over the conventional team functioning clustered. With distributed teams becoming the norm, there are Best Practices for Agile Remote Working in Scrum.

Check:Top 10 Agile Metrics

How does Agile Methodology help businesses function?

Remote Agile teams face many challenges, such as coordinating across different time zones, building rapport even if everyone is not in the same office, collaborating among different development cultures, scheduling meetings, or having informal conversations when all the team members are online at least for a few hours. 

These problems are manageable ones as there are many ways one could tackle them. Here are a few of the best practices that would help the remote Agile teams to function efficiently and perform to their best.

Distributed teams are Agile teams where team members may live in different time zones and work on projects around the clock. In this post-pandemic situation, company leaders rely on Scrum and Agile to function efficiently and increase the revenue per square foot.

7 Best Agile practices for Remote teams

1. Choose the correct equipment, tools, and working space

When you are working remotely, it becomes essential that you set up a working space that suits you the best. All of the members of the teams should have a proper setup to work remotely such that it benefits them, the team, and the company. The working space should be an office where the person gets productive and does not perform other tasks.

Before beginning work, people should evaluate whether they have everything to be productive and comfortable and whether it is a place that would not distract them. Due to the present COVID-19 crisis, working at home has become common. Hence, work disciplines, workspace, equipment, network, and tools should be significant factors when working remotely.

The team members would know what the changes required are once they get started. After working remotely for a while, you can identify the problems that the team members are facing. It could be an issue with video conferencing, setting up a particular time, or using tools that function differently than physically being present in the office. It could be the issues faced by an individual team member where the connectivity could be better, distractions from family members, etc. 

Try to note down these pain points and solve them one by one. Changes such as getting a wireless connection, relocating the router for a better signal, adjusting the desk for better video conferencing, etc., are a few solutions you can implement to increase your productivity. 

2. Getting on the same page with all the team members

When the team has started adopting Agile practices, it is always recommended to start slowly and help everyone get settled in remote Agile working practices. It is mainly a change management program where the whole culture of the organization changes, and you have to start working differently.

It would be best if you started with a set of rules everyone must follow and ways the product development would work. Questions such as how the team should communicate, where the information is being shared, whether any security protocols are present, what the expected response times would be, etc., should be answered in the beginning so that everyone is evident from the start. This makes the transition from the office environment to the remote working style smoother.

The team members who work together should devote specific time and collaborate so that the development activities, e.g., coding, can be carried out without hassle. Tools such as Microsoft Teams and Slack help the other team members know everyone on the team's availability.

In addition to this, status setting is highly recommended in remote Agile teams that have flexible working hours. Being on the same page also means the team members should have small talks and involve more people to brainstorm ideas online. Scrum Master and other leaders must also be in constant contact and ask the team members if they are facing any impediments and assess how much they have understood about the requirements for the project.

3. Reviewing various approaches for Agile Events

Gathering in a specific location in the office to discuss any Events, such as Sprint Planning, would be very effective as face-to-face conversation clears all the members' doubts. However, in remote working, different methods of conducting Agile meetings must be devised such that everyone has a chance to understand what is going on with the current project.

The Scrum Master has to think about the collaboration tools, which depend on how many people are present in a particular team and the availability of the devices. Small groups could use chat gathering for Daily Scrum digital whiteboards for designing sessions and whiteboard tools for planning Sprints. Here are a few other suggestions that could be used to conduct Agile Events.

• Agile meetings could be conducted using video conferencing.
• Selecting one specific person to share the screen during Scrum Events such as Sprint Planning and Sprint Reviews. 
• Surveys and low-code applications are used to get feedback about the Sprint Retrospectives.

Using creative ways to conduct Agile meetings would help the members understand what is going on in the project and would benefit the team members and the company in the long run. Whether your team is comfortable using Zoom or Microsoft Teams, find which tools work best for your team.

Also, read: Agile Planning Process

4. Setting realistic individual and team assignments

The Sprint velocities and the way of working would change as the team has shifted to a remote way of working. Teams should consider resetting their Sprint velocity and re-assessing the complexity of the project so that they can set a realistic date to complete the Sprint.

Treat the remote working Agile team as a newly created team and give significant time to adjust to working in a remote setup. For Instance, think before you commit to a complex' User Story' that needs collaboration from many members of different teams, as most of the team members could not be available while the Sprint is ongoing.

These stories could be made into minor ones and completed gradually till the team members are accustomed to working on complex projects. Projects requiring coordination of other teams should be avoided in the beginning as there is a certain level of ambiguity with the availability of other team members, and the project could not be completed as promised.

Know more about Agile velocity here.

5. The documentation level should be increased

Although the principles of Agile suggest that the work should be prioritized over documentation, the process of recording APIs, architecture, and code should be a common practice. Team members should discuss documentation standards, and more efforts must be warranted if necessary. 

Sometimes, when you document the code, it could replace discussions that require the team members to communicate in person about the working of a code module and how the teammate is going about the technical debt.

6. Investing in CI/CD, Spikes, and knowing about technical debt

Agile teams that work remotely interpret that working on a technical story is way easier than working on a level that would require them to communicate frequently with various stakeholders, product owners, etc.

Suppose the team is working on a project that needs a user experience, which is a multi-step engagement. In that case, there is a necessity for the Developer, Tester, Product Owners, and Designers to coordinate. This would be challenging in a remote working system as everyone would be available at different times. This could be tackled through a few of these methods:

• Prioritizing work that requires a minimum amount of communication could be quickly completed with more innovation and concentration by the individual.
• Prioritizing minor spikes to demonstrate new ideas such that a developer's work could be more accessible as they would have little interruptions and context switching by working on a short-proof concept.
• Investing time in developing and improving the CI/CD automation.

7. Reducing Risks and reviewing deployment strategies

As Agile teams get used to working remotely, it is essential to reduce risk-taking as work conditions affect customer expectations, operations, supply chain changes, and other business factors. The deployment frequency should also be reviewed as end-users and customers want the best quality product, even if the deployment takes time.

It is best to explain how changing the deployment frequency would enhance the performance and the reliability of the application. Agile teams must recognize the broader changes that impact the organization's business model, customers, and working environment. 

The principles that processed the functions of the organizations, such as speed and frequency of the deployment to the types of work and user stories that get prioritized, should be reviewed from a new perspective, keeping in mind the remote Agile working.

Agile organizations have always been ready to adopt changes, and with the present COVID-19 crisis, most of them have adopted the new standard way of working. Remote Agile working has been encouraged in almost all the companies using the Agile methodology.

Reviewing the deployment frequency, not committing to complex projects that would require multiple interactions from various people, and being on the same page and conversing with the team have also helped teams to function smoothly. Overall, a large part of being Agile is not following the principles of Agile; it is recognizing when and how to change.

Conclusion:

Using these techniques would enhance the productivity of the team and the organization as nearly all of the factors that drove business will change. Choosing the proper equipment to work, creating a new culture among the team members, interacting with the team members, and making them trust each other to become a self-organizing company are a few of the methods that have worked well for many remotely working Agile teams.