A Smooth Sea Never Made a Good Sailor

The most difficult thing I’ve ever had to do with Agile is remote ceremonies. I would always insist on people joining in person whenever possible and I always designed the ceremony to have the greatest impact on those in the room. People who dialled in were never an afterthought but I was convinced that they would not benefit from the session as much as the people in the room. Retrospectives were the biggest challenge. You can only really participate if you were there, how else could you be fully involved and grasp the feeling in the room. Even with video, how would it even be possible to understand the vibe of the group if you weren’t there. It was a problem that could not be solved so why even bother trying to solve it. They would just have to understand the impact and it doesn't matter too much anyway because we always have most people in the room so it’s fine.

Well, looks like I don't have a choice anymore. Not only is this something that needs to be addressed now, it might be the way forward for a long (if not permanent) time. So what are the rules that need to be in place for this to work? Well if we are going to make sure that we can communicate effectively we need to be able to see each other, that means video. There is something about looking someone in the eyes that makes communication easier. It also forces focus, if we are all on video we are obliged to pay attention. It’s easier to pay attention when you know all eyes could be on you. Another thing that we can do with video that is more effective than audio alone is interact. Just because we are not all sat in the same room doesn’t mean we can’t do physical things. Doing things like getting people to stand up and jump about a bit and being able to see each other do this is fun and you can all laugh about it together like you were in the same room. So it’s not the same but it’s not an excuse to have a dry boring retrospective. There are a few video conferencing tools out there but I like using Google Meet https://meet.google.com/ as it’s free and comes with most of the features that paid video conferencing tools come with. 

Collaboration is probably the most important part of Agile. So video is a good start but we need to be able to share things in real time. When we are sitting in a room one of my favourite bits of kit is a whiteboard. The ability to write things down and share things instantly with the team is very effective. Losing this ability in a Retrospective is very disruptive to the flow of the meeting. After searching high and wide I have finally settled on a whiteboard that I find great for sharing online, Whiteboard Fox https://whiteboardfox.com/. Multiple people can all share and contribute to this in real time which is great for when we want to work together on a problem. Taking this one step further and using this on a touch screen makes it much easier to use than with a mouse.

Another great tool that helps with collaboration is Slack https://slack.com/. Being able to use something that we can share links  and other text on is a very useful tool. It can also be used for writing down and sharing as you would normally do with Post-It Notes in an in-person Retrospective. Slack also integrates with a lot of other tools you might be using to run your development like JIRA, GSuite, Trello and many more. 

So in conclusion, yes doing Agile ceremonies in person is always going to be easier but in reality it should not be an excuse for making them any less engaging and interactive. There are many tools and techniques out there that can be used and built on to make the experience a positive one, so have a look and see what works best for you.

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