The following scenarios were used at the London Agile Discussion Group for a session on distributed teams on 23 August 2016. See our blog post on the event here.
The story, all names, characters, and incidents portrayed in these scenarios are fictitious. No identification with actual persons or companies is intended or should be inferred.
Part 1: Scenario #1 – Distributed teams within the UK
- In 2008, Bob Scottle rented a flat in Cornwall
- Unfortunately, the flat Bob rented was a dud and the landlord was a rotten scoundrel: the washing machine didn’t work and the landlord failed to get it fixed; a window pane fell out of a window in a storm one night, and the landlord blamed Bob and requested money from Bob to replace it; the electrics kept tripping because the property was poorly wired; etc. Oh, and when Bob left after his 12 month lease was up, the landlord said he was keeping Bob’s deposit for various superfluous reasons
- It was after this experience that Bob created Eliga.com: a way for tenants to score their landlords, and for landlords to rate their tenants … a sort of TripAdvisor for the rental world
- It became an instant success: not only were tenants and landlords rating each other, but loads of companies wanted to advertise on Eliga.com
- Bob built the company into an amazing success over the years
- The company is now split over 3 locations in the UK:
- Bob and his management team are based in Soho, London
- There is a large office in Bracknell where 50+ people deal with sales, advertising, customer services
- Bob kept the development team in Cornwall and it has since grown to over 30 people (there’s a great on-shore environment down there!) – a few of them work from home
- Eliga.com is now hoping to expand … but they have noticed a few problems with their set-up so Bob has asked you to help him get the teams in the 3 locations working effectively and efficiently together
- What is your advice?
Part 2: Scenario #2 – Distributed teams around the world
- Your advice worked! The company grew and became the #1 rental recommendation site with an annual revenue of over £20m
- Bob sold the company to an American firm (Nael Corporation) but he and some of the management team were kept on
- Nael Corp. expanded the company into the US, across Europe and into Asia
- Eliga.com now has:
- 7 developers (who understand the guts of the system) in Cornwall, UK
- A large development team (50+) in Shanghai, China
- A management team in London which reports to the Nael Corp. board in the US
- Regional sales and marketing teams in the US (San Francisco), UK (London), Germany (Berlin) and Australia (Sydney)
- Again, Bob is asking for you to help because they are having even more problems co-ordinating themselves. They key problems he’s identified are:
- The UK and China dev teams don’t work well together
- The sales and marketing departments are split: one half is focused on the landlord side, while the other focuses on the tenants
- The management teams in the UK and the US work well together, but it’s sometimes difficult to coordinate the other parts of the business because they are on different time zones
- Bob is desperate! How can he get all the parts working effectively together? He has considered whether the solution is to centralise everything in California, but he knows that he’ll lose key personnel from Cornwall and London if he does this. What should he do?
Part 3: Guidelines
Now that you have discussed both scenarios, what are the ‘must do’s’ for making distributed teams work?
Write a set of guidelines, which contain the top 10 must do’s. You can choose to split the guidelines to represent the learnings from both scenarios if you wish.