In the second part of my Working Together and Apart in a Time of Crisis series, I look at how our perception of co-location has changed during lockdown.
Co-location Isn’t Just About Geography
Lockdown has forced many of our teams to move to a 100% distributed way of working. No physical hangouts, no water-cooler moments, no spin round in your chair to exchange a few words. Every attempt at communication with other members of the team requires an effort to connect. And yet, teams have not simply imploded. Indeed, many of the teams I work with have thrived under these conditions and sentiment from the team members has been extremely positive. I think there are a number of factors at play here.
The teams I work with are not entirely geographically co-located. Many of these teams are somewhat distributed globally. In some cases the team itself has been assembled to work in a pod-like manner, with several team members assembled together, but the wider group having to operate apart, over multiple miles and timezones. There is also a wider teams of teams structure, synchronised, delivering and managing some level of dependencies together. The organization is currently utilising Scaled Agile’s SAFe framework with teams of teams operating as ‘release trains’.
“It is all about the creation of a level playing field for free communication”
The effect of sending our teams to work from home has been to homogenise the opportunities and challenges of our daily working experience. Everyone now has the same access to communication channels. Everyone experiences our ceremonies; daily stand-ups, ARTSyncs, retrospectives, demos, planning events; in exactly the same way. It has been an unexpectedly positive side-effect but by ensuring everyone has the same opportunity to interact, with no one group able to subconsciously dominate the proceedings through physical proximity, collaboration and connection has actually risen.
Separation across timezones may still play a part in dysfunction but a conclusion to draw here then, is that co-location isn’t just about geography. It is all about the creation of a level playing field for free communication that enables rapid, frictionless exchange of ideas amongst the team members.
Freedom from Commuting
Secondly, working from home has freed everyone from the often stressful and sometimes wasteful daily commute to the office. These hours add up. It is the transformation of this time for other purposes that has been called out by my teams as one of the huge benefits to accompany working from home.
I feel I need to call out an obvious point here. We shouldn’t be thinking these extra hours are an amazing way of expanding workable development time and having team members tied for longer hours to the keyboard. Life needs to have a balance. More personal time at home, away from work or the work-like monotony of train and car journeys is a wonderful opportunity to recharge our batteries. Less exhaustion should make us happier. Happier people tend to be more motivated, innovative and productive.
There are some indications that over time teams have found it harder to conduct refinement sessions and estimate complexity of stories. This seems to be telling us that there may be a need to adjust some practices when fully distributed. By breaking up refinement ceremonies to more frequent but shorter meetings it is possible to combat some of the strain of maintaining engagement through non physical communication channels. We are continuing to experiment with some of these situations and with lockdown set to continue for a while, more results may yet emerge to show better ways of maintaining engagement.
Next Time
In part 3 of the Working Together and Apart in a Time Of Crisis series, I look at the importance of communication and collaboration tools and how weaknesses have a huge impact on motivation and morale.
About the Author
Richard Williams is a fan of business adaptivity in all its many forms. He is a Visiting Fellow in the Industry Faculty at Kingston University Business School and an IC Agile authorised instructor in Leadership, People Development and Adaptive Organization Design. Richard has 25 years of experience working in delivery and product roles for a variety of FinTech and Financial Services companies. He is a transformation coach and SAFe Program Consultant.
