The most effective product teams know how and when to communicate with each other, which is why all teams should have agreed upon “ways of working”. This could be referred to as ground rules, or working agreements, or baselines, but they should define how the team wants to work together, what they want in the working environment, and what they want from each other. There are many templates out there, and perhaps we’ll revisit this broader theme in a future stand-up topic.
But I’ve recently asked my team to reconsider their ways of working in terms of the working environment. Much has changed in the last two years regarding virtual work, and our organization (which was previously quite location-specific) has hired folks from across the globe in that time. This means product teams span countries, timezones, cultures. Since some folks have begun returning to an office at least a couple days a week, and some folks won’t ever go into an office, it is an ideal time to revisit the topic.
One of the original principles of Agile was regarding physical co-location. That has obviously eased and been replaced by virtual co-location. But I asked the team to consider asynchronous communication for areas where they might never have previously thought of it. Geekbot published an article explaining how to run asynchronous stand-ups, that formerly sacred synchronous touchpoint of each product team member’s day. (Geekbot has incentive for this, as their product is a Slack plug-in to help automate/optimize this process.) Finding tools and processes that optimize for all folks on the team is necessary for an effective product team.
STAND-UP EXERCISE
Have your team review the Geekbot article “Daily Remote Standups: Video Call Downsides & How to Run Better Remote Standups in Slack”, and then discuss if they have found any of the same challenges as the article outlines. Are folks getting burned out on all the video meetings? Is the daily standup timed appropriately for all team members?
And then look to them to push it forward - how can they incorporate solutions to some of these problems? How would you test async stand-ups within your own team? Can you begin running asyc stand-ups for Summer Fridays? Or on days that are already ceremony-heavy like the end of sprints? How can you pair with your Agile coach / scrum master to experiment with this?
What are other asynchronous tools that can be employed within your product team? Are these documented in your ways of working?