Help Agile Scale by Fine-Tuning Collaboration

by Jim Highsmith

As companies become comfortable using agile methods, larger and larger projects are being undertaken. While the myth, "agile is only good for small projects," is being proved wrong every day, there are still a number of issues that need to be addressed in order to scale agile -- in two dimensions, up and out. The "up" dimension means scaling agile to larger projects, and the "out" dimension pertains to distributing agile projects across multiple sites. Many of the practices required for up and out are the same; for example, studies show that collaboration begins to break down at distances exceeding 50 feet. If that's true, then collaboration and communications practices (beyond those for collocated teams) will be needed whether a big team is situated on three floors of a building or a smaller team is geographically dispersed. With this example in mind, this first scaling Advisor will take up the issue of collaboration.