The Ugly Americans

Successes & Failures from Distributed Agile Teams

HOTEL EUROPE, October 21st

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’Murica

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Another Ugly American Stakeholder

Jonathan TolerProduct Guy

• 16 Years• 9 Companies• 16 Countries• 10 Unique Products Launched • 12 Products Attempted

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4 Tenants of Distributed Agile Team Success

High Level Business Understanding

Does every team member actually understand the business problem they are solving?

01

Flexible Agile Rituals

Follow the spirit of agile, not a playbook. Ritual and artifacts should flow with the team.

02

Transparency

Information does not care about location or role.03

Be Allies Not Mercenaries

Motivational alignment is key to LT success.04

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Use Case 1: Survey Tool

Objective

Using the next generation technology stack, build a survey & research MVP with a 4 month go-to-market.

Location

Atlanta

Sarajevo

Florida

Member Agile Lead Product Owner

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Success

• Turned Mercenaries Into Allies by ensuring all team members were motivated by success.

• The team decided how to apply the agile rituals they thought would make them successful.

• Unfiltered 2-way access to people and information was available for all team members.

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Use Case 2: Promotions Mgr.

Objective

Create an industry-first tool to allow radio stations the ability to manage radio promotional events.

Location

Atlanta

Sarajevo

Florida

Member Agile Lead Product Owner

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Not a Success

• Failed to ensure every team member had a high level understanding of what they were building.

• Stakeholders viewed developers as “hired help” which stifled communication and innovation.

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Use Case 3: E-Commerce Platform

Objective

Create a new software platform that leverages a “cutting edge” technology stack that will change the way Americans order TV & Internet.

Location

Atlanta

Sarajevo

Frankfurt

Shanghai

Romania

Miami

Member Agile Lead Product Owner

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Not a Success

• Language Barriers kept 4 or 5 developers from having direct conversations w/ others.

• Leadership refused to split team up and let team self-determine how it worked together.

• Half of the developers had no clue what they were writing code for.

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Use Case 4: Reward Platform

Objective

Rewrite a SaaS product that rewards home services customers for the number of successful referrals from social media.

Location

Atlanta

Sarajevo

Romania

Miami

Member Agile Lead Product Owner

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Success

• Since previous proess was documentation heavy, development team was up-to-speed instantly.

• Team chose Kanban method of working since each team member could do almost everything.

14Applying Lessons at Kloeckner

High Level Business Understanding

• Every developer has access to business strategy dcouments.

• Product Owners & Developers get to meet customers.• Frequent workshops by stakeholders / executives on

features.

Flexible Agile Rituals

• Team chose the LeSS Framework.• Team + Stakeholders chose to have a multi-step

stakeholder review process.

Transparency

• Slack ensures that developers and QA have direct access to stakeholders and executive sponsors.

• Product business performance as well as deployments, commits, and system data are all free and open.

Be Allies Not Mercenaries

• Compensation based on the same metrics, product performance.

• Our employees are highly motivated because they believe that they are revolutionizing the steel industry

THANK YOU!