program selection system

Agility asks for face-to-face communication, trust and collaboration. Proximity can be created by travelling – at least sometimes. Virtual communication channels provide another possibility overcoming the distance. But we should take the trust threshold into account which, once hit, will break an existing relationship. In this session I’ll reveal, avoiding this threshold, how to know if you’re approaching it and explain the options once reaching it. Moreover I’ll cover the advantages and disadvantages of synchronous and asynchronous tools. And finally I’ll clarify who is travelling, where to, and for how long.

The agile manifesto asks for face-to-face communication, trust and close collaboration within teams among other things. But widely accepted wisdom is that trust needs touch. So how can you create this proximity over a distance? One answer is definitely to overcome the distance by travelling – at least from time to time. Yet, even with this answer at hand it is important to make the travel beneficial and find good arguments for the costs. Thus in this session I want to point out who is travelling, where to, for how long, and how to convince management about the need of it. Another answer is to overcome the distance using virtual communication channels (tools). Here I want to cover which tools are helpful for what kinds of situation. For example, both synchronous and asynchronous tools have their advantages and disadvantages in some settings. Therefore I want not only to indicate what to use when, but as well what to watch out for in order to recognize if a communication channel works or not. And finally, more and more people have recognized (as well in their private life) that there is a communication and trust threshold which when hit, will break an existing good relationship. In this session I want to reveal, how you can avoid obtaining this threshold, how you will know if you’re coming close to it and what your options are once you reached it.

In this session, I want to report from my own experiences in overcoming the distance in distributed projects. My experiences are mainly based on large global agile projects in embedded and commercial software development.