Virtual Agile Methods
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Virtual Agile is a methodology proposed by Zensar to allow application development teams to continue working effectively while distributed during the COVID-19 pandemic. It utilizes video conferencing, collaboration tools, and Agile practices adapted for remote work to maintain communication and productivity. Key aspects include daily stand-up meetings via video chat, optimizing application lifecycle management tools, using Slack or Trello for task tracking and file sharing, virtual whiteboarding for brainstorming, and ensuring tools are accessible from any device. Zensar offers to help organizations implement Virtual Agile through training, tool configuration, and process guidance.
Virtual Agile Methods
- 1. Virtual Agile The solution to Application Development in the times of a pandemic The Challenge -- COVID-19 has been declared a global pandemic by the WHO. In the world of IT, the distributed and geographically dispersed way of working has been in vogue for quite some time now but never has itbeen so critical for organisationsto stay in business.Social distancingmeans that people need to work from home but remain alertand availableduringofficehours likenormal. As the pandemic spreads,mostorganisationsareaskingall their staff to work from home. Whilesome of the organisationsearlier went to the extent of building“Agile” workspaces with open areas that brought together developers, testers and operations engineers to work more closely,both physically and in principle,these will not help in a time likenow. The burningneed rightnow is a solution where application development, deployment and operation need to happen seamlessly even if all thosewho make it happen areisolated at their own homes and working remotely. To make sure the AD teams do not lose their mojo and deliver as before, following are the Virtual Agile methods that teams can follow: 1. Use video conferencing tools likeMicrosoftTeams for all meetings throughout the day. Face-to-face conversations help maintain focus and providesimilar—if notexactly same—level or interaction between team members 2. Ensure that the Application LifecycleManagement (ALM) tool (JIRA, VersionOne, Azure DevOps , etc.) is setup optimally,enabled for remote connectivity and is updated regularly 3. To manage day-to-day activities,usetools likeSlack or Trello to enable group chats,filesharing, screen sharingand task management Kanban.This will allowall team members to have a singleforum for communication and micro tasks can be tracked to completion. These tools also havea mobile app to improve accessibility 4. Agile projects usually conduct a Daily Scrummeeting once a day to shareprogress of their work with teammates. Teams can organize 2 Daily Scrums –one at the startof the day and one at the end – to get a better idea of daily progress.These meetings need to be strictly timeboxed and should not be made a norm. Once the team is comfortablein this new setup, this tradition can be stopped. 5. It is equally importantin these times to keep the team bonding intact.Create a WhatsApp group (or a group on similarmessagingapps) for non-work-related banter. This will givea chance for teams to keep the environment stress-free. 6. To brainstormduringmeetings, teams can use whiteboarding tools likeMiro or Ziteboard. These tools will allowindividualsto drawfreely on boards which will beupdated in real time for other team members to view and contribute. Zensar can help your organisation implement Virtual Agileby trainingand/or hand-holdingyour teams as well as configuringthe toolsets and help in implementing the processes and disciplinethatcan make ithappen. The solution – Zensar proposes a solution to the above problem by virtualisingall the layers of communication,collaboration and connectivity with its Virtual Agilemethodology that will keep business value being delivered to the customers with same speed, quality and performance as earlier.