Succeeding with Agile

Adding Back Some Documentation

There is no way around it: A distributed team will need to write more than a collocated team. There may be more reliance on written status reports to supplement sprint reviews for attendees who cannot attend. Prospective designs may be sketched and written and then sent between distributed team members, especially team members with limited overlapping work hours. Hallway conversations will be replaced with e-mails. There will undoubtedly be more writing.

Fortunately, more written communication does not need to mean the death of agility on a project, but team members do need to be aware of how easy it is to miscommunicate. I’ve been involved in a few projects where team members in different cities were highly distrustful ...