SPA Conference session: Distribution Problems: investigating working in distributed teams | |||
| One-line description: | Uncover, discuss (and cure?) issues raised by distributed teams through a simulation/game. | ||
| Session format: | Simulation (75 mins) [read about the different session types] | ||
| Abstract: | Distributed development teams are a common and growing challenge in software development. Large companies are commonly spread across multiple offices (and likely timezones). Even within an office, teams often find themselves split between rooms or floors. Distribution places a stress on communication. In this session we will work on some simple projects as a team, simulating distribution, and investigate the effects. What issues come up? Do we reveal any bottlenecks? Can we fix them? This session will be a simulation where people work together on tasks, in teams, but we will simulate distribution by not allowing participants to talk to one another directly, and not sitting them next to the people on their team. We will review the effects that this causes, and identify if we can do anything to fix them. | ||
| Audience background: | No previous experience or technical knowledge required | ||
| Benefits of participating: | Highlight some of the issues faced by distributed teams. Uncover bottlenecks. Think of ways to fix them. | ||
| Materials provided: | A card with instructions for each participant (different people get different instructions). Post-it notes or index cards for sending "email" to other participants. Pens. | ||
| Process: | All the participants sit at desks. Each person gets some instructions about their "job" on a project. Each person gets a set of "email addresses" for people they can correspond with. They don't know who in the room these addresses correspond to (this restriction may not actually be necessary). People are only allowed to communicate by sending "emails" (post-it notes) to each other, which are delivered by postmen (session helpers). No talking. Some people (Managers) are given instructions about a deliverable that's required. A typical exercise might be some sort of data gathering that depends on communication with different people, for example "what are are most popular products selling in Europe and in the US?". Different team members have different parts of the data. We leave people alone to get on with the exercise. Every so often we poll "do you think you're on target? how much of the task is completed?" This can yield interesting results, as likely very few people have the big picture of what the task is. After a while, stop, discuss, maybe rearrange something to fix a bottleneck, try another exercise. The idea is to simulate remote working, different people's impressions of progress, problems with email-only communication.... I'll need a co-facilitator or two, mostly to pass the "email" around, but my idea would just be to ask a couple of friends who are at the conference to help out - or some of | ||
| Detailed timetable: | 00:00 - 00:10 Get everyone sat down. Explain the rules. Not too much explanation of what we're looking for. 00:10 - 00:30 first game: probably 3 rounds of 7 mins: approx 5 mins "working", interspersed with 3 rounds of 2 mins "impression of completeness" gathering. 00:30 - 00:40 discuss experience. Any problems? 00:40 - 00:60 second game 00:60 - 00:75 wrapup/retrospective 7 mins may seem like quite tight for a round, but one of the things for a successful game in my experience is putting on some time pressure, so that people get stuck into the task without over-analysing, and we keep a high energy level. Also it does not matter if the tasks are not completed by the end as they are not the goal of the session. | ||
| Outputs: | We will collect discussion points/retrospective outputs/solutions and put up as a poster at the conference. | ||
| History: | This is new as a conference session, but we've run a similar thing internally at work. | ||
| Presenters | |||
| 1. Robert Chatley |
2. | 3. | |