The Year 2020 signifies INTRASOFT’s Year of Agile! It’s a period in which we transform, we change, and we share the progress!
However, things turned out a bit different, since 2020 has also become the year of COVID-19 pandemic. The virus’ expansion put us on quarantine and sent us working from home; the minute we were so ready to celebrate teamwork, we had to be apart in order to stay safe.
Is this the truth? Certainly, there is nothing greater than being all together, yet something is moving, and our working life still continues in a seamless way.
We all know that Agile has always been about co-location and talking directly with each other, however it seems that we have managed to ‘adopt and adapt’! Despite the difficulties, our Agile mindset is still alive, it is developing, and teams continue their pace as if they were at their office. We have the tools and techniques to communicate, collaborate, progress and deliver. So, that’s good news! Remote Agile is neither complex, nor chaotic, thanks to the practices we follow:
- We have digital dashboards and spaces
Nothing prevents us from continuing the Agile events. JIRA boards, Trello boards, Confluence, SharePoint, and many more will follow
- We have IT Resources
Maven/Jenkins/Sonar/Selenium/Git and GitHub and plenty of other specialized commercial packages and suites are at our disposal, in order to achieve successful deliveries with the expected high quality
- We build a development culture
By the ‘Definition of Done’, we perform code reviews aiming in knowledge transfer and error detection as early as possible
- We take full advantage of our communication apps
Microsoft Teams, Skype for Business and conference calls in any platform bring us together! We challenge distance, we open channels
- We think in a smart way
Teamwork agreements have been put into effect. We respect time, we are on time, we are patient, we are better prepared to compensate for the loss of nearness. We continue trainings and coaching courses! Communities of Practice are empowered
Conclusion: Our Agile Manifesto applies to distributed Agile teams. All 4 values and the 12 principles apply even in unusual environments and situations like the ones we are living in. Agile is a journey and we embrace the surprises!
Author: Rania Alexiou.