Gaining the Advantage for Agile Team Development
By: Seamus Connolly
Tags: Colocation, Agile, Teamwork, Scrum Master, Serious Scrum

Gaining the Advantage for Agile Team Development

The Argument for Colocated Teams

Sharing ideas, gaining consensus.

Making the Case for Colocation

What is best for agile software development teams, to be colocated or non-colocated? I have worked with teams of both types, however, I do confess to a personal preference of having the team colocated. The reality of working during the COVID-19 pandemic means that our choice is limited but that does not negate the need to identify what is best for our teams.

One great advantage for Scrum Masters in meeting the need to facilitate improvement in team productivity and quality is to be able to take a psychological view of the team. Being able to observe and interpret how the team work together can provide direction and priority in helping the team to recognise desirable changes of team and individual behaviours. It helps to map the progress of the team on their journey to proficient self-organisation.

Scrum Masters are not managers and should not be directing or controlling the work of the team. As a servant-leader there will be times when you need to be more leader than servant temporarily. It is not a case of being either one or the other, more a case of being both simultaneously and trying to achieve that balance while also accepting that there are times when guided discovery is not the best way to communicate your message. Whatever approach you take to facilitate an improvement in the team, take the time to step back and reflect on how effective that was.

Your role as a Scrum Master is to help the team to become more aware of how they are working together and to help them recognise where improvement could be gained. Before you can help the team to become more aware, you need to develop this quality for yourself. Even fictional works make reference to this, for example in the Sherlock Holmes novel “A Scandal in Bohemia”, where Holmes explains to his companion Dr. Watson how others fail to note the details that Holmes himself routinely observes. The same can be applied to hearing. You can hear someone talking to you but are you really listening?

There have been a number of studies on the complex topic of nonverbal communication with varying results. However, most experts agree that 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal. “Speaking without words” at lifesize.com

Given the numerous studies that have shown a great percentage of communication to be non-verbal we need to ensure that we listen intently when communicating with our teams. Indeed, even when listening well, many people are unable to articulate clearly what they are trying to convey when they are speaking to you. The key to communication is not that you have expressed your thoughts clearly but really what the listener understands you to have said. It can help to have your listener repeat back to you or, if you are the listener to repeat back your understanding. For electronic messages be aware that the visual cues are missing.

There are none so blind as those who will not see, none so deaf as those who will not listen.

As a Scrum Master I feel that a lot is missed in terms of observation of team behaviours and interactions when you are unable to observe the team together. I found it very beneficial being able to sit slightly to one side of the team, able to view and hear everyone but far enough away not to be a focus for the team.

That also allowed me to see how often the team members were interrupted and by whom.

Behaviours you can observe:

how the team communicate

how the team members relate to each other

do they work alone, pair or mob?

how they negotiate to resolve differences in decisions

how long team members can concentrate on a task

what distractions occur in the environment

how prone team members are to being distracted

how the team deal with external interruptions

level of mood, motivation (displaying signs of perhaps some issue outside of work keeping them preoccupied, or even some issue at work)

Behaving like a manager, constantly checking on a team and controlling what they do has a great potential to impede the team’s development of self-organisation. It also has the potential to skew your observations of how the team interact and develop a functional team dynamic and personality. Being remote prevents you from having this inhibitory effect on a team but there is a downside. Being remote impedes your ability to observe discretely in order to help identify where you can best facilitate the next stage of development as a team.

Paraphrase of Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle. “A watched object behaves differently”

I coach teams on team values by having them visualise what a team looks like when that value is mature in the team and also when it is lacking. This is a conversation with the team, a little guided discovery. Help them to recognise the tells. You are able to observe that relative maturity in the team. Incidentally, I use the same approach when coaching the team on the seven wastes of Lean Agile software development (as described by Mary and Tom Poppendieck in their book ‘Lean Software Development — An Agile Toolkit’)

Among other things, this is clearly much more challenging with a non-colocated team. Non-colocation in my opinion is an impediment to the ability of the Scrum Master to facilitate the rate and degree of progress of Agile team development. Could we even use the description “dislocated” rather than non-colocated?

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

There are good reasons from a company perspective to hire remote team members. Often I would suggest that is for economical reasons although inability to source suitable candidates locally could also drive that decision. Having remote team members though can lead to an over-reliance on electronic communications.

I am not suggesting that remote teams cannot do well, far from it. I would suggest though, that the company does not realise the full benefit for team productivity and quality that a Scrum Master can facilitate when the team are colocated. When I say colocated I mean sat together in a team space, not spread across the building or floor.

That is my preference. You could have an opposing preference however can you explain why this is best for your team? I am not stating that this is the only factor in the mix here however in my opinion being colocated is advantageous for developing the team.