Agile Development

February 22, 2023

Adaptability, collaboration, continuous improvement. The Agile methodology promises a lot — but can remote teams make the most of it? Here are 8 strategies to make distributed agile teams work.

The Hot Progress Wine 🍷

Does a distributed agile team play well with stakeholders?

When Soaq’s CEO, Daniel Wolfe, envisioned an employee engagement platform, he relied on Net Solutions.

But how does a team in India seamlessly partner with a startup in Canada? And does the time difference hinder communication? Do things get lost in translation?

We sat down with Daniel, as he reflected on building Soaq, things he would approach differently now, and how he decided on working with a tech partner on the other side of the world.

Listen to the Podcast

The Insights Steak 🥩

Last year, when my mom was solo traveling through Latin America, my stress levels were off the roof.

Not only had my mom never traveled solo, but to do it on a whim with limited planning? Bold — I should hand it to her.

But I was happy she was getting out of her comfort zone.

Barring the occasional drop in coverage, she called me multiple times in a day, shared pictures of her excursions, and during longer travels, shared her live location on Whatsapp.

Kudos to the Whatsapp UX and Dev team for this brilliant feature. Keeping in touch across countries and continents is easier than ever before, but how teams, stakeholders, and organizations would do it is a completely different ball game than personal communications.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, remote work became a mainstay for organizations. Structures, processes, and models had to be revamped to accommodate the changing work environment. Teams working with the Agile methodology were left stumped.

Agile was optimized for close-knit, collaborative structures to deliver quick results. Now what?

Do distributed agile teams work? Can agile adapt to asynchronous work?

Just as it is important for a solo traveler to ensure transparency toward their friends and family, it is also important for teams to clearly communicate and ensure transparency toward co-workers and shareholders.

But how can organizations go about it? How can a project manager bring the best out of a distributed agile team? Here are 8 key strategies to make a distributed agile team.

Can Agile help my remote team?

Thought Leadership Maté 🧉

The blueprint to implementing agile is in its values. It prioritizes adaptability and collaboration. That is exactly what an org should focus on when implementing agile, geographically distributed or not.

Quartermaster at work

Adam

Net Solutions