The Future of Agile Teams: Remote, Diverse, and Resilient at SKILup Days 2024

This is professor, let me share a interesting fact to start with today. Do you know that what the power of AI is and the AI's role in global economic impact? 7 trillion is what AI gonna contribute to the global economy by 2030.

And you know what? This is more than the combined GDP of India and China. Together, this impact will span industries from finance to healthcare and transportation.

And it shows how AI is not just an individual sector, but entire economic network and to share the machine learning models who have played a vital role in climate change. Let me tell you, this is the factual data. Machine learning models are greatly capable of analyzing the satellite data, which covers 36 million square kilometers of forest in the world, and it can predict the deforestation patterns with 92% accuracy.

Today's data, as we talk, these models provide the real time insights that will help the government, but agencies and organizations to take immediate action to protect the critical ecosystem. That's the power of ai, that's the power of ml, and that's impacting the world of projects. Hi, this is Professor Sandil again.

Today we gonna learn, we gonna witness the next 25 minutes, which will talk about the world of ai. We are gonna walk through the topics which we'll talk about transforming how we approach project management in agile specifically, and we'll explore the remote work, diversity and resilience, how it's shaping the agile teams for tomorrow. My goal in this session is to leave you with practical insights and examples that you can take back to your teams.

So let's get started. Now, when we think of a agile, we know that how agile have evolved significantly when we used to have, uh, the original form of agile. Now if we take a look back, it's no longer just the practice.

When we look at agile, agile is a mindset, and this mindset will encourage adaptability in each aspect of work. In today's environment where thieves are open, spread across globe, they are, uh, in different geographies, different time zones, a giant methods should be used to adopt this changing work ecosystem, work landscapes. Now imagine a traditional agile setup where everyone meets in person, uh, for daily standups for huddles, okay?

And different ceremonies. In today's world, this standard structure have evolved, evolved over time, and now we have Jira bots. Now we have different digital bots, we have shared resources despite the teams are available remotely and also in office and hybrid.

Absolutely when we need, when we know what we need. Different teams are using digital platforms to connect. This shift now have net to the development of hybrid A.

It needs that need blend that traditional practices with flexible solutions, solutions which are more digital solutions, which are more affordable solutions, which are more available always when we need them and should be easily adoptable with the organizational culture. This session, we should intend and we will intend to cover how to leverage own the transformational trends related to agile in AI ML projects to make our agile practices more future remote work have fundamentally changed how agile teams operate. One, uh, significant advantage that, uh, I'll say that how we can now tap into the talent from across all over the world.

That's a benefit that we see. For example, at zip, we recently hired a UX designer who's from Brazil and a developer who is from Eastern Europe. Now, this geographical diversity have brought fresh perspectives that reshaped our products design.

However, when we see that remote work isn't, um, without its own challenge, there are some sweet challenges. So time zone difference makes scheduling difficult and uh, it can be hard to build a strong team culture when team members have never met in person. And a simple solution is to have, uh, a team overlap hour.

So we dedicated, uh, time when everyone is available and we thought that why not connect, why not talk, why not see why not care for each other in that time. Now this helps bridge the gap and makes collaboration more efficient and that have a packet in a better onboarding time, better productivity, better operational, uh, excellence, and less of involvement of the stakeholder. So out of three time zones, we have 60 minutes, which is overlapping time with three teams.

We spend 20 minutes each and once a month some ceremonies. That's how we have achieved productivity. We changing ada.

Diverse themes are not just, uh, uh, about different nationalities. I'd say they're about bringing together different skill sets, different backgrounds, like someone from ui, someone from ui, someone from polling, someone from designing someone from products, et cetera. And different viewpoints.

Absolutely. Now research shows that diverse teams are more innovative. Why?

Because they bring unique perspectives of problem solving. Each team member carries a different persona of how to approach the problem. What are the best solution according to each team member?

Sometimes leaves me surprised, oh, it can be taught this way as well or it can be achieved this way as well. And that's interesting. Uh, for example, on recent project what happened, we had a team members with different levels of agile experience and the more seasoned agile practitioner, we had more focused on process efficiency.

While the new team members were more focused, uh, they were leading into unconventional ideas. Now the combination of both of this created a solution that was both effective and innovative. We were able to understand that how this diversity have been encouraging in and uh, it was a key agile I'll say.

