Re: Agile working with offsite teams

["Pro TechWriter" <pro -dot- techwriter -at- gmail -dot- com>]

I am following this thread with interest, as I am on an Agile team that is
distributed across several locations--and time zones. We have just started
daily scrums after several months without regular communication.

After reading Leonard's response, I am concerned. I am not an auditory
learner, so I have to write detailed notes at review time, which adds to the
level of difficulty.

Any tips?

PT

On Thu, Sep 4, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Leonard C. Porrello <
Leonard -dot- Porrello -at- soleratec -dot- com> wrote:

> Sounds like a difficult situation, but you might be able to make it
> work.
>
> A company I worked for previously used Agile for a $24 million pharmacy
> management application project, and we used teleconferencing to
> facilitate daily scrums comprising team members in several locations
> around the country. Since several team members were remote, we had a
> "scribe" (usually me) capture all of the details of the scrums. These
> were sent to scrum members daily and went into Lotus Notes for future
> reference. The practice of capturing minutes is somewhat contrary to the
> spirit of Agile, but doing so helped ensure that everyone (including
> primarily visual learners) shared the same understanding--or that, at
> least, was the theory. We used NetMeeting when graphics or
> demonstrations were required.
>
> I have to add that the project failed and the company is no longer in
> business. Trying to use Agile with a team was scattered to the four
> corners of the earth contributed no small part to that failure. Agile
> was a very poor methodology choice for that project.
>
> It might not be so bad if only you (the writer) are remote and are a
> good auditory learner.
>
> Leonard
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: techwr-l-bounces+leonard -dot- porrello=soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> [mailto:techwr-l-bounces+leonard.porrello<techwr-l-bounces%2Bleonard.porrello>
> =soleratec -dot- com -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- c
> om] On Behalf Of Sarah Blake
> Sent: Thursday, September 04, 2008 7:09 AM
> To: techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com
> Subject: Agile working with offsite teams
>
> Hi all,
>
>
>
> I've recently begun a new job, at which I've been given the
> responsibility of handling the documentation for a set of products that
> are developed by a team overseas.
>
>
>
> Now, this isn't a situation that's entirely new to me - in the past I've
> worked on a number of projects that have required international
> communication - but this has a far larger scope than what I've done
> before, and will require a more intensive level of communication (the
> overseas team are also hoping to migrate to SCRUM over the coming
> months).
>
>
>
> So given that I'm essentially going to have to put a communication
> strategy in place from scratch, and given that the dev team have no
> experience in working with an overseas writer, and given that my
> knowledge of SCRUM is so far entirely theoretical, I'm hoping to be able
> to use the experience of this list as a guide; can anyone offer any
> suggestions, warnings, or similar experiences from which I might learn?
>
> Sarah Blake
> Senior Technical Author
> Micro Focus
>
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