Working Agile & Remotely - The best of both worlds

The Agile community has grown tremendously over the last few years, and the impact agile methodologies had on the way projects are approached can be seen all around. However, though some companies do agile remotely, it is far less common than those that do it collocated. Most companies that we’ve worked with are either doing Agile collocated, or have not been exposed to agile methodologies before they’ve worked with us. As a company we’ve been doing agile remotely for 4 years.

In this talk we’d like to share a bit about our agile journey, and the role remote work played. We’ll highlight the challenges and benefits of working remotely. We’ll also tell you about some handy tools we’ve been using and lessons we’ve learned along the way.

Learning

● Benefits of having the flexibility of when and where to work from
● Comparison of collocated vs remote agile methodologies
● Tips and Tools for working remotely (and agile), including:
● Dispelling some common myths/misconceptions about 'working from home’
● How we do remote work at Polymorph
● How we develop and maintain our Team Culture
● How can I trust that my people are working if I can't see them?
● Unclear or lack of communication because people aren’t face-­to-­face (i.e. no shoulder tapping, no body language)
● Doesn’t it get lonely?

Speakers:

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Marietjie McDonald

I started my agile journey on the 1st of November 2011; the same day that I started working from home. I am based in Pretoria, and am an Agile Manager for several mobile application developer teams that work mostly from the Western Cape. We have been using Scrum or Kanban, depending on what works best for the team and project at the time. I used to be in a QA role previously, and still have a soft spot for testing. I enjoy being able to do interesting, satisfying work while having the flexibility to work from home.

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Johan Pretorius

After finishing my B.Sc (IT) degree at UFS, I spent some time working at the university and freelancing. In 2006, I moved to Cape Town to work as a developer at Mosaic Software right before they were bought by S1 (in the payments industry). After a few years, I became QA lead on the same product and went on to try my hand at project management for ACI. I’ve been working in a true Agile development environment at Polymorph since April 2015, where each individual has the autonomy to decide for themselves what physical location will be most conducive to effective work.

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Duke Coulbanis

After being a developer in Waterfall setups for 14 years I was privileged to be part of a team that spearheaded my then Corporate Employer’s transition into the Scrum flavour of Agile. From the very beginning my life as a developer became humane and enjoyable again. The sheer joy of developing in an aligned, well functioning team was electrifying, and I knew at that moment that my career would be devoted to, and guided by the Principles of Agility. I then joined Polymorph, and realised that there was something even more fun than Agile… Remote Agile!