Colocation Versus Missing a Team Meeting
management, scrum, software development
At a recent team meeting four out of eleven developers missed the meeting. None of them planned ahead of time to miss the meeting, and all of them were a little surprised when I mentioned it to them.
Three of the four who missed the meeting are not collocated anywhere near the bulk of the team. They are on other floors or in other buildings. The one developer who was located with everyone else was simply heads down coding. I’m willing to bet that if all of the developers were located together chances are all but maybe one would have made the meeting. A host of developers walking by your cube is a good reminder.
So colocation is even helpful for team meetings. After I realized we were missing quite a few people I dismissed the idea of trying to round people up and assumed things had probably come up. Running around to another building and another floor for a 30 minute meeting just isn’t worth it. The distance barrier makes it difficult to take action to resolve a simple problem.
Anyway not really that big of a deal, but another little lesson on the value of sitting near your neighbors.
Ed Gibbs @ August 16, 2006
Great point. Just imagine how much more you can tell in a war room type arrangement where you look up and everyone is gone!
The question I have is why didn’t the rest of the team notice these people weren’t there? I feel it is part of the team’s responsibility to get the most value out of the meeting by making sure everyone is there.
I second Cory’s comment about the rest of the aren’t hateam. Could be a process smell…people aren’t fully engaged, don’t have a sense of collective ownership…something.
That’s just the sort of thing a ScrumMaster would notice and respond to. We (as an industry) need to start recognizing the ScrumMaster role is distinct and beneficial, and not merely an adjunct function for the PM.
Another question is whether you’ve got a dedicated team. Are those remote individuals assigned part-time to your project and part-time to one or more other projects? If the latter, then they may not always be available for your meetings. That may simply be a reality you have to live with.
If they’re dedicated to the project but happen to be remotely located, you could consider using some kind of “instant messenger” product to keep them tied in with their team mates during working hours. It’s the next best thing to being there.
Oops. Please forgive the fat fingers.
Small point but as a functional manager all eleven people are on my team, but four are collocated in another building on an Agile project, and two are in seperate wings on another floor because they just got added to my team about a month ago and they haven’t been relocated to sit with everyone else yet.
I have a tendency to assume as a manager that if someone misses a meeting and it isn’t 100% critical they have a good reason. Either there deep in flow on technical problem or they’re following up with a customer. And occassionally people just forget things. Heck, I know I do. Of course if they start missing a lot of meetings you have to have a little talk about teamwork.
Anyway thanks for all the feedback. (By the way we still aren’t allowed to have IM clients without specific permission from our network group. One of those battles I haven’t revisited in a while.)