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.

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:

• email
• 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)

2. Open personal communication profiles. Defined by everyone. Available to everyone.
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)

Personal communication profiles should be available to every member in a team, so that key principle of agile development can effectively be implemented for a distributed team - everyone should have a reliable way to communicate to everyone on-demand, i.e. right when there is a need for a discussion.
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

Daily Scrum meeting is definitely the most important communication instrument here though other are also key and quite indispensable meetings too.

4. Enrich communication. Whenever possible.
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.