That’s it! I’m going to rename this blog ;-). It’s all about communication again.Since I started to work as an Offshore Manager almost 3 years ago I became sort of a “communications hub”. Team members in Ukraine got used to communicating to other development managers and team members in US through me. While it made sense in few occasions we didn’t do much about it, especially because I was a development manager for majority of the features developed offshore. Bad habits are hard to break, so this went on for quite some time, until we moved to Agile. With me coaching all the Agile teams that came on board I still could be the communications hub, but I decided to seize the opportunity and change this behavior across the teams. Now I encourage all team members to communicate directly to their Scrum Masters, Product Owners and peer team members using any communication channels available. With Skype, cameras and headsets the bar is so low, that talking to someone across the pond is almost easier than walking to another room on the same floor.
In my capacity as an Offshore Manager I still help identifying inefficiencies across teams and manage core as well as “out-of-band” projects, but now my team members in Ukraine are more self-sufficient and don’t depend on me for communication with their peers in US. This allows for more time focusing on scaling Agile and coaching multiple Agile teams.
While this transformation is not easy as it requires certain comfort level from both sides of the ocean I see how Agile being a catalyst by fostering this behavior. There is just no other way to communicate if we want to succeed with Agile, so everyone is vested in making it work.
While this transformation is not easy as it requires certain comfort level from both sides of the ocean I see how Agile being a catalyst by fostering this behavior. There is just no other way to communicate if we want to succeed with Agile, so everyone is vested in making it work.
