In Hong Kong, one of the most densely populated areas in the world, the average household size in 2019 was 2.8 persons with an average living space per person a mere 13.3sqm (Hong Kong Housing Authority – Housing in Figures 2019 (PDF)).
When it was decided because of the Covid 19 pandemic that most of the labor force was to work from home, and children had to stay home too and take online classes from there, it was not clear how this would unfold in small apartments with children on Google Meet concurrently with dad on Zoom and mom in conference calls.
There must indeed have arisen comical if not also tense situations across the board, but somewhat unexpectedly, I noted that in my team's case, working from home turned out to be more of an opportunity than threat. Increased productivity! How?
In order to understand this we need to quickly look into the main components of the agile framework. From several agile approaches like Extreme Programming (EP), people focused Crystal or increment oriented Dynamic Systems Development Method (MSDM), let’s look at Scrum. An in-depth explanation of Agile Scrum is given by the Project Management Institute and we will not repeat this here. The main components then are:
Three roles
The delivery Team (7 plus or minus 2 members) is self-organizing, cross-functional with no fixed single roles for any member. The Team has the authority to do "whatever is needed to meet commitment".
The Product Owner (PO) defines and prioritizes features, content and accepts or rejects work results.
The Scrum Master facilitates the meetings, protects the Team from external influences and removes obstacles, while coaching the Product Owner.
The Meetings
Sprint Planning 1: Selection. The PO and Team both participate, select functions and features which are all then put in a product backlog (one list per product) and establish a “DoD” (Definition of Done).
Sprint Planning 2: Commitment. The Team breaks items into task to form the sprint backlog (any Team member can change, add, delete in this backlog and sign up for tasks – estimated work remaining is updated daily).
Daily Scrum. This open meeting (but only “pigs” (committed members can talk)) takes 15 minutes, is held at same place and time and requires all to answer 3 questions (after which the Team updates the sprint backlog and sprint burn down chart (remaining work in a sprint in hours):
What have you done since last meeting?
What will you do before next meeting?
What is in your way?
Sprint Review: inspection and adaptation around the product based on “done” and “undone” work and feedback from the PO. The product backlog and release burn down chart (showing remaining work in a release and managed by PO) are updated.
Sprint Retrospective: review of people relationships, process, tools and make adaptations.
In short we can see a structure that allows high level of informality and autonomy, adaptability and interaction.
In the year 2020, communication tools like Zoom have given us a platform for hassle free interaction. Every morning the "pigs" meet for just 15 minutes to answer the three questions, while "chickens" (people not committed but involved) can listen in. No matter how small or crowded your home, 15 minutes is a reasonable short amount of time to claim for yourself among other family members.
All work interactions and communications are from your home, perhaps while you are having a snack, doing push ups, feeding the baby or simply in-your-shorts-feet-on-the-table pose. By definition informal.
Communication is immediate and as needed: you send a WhatsApp message to your colleague to review your code quickly. No need to plan a meeting, or go to his or her office, cubicle, desk. And if the answer comes late in the evening, no problem, in the developer's mindset office hours are less relevant than finishing up that piece of code, just for the heck of it. Without exception every day there was e-Mail correspondence still going back and forth around 10pm. After all, tomorrow, after the 15 minutes morning Scrum meeting, you can always take a short nap of an hour or two and go for it with the next task you freely choose.
Backlogs are all online, in Google Drive or in your corporate network, accessible 24/7. Working from home, with current available online collaboration tools, comes very close to the spirit of Agile: choose tasks you want to do, share your work when it is most appropriate to share, adapt your output when required and communicate (WhatsApp) often, fast and without formal meeting room protocol or looming hierarchy. It is easier to speak up. After all, in our homes we are all Kings in our castles.
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