Parttime developers working from different location

When you say dividing the developers into two teams has had a negative impact on velocity, do you mean velocity dropped after dividing up the teams?

Why exactly is it a problem to pick PBI's from the top of the Product Backlog?

Good question!

Because the teams are small( in FTE) and there are BI and .Net roles, it is not always possible to pick up items from the top of the backlog. So besides parttime and locations, also the roles play an important role

The team members live across the country and will only see each other at the Sprint review, Retrospective, Refinement and Sprint planning.

How effectively do they collaborate throughout the working day? For example are they able to limit work in progress, re-plan daily to meet their agreed Sprint Goal, and is the throughput of completed work stable?

The team members have regular contact over the day, using Skype, Teams, etc.. Limit Work in Progress is not something the team is focusing on. Currently they are more task oriented (task are already assigned during refinement). This means that we have a high WIP. This automatically means that the throughput of completed work is not stable. 

Do you have an opportunity to schedule a Daily Scrum via GoToMeeting, Google Hangouts, or a similar service?  Those daily interactions can have a significant impact on team dynamics.  Different time zones and schedules are a challenge, but I'm sure you will discover a way to find that 15-minute window that will work for everyone.

I am a Scrum Master on a couple of teams that both are domestic and international.  We hold our Daily Scrum at the same time each morning and try to have many Development interactions using Google Hangouts.  Seeing someone face-to-face, even by screen, is a great start to moving towards that high-performance level.

We have Daily Scrum via Teams. But because of parttimers and focus on BI vs .Net vs. Testing, team is focussed on their own tasks above finalizing a PBI. Do you recognize that?

We have Daily Scrum via Teams. But because of parttimers and focus on BI vs .Net vs. Testing, team is focussed on their own tasks above finalizing a PBI. Do you recognize that?

Yes, it is a common problem where there are skill-silos, or the ability to maintain a joint focus and to collaborate is not part of an organizational culture.

When team members are dislocated, the ability to collaborate effectively is reduced further. Whether you have two theoretical teams or one theoretical team will not resolve this very practical problem. In truth there may be no teams at all, because the ability to demonstrate teamwork is compromised. If people are co-located there is generally a better chance of doing so. If they are not co-located then this must be compensated for, perhaps by investment in technology and establishing a sufficient virtual presence.

How do the people in this situation view their ability to collaborate? Why, for example, is work being "assigned" to them during Product Backlog refinement? What problem is that covering? What is stopping them from being a self-organizing team, which makes such work-related decisions during each Sprint? Once a collaborative foundation is there, they can decide how to structure themselves appropriately, such as by minimizing any dependencies which may have emerged.

I'm sorry to necro this thread, but I am stumbling over the exact same problem.



I'm struggling to bring my team members (none of which sit in the same location) to cooperate with each other. While techniques such as Pair Programming kind of work (we now have 2 pairs who rarely cooperate,) I would like my team to regard the bigger picture.



So my question to Ian is: do you know any good literature on how to create such a collaborative foundation? Do you have more advice?