And it helped the team approach the challenges from multiple angles. Now, a agile team faces constant changes. I'm not talking about just the team level, we are talking about the market condition.

Decline demands various product improvements or even internal. Now resilience is the quality that allows this team to keep moving forward despite various adults, various obstacles. One practical way to build, uh, resilience is through one concept, safe to pay or oil safe.

Now in our recent project, we were trying out new features which was innovative and it was related to cryptocurrency and it's required a different pouring approach. Now instead of rolling it out to everyone, we tested it with a small set of group. And the favorite most model that is proof of concept.

The experiment failed initially and which we expected may be the possibility, but we learned some valuable lessons without risking the entire project. We were able to test the prototype on the low complex, low priority work, and it was safe to fail approach. Now, this safe to fail approach allowed us to adapt, uh, the change without any business impact, without any product here and making the team more resilient, more confident, and it was more productive.

The effective tools played a vital role in onboarding any change, understanding any, uh, cultural diversity, project diversity, ecosystem diversity or technological diversity. Easy. Now effective tools are essential for agile success in all virtual and environ.

If we want to take a quick look at some of the tools that have transformed an approach to agile collaboration, if I know of you are, uh, a Microsoft teams slack for real world communication, for real time communication. This tools have created a secure platform which are integrated with any number of project management tools, maybe Jira, uh, who which is used for managing the sprints, tracking the progress, or it can be Trello, which is used for virtual task management or maybe the Citrix, uh, work now solution, which we are using with JIRA's MS projects, SharePoint, so and so forth. Now at Citrix, we use this, uh, work now, which is integrated with Microsoft teams and also it talks with Jira.

Now every sprint review is recorded in teams, which means we don't have to worry about is project manager or scrum master available, which team members will have a responsibility Now because the meetings are AI enabled, the notes are taken and approvals are seamlessly understood if there are any, uh, improvements, if there are any observations, if there are any rework, those are smartly captured. While ai, a simple practice of onboarding the productivity tool with various other collaborative factors, app helped us to meet the deadlines app helped us to keep track of change. App helped us to keep track of betterment approvals.

Remember, tools are only effective when team know how to use them. Collaborator, the techniques for managing distributed giant teams, it's an interesting topic and it happened. Uh, I see that this will be lived for a longer period of time.

Teams will have a great future. All the companies will see that their teams are working remotely, will have a great good future. Now, for distributed agile teams, it's crucial to adapt some practices like, uh, daily standups, retrospectives planning sessions.

There are some techniques that have worked well now, uh, uh, if we talk about US and pro standup, not every dean can join at the same time using a platform like Slack for any US and Kroners, check-ins, which will allow team members to enter access, communicate, collaborate, despite their from different time zones, they will be able to update their progress whenever they are available. Maybe tools like Jira, updating the board using a product board where the features are requested and users get to know which features have been accepted or which features have been, uh, parked on hold or parked off and later, which features are in pipeline. That gives a great good confidence to all the business and internal users to understand how the product shaping should take place.

Marketing team understands which goals have to be designed in a specific way. Now this real-time usage, instead of waiting for documents to be rolled out, minutes of meeting to be rolled out, app created a real time meeting inbox instead of person retros. We have virtual retrospective.

We use Miro to create interactive retrospective. Each member had their thoughts on virtual sticky keynotes and most of the time it can be more, it can be mirrors. And this approach have improved the engagement and given all team members a voice, even the quiet a one that's most important.

I'll give you an example. One of our, a giant team in India and Europe, they had an issue sinking on screen codes. Now by moving to this, uh, a synchronous check-ins team members could log and update, which means they were able to update without any restriction.

Without any challenge. Even the quieter ones had their opinion and they used to keep it forward. And because it was the common platform, it was more collaborative, a small change which created a big impact, a big impact that have reduced misunderstanding, that have improved the alignment, improved the team outputs.

And this changes have been increasingly promoting our organization culture towards transparency, towards productivity. When we think of building an inclusive a joy culture, it requires intentional actions. It requires an objective.

Inclusivity is not just about policy. It's not just about creating the rules, it's about daily practices. It's about driving the right sort of culture and the culture, the practices that makes the team member feel valued.

It should make team member feel that they are heard. I'll take an example again. Now, during retrospectives, we ask each team member to share one success and one area of improve.

