Agile for Remote Teams: Best Practices for Growth

Agile is a project management methodology most effective with in-person collaboration. However, global events like the COVID-19 pandemic have caused software development teams and other departments towards a remote workstyle. This article takes a deep look into Agile for remote teams, and how adopting its practices can help you improve the performance of your distributed team.

Key Takeaways

• Agile teams are used to working face-to-face, which is why many companies face challenges running remote and hybrid teams.
• Challenges of working remotely include different time zones, lack of physical presence, issues with time-blocking, and more.
• You can still implement the Agile way of working in remote teams through effective remote work environments, transparent communication, and continuous collaboration. 

Quick Summary

Agile methodologies traditionally favor teams that work at the same location. With that being said, global events like the COVID-19 pandemic caused a shift to remote and hybrid work settings.

Transitioning Agile practices to remote settings poses difficulties and challenges such as:

• Handling team members with diverse time zone differences
• The absence of physical presence in the office
• The team that is over-relied on digital communication tools
• And difficulties fostering personal connections.

Although these challenges seem impossible to overcome without forcing your employees back to the office, there are several solutions to this problem. 

• Adopting effective remote work environments
• Maintaining transparent communication with your team
• Facilitating continuous collaboration
• Ensuring team-building activities for employees who are located in different countries
• Introducing productivity tools that focus on wastage reduction and efficiency such as Kanban Zone

If you want to learn more about how to implement Agile for remote teams continue reading the article!

What is Agile for Remote Teams? 

Agile has always worked best with teams that are co-located, especially in agile software development. However, practices like distributed scrum teams are taking over because the teams can either work partially remote, or fully remote. 

Agile for remote teams is an adaptation of traditional Agile methodologies, which aims to bridge the gap between remote work and the co-location requirements that traditional Agile and Scrum practices require. 

Agile methodologies such as Scrum emphasize flexibility, collaboration, continuous improvement, and delivering value to customers promptly. Many organizations think that geographical distance can hinder the team’s ability to deliver continuous quality, which is why they don’t consider working with remote teams, but that can be a mistake. 

According to the WFH Research survey, between May and August 2023, nearly a third of respondents said they’d prefer working from home 5 days per week. Only 19% of the respondents said they’d work from home “rarely or never.”

In addition to that the Agile process was originally intended for in-office use. The Manifesto for Agile Software Development, a document that oversees best Agile practices states that “The most efficient and effective method for conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.”

If you want to shift your software teams to a hybrid or remote work model, it’s still possible to apply Agile practices like Scrum and Kanban. However, you need to keep in mind that these principles require some adjustments to accommodate the lack of physical presence. 

Challenges in Implementing Agile Practices in Your Distributed Team

As mentioned above, companies fear that moving to a remote work model could damage the team’s productivity, collaboration, communication, and finally, efficiency. Here are the biggest Agile  challenges that teams that shift to remote working face:

• Lack of physical presence could make face-to-face communication challenging within a development team. 
• Teams may face difficulties collaborating due to varying time zones. This becomes extra challenging if you’re managing more than one team.
• Over-reliance on digital communication and collaboration tools can slow the product development lifecycle. 
• It’s harder for remote workers to develop personal connections and trust due to the lack of informal interactions between team members in a co-located environment.
• Even though diversity is often seen as a strength, it introduces challenges like communication styles, work expectations and perceptions, and understanding of Agile practices. 
• Technical issues, software limitations, and the learning curve associated with new tools can slow down productivity and efficiency processes as the remote model heavily relies on technology

Continue reading to see all the benefits of bringing Agile practices to your remote team, powered by Portfolio Kanban! 

Benefits of Implementing Agile Practices With Remote Team Members

Despite the challenges, remote agile teams can benefit from introducing agile practices in their workflow. Here’s how. 

• With agile practices, remote teams have clearer goals and milestones that they can focus on throughout the Sprints, which is important for remote work.
• Agile methodology helps remove excess unnecessary meetings that can take hours through daily standups and specialized meetings that focus on important bits of the project. 
• Special retrospective meeting to discuss prior Sprint that are part of Agile methods such as Scrum encourage continuous improvement and learning from your mistakes. 
• Agile practices allow remote teams to improve their flexibility and responsiveness, adapting quickly to changes in project requirements. 
• Breaking down projects into smaller, manageable tasks (sprints) helps teams focus on delivering specific features or products within short cycles. 
• Agile values help nurture a culture of trust and empowerment among team members. This empowerment is crucial in remote settings as it encourages individual accountability and initiative, as well as helps align the team values.

