Summary

The article emphasizes the importance of face-to-face interaction for building effective agile teams, despite the prevalence of digital communication.

Abstract

The article, part of a series analyzing J. Richard Hackman's work on teamwork misperceptions, advocates for the fourth pattern in agile leadership: enabling face-to-face interaction. It argues that despite technological advancements, face-to-face communication remains crucial for team building, fostering stronger relationships, enhancing the quality of collaboration, and accelerating team learning. The Agile Manifesto supports this view, emphasizing the efficiency of face-to-face conversations. Alistair Cockburn's research further underscores the superiority of in-person interactions, particularly for addressing misunderstandings and achieving a shared understanding. The article also addresses practical aspects of co-location, suggesting that team members should be close enough to facilitate spontaneous face-to-face interactions, ideally within a bus length. For remote teams, it recommends periodic in-person meetings to strengthen relationships and communication.

Opinions

Face-to-face communication is irreplaceable for optimal team interaction, even in the digital age.
Non-verbal cues in face-to-face interactions are often more impactful than the spoken words.
Co-location is preferred for agile teams, with proximity within a bus length suggested for maintaining effective communication.
Remote teams should strive to be fully co-located in a single remote location to enhance team dynamics.
Distributed teams should be brought together at key points to foster better collaboration and understanding.
Face-to-face interaction is the highest bandwidth form of communication, aiding in relationship building and team learning.
The Agile Manifesto and Alist

Agile Leader Pattern 4 for Building Awesome Teams: Enable Face-to-Face Interaction

Face-to-face interaction never goes out of style.

This post continues the analysis of J. Richard Hackman’s article, The Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork¹. Building on the first three patterns — Encourage Different Perspectives, Stabilize Teams, and Small is Big — this fourth post in the series focuses on face-to-face interaction. Face-to-face communication is key for enabling optimal team communication and collaboration.

Pattern 4 — Encourage Face-to-Face Interaction

Misperception: Face-to-face communication is no longer necessary in the age of digital communication.

Reality: Face-to-face communication is no longer necessary in the age of digital communication.

The common belief is that today’s technological advancements make remote work just as effective as face-to-face interaction. However, Hackman’s study finds that when team members are face-to-face, they will:

Build stronger relationships
Experience higher quality communication and collaboration
Accelerate team learning

Additionally, non-verbal communication is often more important than what you say. When teams are remote, picking up on non-verbal cues is extremely difficult even with the best technology available today.

Putting It Into Agile Practice

The Agile Manifesto highlights this pattern clearly in the following principle:

The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation.

In his book Agile Software Development², Alistair Cockburn models different modes of communication and their effectiveness. The communication quality of different communication modes is depicted in Figure A.

Figure A — Communication Quality for Different Communication Modes

Face-to-face interaction is more effective than any other means of communication. This is largely due to non-verbal communication cues. Also, when face-to-face at a whiteboard, team members rapidly address interpretation gaps and converge to a shared understanding.

Co-location and Remote Teams

Co-location of team members and teams in a multi-team product will enable the right environment conducive to face-to-face interaction. If you have a choice, don’t have geographically remote team members or remote teams.

Interestingly, geographic distance is not the only way to hinder the effectiveness of team communication. Alistair Cockburn found that if the team’s members sit apart further than a bus length, communication drops off rapidly³. Often, team members will not get up to have a face-to-face interaction if farther apart than a bus. Therefore, being on the same floor or the same building does not count as co-location. If team members are further apart than a bus, they are not co-located.

If you have no choice but to have a Scrum team’s members separated geographically, there is something you can do. Bring team members together at the beginning and several key points throughout the life of the team. As a result, your teams will build better relationships and will be more effective when working remotely.

When you have a remote team, make it whole. Furthermore, all team members should be co-located in the remote location. For a Scrum team, this means the Scrum Master, Product Owner, and Development Team members should be co-located.

Additionally, distributed teams can also pose communication barriers. Distributed teams occur when a product has more than one team, but the teams are not co-located. In this scenario, bring the distributed teams together at their inception and as many key points as possible throughout the life of the teams.

Conclusion

The fourth pattern — Encourage Face-to-Face Interaction — shows that even with today’s technological advances, face-to-face interaction retains its top spot as the highest bandwidth form of communication and collaboration. A co-located team will also find it easier to build relationships and learn from each other.

Our posts to date emphasize the importance of a team having diverse perspectives, stability, a small size, and face-to-face interactions.

References

The Six Common Misperceptions About Teamwork, Robert J. Hackman, June 7, 2011
Agile Software Development, Alistair Cockburn, 2001
Agile Software Development as a Co-operative Game, 2nd Edition, Alistair Cockburn, 2006

Originally published on Coach Lankford.

You can connect with Todd on LinkedIn.