Using AI for Agile in Multiple Geographies

Agile involves deep interaction between team members. When a team is distributed over multiple locations, extra care is needed to ensure things go well. Let’s look at activities to ensure your agile project delivers on its promise.

The initial planning or Envision stage of the project requires additional verification to avoid missing requirements. Different geographies involve different regulations and labor laws. A company’s clients in different geographies can vary along with their needs and expectations. Costs for raw materials or services such as transportation can also vary, so using benchmarks from “the home office” might not be accurate.

To ensure missing requirements or unexpected cost variations don’t hamper you, start by launching AI queries. Obtaining average costs for materials or services by region is straightforward, so you can determine if costs vary between geographies. Also, extra time should be allowed during the Envision stage to enable team members to share compiled requirements with a wider set of stakeholders. Make sure you cover influential stakeholders from each geography represented in the project, so you have complete and agreed-to requirements.

Multiple geographies can make staffing difficult during the sprint planning or Speculate stage. Agile’s power comes from the dedication and consistency with which team members work on the project. Given the different work pressures and priorities that may exist across geographies, extra care is required when choosing team members for the project. AI can assist if you have a consistent calendaring application and process throughout your organization.

During the execution or sprint iteration stage, ensuring that all geography’s thoughts, concerns, and ideas are heard and reviewed can be a challenge. I worked on an international project where stand-up meetings meant some team members were working late, and some woke up early to attend. That’s challenging when team members are working on the same feature. I found that having team members from one geography develop the feature, and members from the distant geography test the feature worked best. That way, the entire team was involved, but the number of handoffs between team members was minimized. Switching roles across features, where the sub-team that develops one feature tests another one, spreads the knowledge contribution equitably.

Across multiple geographies, retrospectives become vitally important and need to be run diligently. During initial planning, it is vital to check with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure they are on board with what’s happening and in agreement with the backlog priorities to maintain engagement in the project.

While challenging, running agile across multiple geographies can still involve deep interactions. Take extra care throughout the entire project lifecycle, and you can still get the exceptional results agile is known to produce.

This article is based on my and Christina Charenkova’s LinkedIn Learning course entitled AI-Powered Agile: Strategies for Modern Project Managers