Over the years, software teams have gradually become more dispersed as technology advancements facilitated hybrid work and allowed teams to collaborate, create and innovate remotely. However, this trend accelerated and became more of a mainstream norm over the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic, requiring newly dispersed teams to develop a more streamlined hybrid approach to the development process.
When seeking to implement a hybrid environment, it’s important for development leaders to consider how best to coordinate a distributed workforce across time zones, how to track projects effectively and ensure accountability. At Lenovo, these are considerations the Cloud & Software team has had to navigate since its inception due to the global nature of our business. To be effective in a hybrid environment, we adopted certain processes and tools that facilitated open communication and cross-collaboration no matter the location. After evaluating various hybrid methods, here are five best practices that stand out.
1. Adapt the development process to suit a hybrid setting
In a hybrid work environment, it can be challenging to consistently bring the entire team together at a specific point in time to estimate work, refine issues or plan sprints. Coordinating between busy calendars and multiple time zones is an inefficient use of time, especially when many software projects are deadline-driven. Moreover, many developers are highly creative and want fewer coordinated meetings and more time to contribute when they want, at their own pace.
To navigate these challenges, program managers can adapt the development process to be less regimented and more flexible. Facilitating such events as estimation, sprint planning and backlog refinement in an asynchronous manner within a virtual team workspace can allow all team members, no matter where they are located, to contribute, feel heard and seen and receive feedback from their teammates. Such programs can also enable an automatic way to log decisions and house required software documentation.
2. Establish a single source (or tool) of truth
Many organizations relate to the challenge of having project data spread across multiple tools. While the development team tracks day-to-day work in one tool, other stakeholders are tracking goals and team KPIs in an entirely different set of tools which can lead to misalignment, something that can be exacerbated in a hybrid environment.
To overcome this challenge, development teams can establish one central location using a work management tool where past, current and future projects live and that all team members can access, reference and share. By leveraging this tool as a single source of truth, team managers can bring visibility and transparency to the development and program management processes while creating stronger alignment.
3. Enable full transparency in decision making
Our team at Lenovo follows a strict process of documenting the decisions taken throughout the development process and we make that documentation available for all team members to access within the team workspace.
This can be a beneficial practice for project managers that want to strengthen accountability. Encouraging such transparency enables team members and stakeholders to reference the reasoning behind a specific decision, especially if concerns arise later in the project life cycle process. The result is better alignment across the organization.
4. Establish a facilitator for each ritual
To maintain a healthy hybrid environment, assigning an owner to each Agile event can make all the difference. By serving as a facilitator, that owner would then be responsible for aligning everyone to a pre-meeting agenda and goal, allowing teams to prepare and review issues and tickets ahead of time. This added organizational step can result in a more streamlined meeting cadence and more productive discussions.
5. Automate and leverage efficient tools
Finding the right combination of tools to support a team’s specific collaboration needs is imperative to a successful hybrid development environment. Seamless and automated collaboration is the key, but there is no one-size-fits-all solution mix. Development leaders should consider tailoring their portfolio of tools around specific needs and look for programs that can help keep a dispersed team on track and synchronized (via direct messaging, ongoing team conversation chats or face-to-face virtual meetings, for example), as well as those that can ensure visibility and improve efficiencies. Whatever external programs are selected, however, should be hosted internally behind the company firewall and VPN for added security.
The modern workplace has changed dramatically in the last two years—in many ways permanently—with flexible, remote and hybrid work driving the greatest transformation of collaboration for software development teams across all sectors. By adapting to new hybrid development strategies, enabling transparency in decision-making and leveraging automation for greater efficiency, the development teams of today and tomorrow will be well equipped to more easily adapt to future disruptions in the workplace.
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