How to Make Your Remote Team more Agile? Best Practices for Remote Work

Understanding the challenges and benefits of working with remote teams can help you identify their strengths and weaknesses and use them to make your remote team more agile. But what is the best practice for Agile work? The in-person Agile is not the only way to implement Agile organization. Here is how you can improve your team’s agile practices. 

1. Promote Transparent Communication

Agile teams thrive on transparent communication. Since the team members usually don’t work from the same location, they will need to communicate their needs and requirements and progress effectively. The teams use different tools to stay in touch, but using software like Slack and other communication channels can support Agile practices better.

Introduce collaboration and communication tools and practices that will enable your team to be agile. That includes anything from project management and collaborative tools to advanced tools that oversee product development from start to finish like Kanban Zone. 

2. Create an Effective Remote Working Environment

For a remote team to thrive, you need to enable them to work on your projects without unnecessary interruptions. Interruptions can vary, from outdated collaboration tools to their setup and internet bandwidth and connection. 

Some of the best ways to ensure your team works in an adequate working environment, are to ensure that they have:

• Good connection that can work on high-quality audio and video conferencing calls.
• Computer hardware that meets the requirements of workflow
• Remote access to files through a cloud-based storage solution.
• Virtual breakout rooms if you set up a virtual office that replaces in-person meetings.0

Whether you have team members who work at home or are scattered in other locations around the globe, you need to make sure that their basic needs are met and that your organizational infrastructure can handle that kind of work. Creating an effective working environment will help the teams use Agile more effectively and successfully apply the Agile ceremonies within the team.

3. Keep Your Remote Employees Well-Informed

It’s relatively easy to keep the momentum going with a co-located team, but delivering the right information and announcements to remote coworkers is the key to effective communication. 

Even with modern and robust tools, informing everyone can be challenging. That’s why you always need to ensure your remote coworkers are connected to joint communication and collaboration channels and that all information and changes are communicated effectively.

More importantly, you need to ensure that your remote coworkers, as well as those that come to the office occasionally like the managers, are well adapted to remote work. Agile principles work best on individuals and teams that stay informed and communicate effectively.

That will not only keep the momentum going but also achieve more efficiency and productivity, which is crucial in remote agile teams. 

4. Involve Remote Team Members in Team Building Activities

Teams working remotely may also feel isolated and lonely and not be able to connect with team members who work from the office. 

That’s why you should try organizing games and other team-building activities that can be done online and serve to connect with the team. 

Activities in remote format can include virtual escape rooms, online workshops or classes, remote team lunches, virtual team challenges, and interactive game nights. 

5. Make Sure There’s Work-Life Balance

Working in a remote office can often mean flexibility. However, that flexibility can easily become a challenge when people work in different time zones and block time out of their working hours.

That’s why establishing a versatile work policy is essential for being more balanced, avoiding burnout, and improving employee satisfaction in the rest of the team.

In addition to that, respect off-hours and promote a healthy, sustainable pace of work by recognizing the early challenges and working together to solve them. 

6. Support Continuous Collaboration

If some decisions concern the broader scope of the organization, your team members should know about it and plan accordingly to adjust to these changes and decisions. 

Additionally, pair-working can help you get to know your team members better, where they’re strong, and what their weaknesses are. That way, managers will be able to delegate tasks accordingly and set up Sprints for the future.

This way, all the work can be double-checked and there’s a good way to implement constructive feedback and work together to make things work. 

How Portfolio Kanban Can Help Remote Teams Thrive?

Kanban is one of the most popular Agile methodologies which promotes collaboration, wastage reduction, and continuous improvement even for distributed Agile teams. If you’re looking to manage your remote team, adopting this methodology can help you take your organization to the next level and prioritize tasks more effectively. 

Portfolio Kanban not only streamlines project management but also fosters a culture of transparency which is an essential element for any team striving to thrive in a remote environment. If you’re a team leader, you can help remote teams achieve more with less which is the ultimate goal of agile development.

At Kanban Zone, we’re devoted to streamlining project management and better collaboration. Check out our Kanban Board for better remote team project management and streamlined workflow optimization and reinforce the transition to remote work within your team. For remote teams, by a remote team!