Video to this pres cand be found here:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fy_j5c_vnaw

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Managing Communication Barriers in
Geographically Dispersed Teams
Luxoft Agile Practice Webinar
By Vyacheslav Moskalenko
11 Mar 2016

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Introduction
Slava Moskalenko
Agile Coach at Luxoft
Professional Scrum Trainer at scrum.org
https://ua.linkedin.com/in/slavamoskalenko

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Session Plan
 What are the common problems and bad habits of the dispersed teams?
 Principles to overcome communication barriers?
 What are the tools we can use for better communication?
 How to setup Scrum meetings in the dispersed teams
 Materials for further reading and watching
 ICAgile session attendance code
 Q/A

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What is Dispersed Project Team
Stakeholders in San-Francisco
Product Owner in New York
Java Developers in Krakow
QA Engineers in Bangalore
Business, management and development team in different locations
Support in Philippine

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First Recommendation
Minimize number of locations as much as it possible
Business and development team in
one location is rarely possible
Achievable target:
Entire business (decision centre)
in the first location
Entire engineering (development)
in the second location

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Communication Barriers
Paper documentation
is the weakest channel for
knowledge sharing
Interactive tools
can break communication barriers
when face-to-face conversations
are not possible
Poor communication channels create communication barriers

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Real Story
Developers from Kyiv
Product Owner
from New York
Project Manager
from London

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Same Story One Month Before
Development Team was spending
most of its time to read paper specification
The used e-mail conversation
to ask questions
In some rare cases they used phone when
E-mail conversation was getting so HOT or
when
business escalated project setup
dissatisfaction
For entire month project team was not able to start meaningful work !!!

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Project Setup With Dispersed Scrum Team
Find the cheapest way to gather
all Scrum Team Members in one
location for a week
Use collaborative techniques
to create Product Vision,
Product Backlog,
Definition of Done and
Release Roadmap
Create working agreements

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Worst Business Trip Ever
The people on the picture came are
having a business trip

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Scrum Pulse
No recurring Scrum meetings

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All Scrum Meetings should be interactive
Use video conference calls
Use GoogleDocs,
LyncSkype screen sharing
WebEx conferences
Trello for voting
Interactive MindMaps
Interactive demo sessions

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Interactive Meetings

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Interactive Sprint Review Session for Stakeholders
 Direct feedback
 Value for end users
VS
 Acceptance criteria
 Business value

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Communication Slowly Deteriorates …
Audio channel should be
high quality
Long audio calls should be
Interactive and supported with
Screen sharing
Every minute check that
the person on the other end
is not falling asleep

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Collaborative Origami Game
Rich feedback and real collaboration speed-up development process
Emulates: audio,
Video/screen sharing,
Face-to- face communication
You can find this game:
http://tastycupcakes.org/2009/
06/collaborative-origami/
This game can be facilitated by
anyone

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Collaborative Origami Insights
Face-to-face collaboration
and pair work 5-6 minutes
to achieve the goal
Interactive cooperation takes 10 minutes
to achieve the goal
Communication over the phone rarely helps to achieve the goal in 10 minutes:
• Describing initial goal in simple words
• Having some practical experience with business domain
• Every 5 seconds developer explains what he did and how the current state is looking

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Communication Barriers Strengthened By …
Don’t use it for negative feedback
Confirm decisions are made on
the collaborative meetings
(MoM)
Document some issues
which can be a part for the next
collaborative meeting
CC entire team

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Communication Barriers Start With …
Belief that documentation is the best way to preserve project information
Team blog post
JIRA
Avoid 100 + pages

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Agile Communication Channels
Channel usage in ideal world
Channel usage in dispersed
teams

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Recommended Materials
Collaborative Origami - http://tastycupcakes.org/2009/06/collaborative-origami/

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Available Trainings and Workshops of Luxoft Agile Practice
 ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Fundamentals https://icagile.com/icagile-certified-professional
 ICAgile Certified Professional - Business Value Analysis https://icagile.com/icp-business-value-analysis
 ICAgile Certified Professional - Agile Team Facilitation https://icagile.com/icp-agile-team-facilitation
 Professional Scrum Master https://www.scrum.org/Courses/Professional-Scrum-Master
 Management 3.0 https://management30.com/events/two-day-course/
 Custom Workshops:
• Coaching and self-coaching;
• Agile project management;
• Agile project metrics;
• Motivation models;
• Feedback gathering;
• etc.

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Way Forward – ICAgile Certified Professional
ICAgile Certified Professional – Agile Fundamentals
Details - https://icagile.com/icagile-certified-professional
Registration
­ For Luxoft employees
https://inthr.luxoft.com/IntHRWebApp/aspx_PTC/CreateRequestInternal.aspx?Course=SDP-031
­ For non-Luxoft – http://www.luxoft.com/agile/icagile-certified-professional-icp/#request

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More Information
 agile@luxoft.com
 http://www.luxoft.com/agile
 http://blog.luxoft.com/agile
 https://sentinel2.luxoft.com/sen/wiki/display/AGLP/About+Us (Luxoft employees only)
 http://www.luxoft.com/agile-lean-webinars-schedule
My personal contacts:
 vmoskalenko@luxoft.com
 https://ua.linkedin.com/in/slavamoskalenko

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Next Events
18.03.2016 15-16 MSK Svetlana Mukhina Team Coaching
03.30.2016 16-17 MSK Svetlana Mukhina Как мотивировать себя и свою команду
(часть 2)

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Q&A