6.3: Agile Communication Practices and Remote Work - Video Tutorials & Practice Problems

<v ->Now let's talk about agile communication practices,</v> and remote work. One of the principles behind the agile manifesto reads, "The most efficient and effective ways of conveying information to and within a development team is face to face conversation. There are multiple agile practices based upon this principle. However, it is hard to achieve nowadays, when most teams are distributed, and team members are remote. Likely, there is technology and tools in place that make it easy for teams to stay in touch, and to collaborate successfully. There are white boarding tools, document sharing and collaboration tools, and of course, virtual meeting tools. To make best decisions on frequency and mode of communication teams, there are several factors to be considered. First, The teams need to decide on synchronous or asynchronous communication. There are good reasons to use both synchronous, and asynchronous communication. However, it is important if it is a team, has common understanding of which mediums you'd use for each of them. For example, email could be the asynchronous medium. And the expectation would be that they don't expect to respond right away. Just do it in a timely fashion. On the flip side, Slack could be used by the same team as the synchronous communication platform. Where it is expected that everyone on the team responds as soon as they get a message, or within reasonable periods of time. Another communication rule is that it is not beneficial if some team members can attend the meeting, and remote team members cannot. If one person is not collocated, they start feeling uncomfortable, and not being included. So by deciding on remote only meeting, and turning on the cameras, members of a remote team make an important commitment to each other and they respect each other's timeframes, locations, time zones, and so forth. Communication mechanisms are usually listed in the team's working agreement, where a team members agree on the perception, communication, and policies. Whatever works better for their team.