Distributed Scrum
As I mentioned in one of my reply to a post that we are a distributed scrum team located in US and India. Our PO and a few team members are in US and our scrum master along with other members are in India. Initially it was a big challenge for us but team managed to overcome those challenges. Here is the list of best practices and learning from our team which I would like to share with everyone. Also just to make it clear that these items may not be part of an ideal Scrum process but somehow we managed to achieve our goal.
1. Daily standups – [A-Z] in alphabetical order to avoid any confusion on who is going to speak next while everyone is dialing in a conference#
2. We did two stand-ups one at IST and other at CST and it was mandate that at-least one member (optional for others) from IST should join the CST standup and vice versa. Each side has its own roaster on who will be attending on which day e.g. Mr. X on Mon, Y on Tue and X on Wed etc..
3. Team used the wiki board for handing over the tasks to other side. Each side was updating the wiki with some details so that the other side can pick it up from there
4. Team bonding with more casual interaction within team (US & India) - had a discussion on some personal things e.g. favorite color, what annoys most, best moment of life etc..
5. Review by at-least one member from each side so that overall product quality can be maintained
6. We shared the timezone pain so that some of the meetings were scheduled at IST evening i.e. CST early morning while other meetings were scheduled at IST morning i.e. CST night
Please share your findings and suggestions for us.
Hi Sanjay -
I think you guys brought in nice protocols already, what about video conferencing on technical or non technical matters. With faces of all the team players onsite and offshore on weekly basis(at least) would increase team-spirit no doubt.
You may arrange webex session during the daily scrum. Does daily scrum go for 15min? I would say it could be less then. We can use pair-programming between on and off thru webex.
Good Information. And thanks for sharing it.
Couple of questions -
1] Was it a common scenario that one task was developed by developer in us and india ?
2] When situation came about task not being in track , and onsite blaming offshore - what did you guys do ?
3] Did you capture percentage progress on a task ?
4] The rooster had to have knowledge of all the other team, and did it impact the person and srcum meetings in any way ?
Hello Manojeet
1. Yes
2. There was no onsite-offshore model, we were employee of the same company. The Top three ingredient of any successful team is Trust, Transparency and Communication.
3. No, just the remaining work
4. No, it was more to ensure that India/US team members are talking to each other