Now, by giving everyone a chance to speak, we encourage diverse viewpoints and we foster a psychologically safe environment, a safe team culture, which will help individuals feel comfortable, transparent, valued, and they are comfortable to propose new ideas even if they are unconventional, even if they were not tried and tested earlier. Now, this openness is crucial for agile teams so that they can thrive on adaptability and continuous improvement. How many of you may have faced an issue if you are in a retrospective?

If you are in, um, a meeting and you may have taken a second thought, should I really put out my word, talk out, my thoughts loudly and I have an unconventional idea and should I call it out? How many times have we felt that there are so many leaders in the events, retrospectives meetings, ladies stand up and we have old pack from sharing the best idea that could have saved a lot of time or would have been beneficial to the end customers, some of the other ways, a lot mini if yes, this is the answer there. The technique that we are talking about, the strategies that we are talking about, let's try this is more about it.

So one of the strategies for fostering adaptability, adaptability is a core agile value and it's more critical than ever it was in today's dynamic work environment. Now there are some strategies like when we think of leveraging adaptability, when we embrace continuous learning, when we learn from the mistakes, when we learn from the best practices, when we learn from nothing is working the way we expected or everything is working in a better way, what we podcaster, we encourage the team members to regularly upskill and explore new methods of learning. We implement the flexible frameworks, we consider various frameworks like we have been using, uh, Kanban boards that will allow frequent adjustment based on the team requirements and needs.

And a product manager. It was some for people with Kanban, despite it was, uh, an a giant sprint that we were wanting to move and it was more iterative. But if it was creating a value to the product team and to the business understanding CanBan better and the development team was flexible enough to adapt the sprints in the CanBan.

So that allowed a frequent adjustment according to the product managers priorities, which means product manager was able to shuffle the Kanban boat the way he or she wanted, and team were able to understand this priority seamless. One of our team at Citrix recently adopted Kanban two weeks ago for an experimental project and they had shipping requirements way too flexible. I will say.

Instead of sticking to the fixed print cycles, we moved tasks dynamically. So this strategy allowed us to adapt quickly without the constraints of without the constraints of, uh, limitations of various techniques. We have also been thinking to work on a j plus xp, A J plus, um, different models that we have.

We used MS projects, we use CAN plus Agile, and each team came up with their unique way of working where we integrated the entire collaborative team communication on either Slack, on either various different channels. Now, if we happen to sum up what we have discussed so far, what we have been talking about, so there are three takeaways for building an agility that is ready for future one. Firstly, the remote work.

Remote work is gonna stay for long companies, teams, managers, leaders. We should be ready to welcome this work approach. We need to equip your teams with effective collaboration tools to bridge the geographical gaps, technical gaps, skillset, diversity where we promote inclusivity and encourage the diverse perspectives as the lead to innovative solution.

If something's working well for a team doesn't mean that it should work for entire organization. Looking at the skill sets, the expertise, the way cultures are being driven into silo teams and the geographies where they belong to or different set of team members belonging from different geographies in a set of team, it may work well and lend the customized approach of project management and ceremonies and the tools and techniques be respected for this bits and pieces, which means, uh, organizational value, which is leveraging team members to decide on how they would want to manage their productivity and collaboration using different techniques and tools effectively. Lastly, I'll talk about the resilience and adaptability.

Once again, one should foster a safe to fail environment because in AI ml there are a lot many things to be explored. Let the teams safely pale, create the safely peeling environment and create a level of comfort and adaptability. Adapt the flexible free works that will empower the team to adjust swiftly.

Now, this pillars which are remote work, diversity and resilience are foundational for agile teams and global fast paced environment. With this, I would want to thank you everyone for joining in this session. We have explored the teams and agile teams who have been accommodating teaching and also improvising themselves with the changing landscape.

Uncertain situations have yielded to beneficial approaches with explored the future of agile teams touching on remote work, diversity and resilience and agile teams today are increasingly global, building a strong foundation in this areas. This will prepare you for the challenges and opportunities of tomorrow. I would like to hear your questions, insights, or any unique experiences that you would like to share about your own agile journey.

Let's discuss how we can apply strategies to our unique projects and challenges with this. I appreciate everyone staying with me for this webinar and text prong for giving this wonderful opportunity. This was Professor Sada.

Have a wonderful day and journey. Let's stay connected. Thank you so much for your attention once again.

Yeah, 80, that's all. Thank you.