This week I am attending the 2011 Agile Alliance Conference in Salt Lake City, and so this seemed like a good opportunity to share my new word with you. I’m going to start referring to non-collocated teams as dislocated rather than non-collocated.
Saying “dislocated” seems to have the right amount of sting, without being offensive or overly neutral
One of the principals of agile is the idea of co-location, that is, having teams work together where they can be face to face. From the Agile Manifesto 12 principals of agile:
The most efficient and effective method of
conveying information to and within a development
team is face-to-face conversation.
There is an acknowledgement that the best way for teams to work and communicate is face to face, and that there is a hurdle that must be recognized when we are not able to work face to face, or when our working hours have limited overlap do to time-zone differences.
We often use the term non-collocated to refer to distributed teams, or to the degree that they are distributed. I’ve always felt that non-collocated was strange since it didn’t describe what the team was, but rather what they were not. Also, the term distributed doesn’t really convey the challenges that must be addressed and worked through when teams are highly dislocated.
What do you think? Does the term “dislocated team” make sense to you? Does it communicated that natural dysfunctions that often arise from dislocated teams if not addressed?
11/2 Update: Looks like Ken Collier (@theagilist) beat me to it. Check out his post on Agility in Dislocated Teams. Glad to know I’m in good company!
Photo Credit: (cc) John Scone
So which Trekky solution to “dislocation” will research provide first: the “Holodeck” or the “the transporter”? My money is on a minimally-viable-product version of a Holodeck. While video conferencing or Skype may be the best we can today (within a limited budget) I don’t think it passes the minimally-viable-product test.
Sounds right to me. I have yet to be a part of an Agile team that (in my opinion) adequately overcame the significant communication challenges of being dislocated. Software gets built, but the quality of the product suffers, and it takes longer.
Now, just because I haven’t experienced it doesn’t mean it can’t happen. But in the corporate environments I’ve worked in, I don’t think the companies have fully assessed the impact of being dislocated. It should be fairly easy to run some A/B comparisons and measure the cost vs. benefit. I suspect in many cases the money saved by fracturing a team across continents is largely offset by the reduction in product quality and the loss of time and productivity.
I imagine it would take three things to get it right: very strong leadership; the right kinds of communication tools; and a team with a pervasive, persevering devotion to collaboration.
I think the term “dislocation” carries with it a very negative (as in “Ow! That hurts!”) connotation with it.
I think the problem lies in convincing people that think distributed development (both geographical and chronological) is a good thing otherwise. The problem their is that you are asking someone to change their behavior. In order to do this successfully, you have to have the confidence of the person you are asking to change.
Making sweeping statements that “distributed is bad”—though in my experience you are correct—will just label you a zealot or a salesman in the mind of someone who doesn’t want to hear what you are saying, which in turn makes it easier for you to dismiss.
Without changing their environment (asking people in their workplace to change), going distributed my be the best solution—in their view.
People tend to take the easy path when they are only looking out for their own hides.
“Agile is hard.It’s tough! Requires a lot of discipline.And thinking. Not everyone’s into this kind of stuff.”
–http://agilewarrior.files.wordpress.com/2010/11/agile-in-a-nutshell.pdf
In order to become better business people, we’ve got to become better people. Altering your vocabulary is—at best—a small part of the solution.
Our culture (at a national level) fights what you and I know to be the “best” way to do things. If we get rid of the cultural evils, the business problems will come out in the wash.
Litigation and blame-fixing ought to be the first things to go.
Pressure and fear absolutely kill creativity. To do things better, people need to know they have the support of their organization; rather than being worried about whether or not this action is going to get them hung out to dry. Loyalty is a two way street.