As I've introduced Continuous Communication framework in my previous post, one of the aspects I've talked about was importance to maximally mobilize communication channels. This means extending personal communication availability window beyond one's work place - so that quick chat/voice/video session may occur when one or several of team members are out of their typical office hours.
This helps to implement flexible working hours strategy and also to address a challenge of a restricted communication window
for teams in different time zones.
Now, here's two practical ways to implement this advice:
1. Invest into conference calling system and make it standard tool for cross-geography voice meetings.
As people are engaging into communication beyond their office hours, making VoIP calls is not always a good option - for some parts of your geographically distributed team high bandwidth connection may be not available or not reliable, which means utilizing "standard" VoIP tools like Skype of Google Hangout for multi-participant conferencing leads to unreliable and low-quality communication. Conference calling systems like OnConference help hugely in this situation - as they allow every participant to have really high-quality voice conference experience through simply dialing some local number (specified for each country) and then providing 7-digit participant code. In most of cases such dial-in calls are toll-free for participant's private mobile accounts, which removes yet another friction point to use the service.
2. Utilize commute time for voice conferencing with your team members.
I've learned that regardless of location, for many people home-office commute oftentimes may take 30-120 min per day. It is indeed an excellent opportunity to extend one's voice communication window. If good 4G/LTE coverage is available during commute time, VoIP conferencing may be used. But, especially for conferencing with many participants, conference calling system is an ideal option at this point - one has to simply call their local number and enjoy high-quality multi-participant meeting. Also, having free-hands voice meeting during commute does not lead to driver distraction issues and is legal in most countries.
So, two simple rules: usage of conference calling system and utilization of one's commute time for voice meetings - may give up to two hours of extended communication window every day - a huge opportunity to improve communications in a project!
Monday, April 14, 2014
Wednesday, April 2, 2014
Introduction into Continuous Communication
As I've stated in my previous post on key challenges of a distributed development, building effective communication is certainly the biggest challenge. I think the best way to address it is via a well-defined and neatly-followed system approach which I would call a Continuous Communication.
Here are main constituents of a Continuous Communication.
This is really foundational aspect. At Cogniance, we've learned through thousands of man-hours of distributed development that it does make sense to invest into really high-quality communications infrastructure - and make this infrastructure available to all team members without exceptions.
Specifically and typically, technical communication infrastructure includes:
The idea is that every team member should make themselves available for one-to-one or many-to-many communication session with any other member of the team. They provide this continuous availability via publication of their communication profile, which typically includes:
In addition to sharing communication profiles, it is important to maximally mobilize communication channels and extend them beyond work place so that quick chat and/or voice/video call may occur when one or several of team members are out of their work place or out of their typical office hours.
This helps to implement flexible working hours strategy and this also helps to address a strong challenge of a restricted communication window for teams in different time zones.
3. Iteration-based, heartbeat-like meetings schedule. Carefully planned. Responsibly executed.
While ad-hoc, on-demand one-to-one and many-to-many communication which is explained in the above principle is indispensable for a true agile process, more "disciplined" planned meetings schedule is a foundational aspect too.
If the team uses scrum-like framework, their typical meetings schedule include:
There is a well-known communication richness scale, which I would present in this way:
The communication quality improves dramatically when communication gets from asynchronous into synchronous mode, it also further improves qualitatively with each "upgrade" - from chat to voice, from voice to video and then finally from video to face-to-face mode.
The idea is that every time a communication session is going to take place, those tools should be utilized which provide richest possible way of communication.
For example, typically all of scheduled meetings described in section above should be at least voice conferences, with the default option of video conference + document/screen/dashboard sharing session. Another example is ad hoc one-to-one meeting. If video conferencing is available, it should definitely be used instead of voice or chat.
As a separate comment, documenting all key decisions/findings of synchronously run meetings in emailed/"wiki-tized" meeting notes remains of course a valid and vital rule.
5. Face-2-face communication. At pivotal points and wherever possible.
This aspect has been discussed already in a previous post: no matter how effective is your distributed team setup, getting people to meet each other in person brings huge positive impact into the way team collaborates.
We've learned through our experience that out of all possible project pivotal points the most important as regarding face-2-face engagement is start of the project itself and elaboration of a new development phase - personal interaction at these points provides team with the huge positive impulse for the rest of the project/development phase.
Here are main constituents of a Continuous Communication.
1. Technical communication infrastructure. High quality. Available to everyone.
This is really foundational aspect. At Cogniance, we've learned through thousands of man-hours of distributed development that it does make sense to invest into really high-quality communications infrastructure - and make this infrastructure available to all team members without exceptions.
Specifically and typically, technical communication infrastructure includes:
- shared calendars
- knowledge management system (usually wiki style)
- instant messaging tools
- voice conferencing tools
- video conferencing tools
- distributed collaboration system (notes, screen, document, dashboard sharing etc)
The idea is that every team member should make themselves available for one-to-one or many-to-many communication session with any other member of the team. They provide this continuous availability via publication of their communication profile, which typically includes:
- email address
- personal calendar link (including information on personal communication availability window)
- instant messaging ids
- voice conferencing ids (personal mobile numbers)
In addition to sharing communication profiles, it is important to maximally mobilize communication channels and extend them beyond work place so that quick chat and/or voice/video call may occur when one or several of team members are out of their work place or out of their typical office hours.
This helps to implement flexible working hours strategy and this also helps to address a strong challenge of a restricted communication window for teams in different time zones.
3. Iteration-based, heartbeat-like meetings schedule. Carefully planned. Responsibly executed.
While ad-hoc, on-demand one-to-one and many-to-many communication which is explained in the above principle is indispensable for a true agile process, more "disciplined" planned meetings schedule is a foundational aspect too.
If the team uses scrum-like framework, their typical meetings schedule include:
- Sprint planning session
- Daily Scrum meeting
- Mid-Sprint meeting
- Sprint Review (Demo)
- Sprint Retrospective
- Backlog Grooming
There is a well-known communication richness scale, which I would present in this way:
The idea is that every time a communication session is going to take place, those tools should be utilized which provide richest possible way of communication.
For example, typically all of scheduled meetings described in section above should be at least voice conferences, with the default option of video conference + document/screen/dashboard sharing session. Another example is ad hoc one-to-one meeting. If video conferencing is available, it should definitely be used instead of voice or chat.
As a separate comment, documenting all key decisions/findings of synchronously run meetings in emailed/"wiki-tized" meeting notes remains of course a valid and vital rule.
5. Face-2-face communication. At pivotal points and wherever possible.
This aspect has been discussed already in a previous post: no matter how effective is your distributed team setup, getting people to meet each other in person brings huge positive impact into the way team collaborates.
We've learned through our experience that out of all possible project pivotal points the most important as regarding face-2-face engagement is start of the project itself and elaboration of a new development phase - personal interaction at these points provides team with the huge positive impulse for the rest of the project/development phase.
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