Agile in distributed environments

Often, people assume agile means colocation. Today’s technology infrastructure and maturity of distributed teams have enabled agile to be practiced in a distributed mode. As per the World Quality Report 2016-2017, more than 42% of the organizations that adopt an agile delivery model use distributed agile. Distributed agile allows the organizations to achieve higher cost savings with the global delivery model. Take a look at the following diagram:

Key challenges in distributed agile model include:

• Communication challenges across the distributed team
• Increasing product backlogs
• An ever-growing regression pack
• Poor knowledge management and handover for new people due to less documentation and high-level placeholder tests
• Little time overlap with isolated regional developers for distributed teams

These challenges can be addressed through the following:

• Communication: Live meetings, video conference calls, and common chat rooms
• Product backlogs: Better prioritization within the iteration scope
• Regression scope: Better impact analysis and targeted regression only
• Knowledge management: Efficient tools and processes along with audio and video recordings of important tests, virtual scrum boards, and the latest communication and tracking tools
• Distributed teams: Optimal overlap timings through working shifts (40–50 %)