Agile Team Patterns
When distributed team wants to adopt Agile practices, it’s become important to have and play the role of Agile lead to facilitator and mentor team.
Pattern-A1 is clean a outsourcing where all cross functional team members and Agile lead located at one location and Product Owner, BA & IT-Owner located other side in distributed agile team.
Pattern-A2: This team pattern is similar of Pattern-A, the only addition is for complex / big projects at-least one Vendor developer works from Onshore during last iteration/release time to accelerate the support and reduce communication delays in release activities.
Pattern-B:
In Out-scouring project engagement, the team members generally work at offshore location, but there could be scenario where one or two Vendor team member(s) work from onsite. This member will coordinate closely with Product Owner and IT-Owner to understand their concerns and updates which will be discussed in daily standups. Agile Lead provide required support to team on ceremonies using video enabled and using Agile management tool (VSTS).
Pattern-C:
This pattern illustrates team members located in three different locations; offshore have all Vendor members and other location at onsite will Client members part of one development team with common project objective.
Agile Lead coordinates with distributed development team members including Client members in different locations.
Pattern-D:
Cross-functional team members in distributed development team located at onsite can include Client members/experts and Vendor members to meet the project objective.
Agile Lead will coordinate distributed development team members including Client members.
Pattern-E:
When working with distributed teams, due to project requirements more team members might locate in onsite, in this team pattern Agile lead should be located at onsite as well. Simple rule will be, Agile Lead to be co-located with team where most of team members are working
Product Owner develops the product backlog items from the customer requirements and records them in Agile management tool (such as VSTS). Later prioritizes the items for Agile team; also provides (business) value for each product backlog item in product backlog, this helps PO to maximize the (business) value that a Team delivers during the iterations.
Agile Lead conducts most of the ceremonies using video enabled, this helps team members working in different locations to communicate transparently. Encourages to collaborate the distributed team members using collaboration tools such as Skype/IM. Using Agile management tool (VSTS), Agile lead will ensure to record all the team work in tool so that reports generated using same tool.
Team members use to interact with other members located remotely using Skype/IM from their desktops/laptops or using video facility from conference rooms. Every day work tasks are updated in Agile board in VSTS to that during daily standups all members shares the same board to updates and daily plans.
Agile Lead should be from out-source vendor and to be co-located with team where most of team members are working.
