20 years ago, teams first turned to Agile as a way to better collaborate, respond to change, and quickly deliver value. The Agile Alliance states that Agile essentially provided teams “a way of dealing with, and ultimately succeeding in, an uncertain and turbulent environment.”
Today’s challenges are increasingly more complex than those that existed when Agile first came to be. Constant, unpredictable change is now the norm in many industries and areas of the business world. The speed of technological change continues to accelerate, as does the pace of competition. Leading organizations are now deploying product upgrades hundreds of times a day. It takes exceptional teams, cross-organization collaboration, and program-level coordination to bring these solutions to life.
On top of all this change, teams are still adjusting to working in remote, distributed, or hybrid workplaces. Organizations are in a place where the ability to be agile—to succeed in a turbulent environment—is more important than ever. When teams are hybrid, though, they face a new set of challenges that makes it difficult to remain agile.
These challenges include:
- Disconnected workflows as teams juggle multiple tools.
- Delays and miscommunication resulting from asynchronous work.
- Difficulty fostering team trust, motivation, and buy-in.
- Balancing flexibility with accountability and team cohesion.
Looking at the Principles Behind the Agile Manifesto, it becomes clear how achieving what is intended with Agile can seem like a near-impossible task for hybrid teams. Many of these principles focus on communication, collaboration, and motivation—all of which suffer when teams aren’t in person together.
Take, for example, the sixth principle that asserts, “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation,” or the fourth principle that states, “Business people and developers must work together daily throughout the project.”
We know these principles are necessary for agile teams to rapidly learn from each other, adjust appropriately, and continuously deliver value. This then begs the question: How can we reestablish agility to stay competitive when we’re working in different places, different times, and different ways?
Tips for remaining Agile in meetings with a hybrid team
It is indeed possible to continue Agile practices in a hybrid workplace. To demonstrate how, let’s take a look at some ways teams can make one of the most common Agile frameworks, Scrum, thrive in a hybrid setting. Keep these tips in mind throughout all of your Agile or Scrum meetings—or events, as they’re referred to in Scrum—to keep your hybrid team ahead of the curve:
Invest time up-front fostering team connections. In a hybrid environment, teams may lose some of the bonding that occurs naturally in an office setting, like water cooler talk or the playful conference room interactions that used to occur before meetings started.
Look for ways to connect your team members and encourage bonds outside of business, such as team lunches or one-on-one meetings between team members. When the barriers start to come down, empathy grows, trust forms naturally, and collaboration becomes more effective, and, with intentional effort, trust can be built.
Create a “safe to fail” culture, not a fail-safe one. Psychological safety is one of the most important foundational elements to an Agile team. For teams to truly embrace an Agile mindset, a culture that makes it okay to experiment, admit mistakes, and openly share ideas must exist.
Re-establish team norms and agreements. Team dynamics change drastically when members are working from various locations and at different times. It’s important to take time to establish processes and expectations for communication early on. You can think of this as slowing down now in order to speed up later. These could be as simple as coming to consensus on when to mute mics or have cameras on. Be sure to establish these agreements as a team to ensure all voices are heard and everyone is on board.
Brush up on your facilitation skills. With hybrid teams, it becomes even more important to have an effective facilitator to foster productive group collaboration, enable teams to develop a shared vision of the future, and decide on their direction forward. Keep our meeting facilitation toolkit handy for some best practices.
Use a visual, virtual “where” for agile team meetings to increase team collaboration. Hybrid teams still have each other (who), projects to work on (what), and times to meet and collaborate (when). What’s missing is the place to work, or the where—and we’ve noticed the absence. Teams that effectively fill this gap will be able to adapt and innovate much quicker than those teams that don’t address the gap.
Zoom and Slack are a good starting point for hybrid communication, but to really fill the gap teams need a place to collaborate, share ideas, and return to consistently. Look for a visual collaboration solution that enables hybrid teams to brainstorm, align, and co-create through virtual whiteboarding, real-time collaboration, and seamless integration with other tools. A solution like this inspires creative problem-solving, allows the best ideas to surface, and accelerates your team’s ability to learn, adapt, and deliver in a competitive market.
