How can we implement the Scrum framework to create GREAT cross-cultural distributed teams?

Line Mark Rugholt from Culturewise was selected as speaker for the conference AgileIndia 2012 on 17th to 19th February 2012. At this conference, Line conducted a workshop on Scrum, an Agile framework, and on how to implement the Scrum framework to create succesful cross-cultural distributed team. If do not know Scrum, you can read a short introduction to Scrum by Scrum Master and Agile Evangelist, Jonas Auken, on Culturewise's blog.

The workshop conducted by Line is a part of a research program that Culturewise runs with the aim of investigating how we can improve our cross-cultural distributed teams by the help of Scrum. Culturewise asks three questions:

1: What is the main impediments that cross-cultural distributed team experience?

2: How can Scrum help cross-cultural distributed teams?

3: Do we have to adjust Scrum in order to make it Scrum fit perfect for a cross-cultural distributed team? How?

The following article is a status on this research and on the outcome of this workshop. First let us take a look at three main impediments in cross-cultural distributed teams.

Hierarchy as an impediment

In cross-cultural distributed teams with one part of a team located in Nordic countries/Northern Europe, team members often experience that there is a difference in the expectations to hierarchy and roles in a team. In India, there is a tendency to ascribe power to the Scrum Master, for example in a Scrum Master Certification one participant asked. "Will the Scrum Master track team members?" and "The Scrum Master must have some kind of authorities?". If you know Scrum, you are aware that this kind of thinking is an impediment to the Self Organised Team. The whole team takes part in the tracking the team and the Scrum Master is a facilitator or "a servant leader" who works for the team, not as leader of the team. 

In the workshop, and in Culturewise's reserach interviews and observations, has been mentioned another issue related to hierarhcy that is a challenge for both of the locations in a distributed team. Because of the way that Indian and Nordic companies are structured (the Nordic often being smaller and with less focus on the importance of titles and promotions) in many cases team members on the Nordic side have lots of experience, while their Indian colleagues are less experienced. This, of course, is a challenge for the Nordic teams because they have to work with Indian team members who are less experienced and do have the insight that they themselves have.

On the other hand, it is a challenge for the Indian team members as well, because it puts extra pressure on their heads. Added to that is the fact that in India the Nordic teams are often looked upon as "the clients". So, we have a situation where the Indian side of a team is under extra pressure because expectations from the Nordic side are very high, and there is an extra pressure on Indian team members to deliver to the customer. This is NOT a good starting point for a self-organising team.

Communication differences as an impediment

In social scientist research India is rated as being a country with an indirect communication style. This means that communication style is not direct and that the co-communicator has to be able to read between the lines. Also, if the truth might hurt someone, it could be tempered. Almost at the other end of the spectrum direct-indirect communication style, we find the Nordic countries. Direct communication style means that you say what you and you mean what you say. Ideally, there is no reading between the lines, and the whole truth - and all facts - should be revealed.

We have seen several examples of this difference in communication style in the workshop and in Culturewise's previous research. Many examples showed that Nordic team members can seem very direct - almost rude - for Indian members of the same team. This can affect Indian team members to feel insecure and to be more hesitant to speak up. Also, we sometimes see a lack in feedback and appreciation from the Nordic side which only adds to the same problem.

As for the Indian team members, they are often experienced as not being direct by their Nordic team members, and the Nordic team members might even get the thought: "Maybe the Indians want to hide something?" because the Nordics expect everything to be revealed.

Also, a common impediment mentioned from Nordic as well as Indian team members is differenct accents of English experienced in the teams. This is a challenge, because English is in fact THE most natural medium of communication in Nordic-Indian teams. To add to that, it regularly happens that Nordic team members are not very skilled in English and Indian team members have a very elaborate English that is much more advanced that Nordic team members.

It is clear that we have quite some impediments to deal with, if we look at the communcation and hierarchy impediments. However, there is one more major impediment for cross-cultural distributed team. That is distance.

Distance as an impediment

One of the key impediments that arise from the distance between a distributed team's location is lack of trust. Because team members do not meet each other on a daily basis and, therefore, it is more difficult to build up relations and get know each other, there is a lack of trust. We see in practice that there could be hesitance to delegate work to the offshore team, the blame factor is heavily increased, and people on 'the other side' is more easily forgot that people on your own side'.

Distance also leaves us with a serious communication barrier to bridge. We are not sitting next to each other, we cannot point and feel the same things. We cannot go and ask a person in the office or go take a quick look at the warehouse, suppose we are a team developing software for warehouse management.

How can Scrum help Cross-Cultural Distributed teams?

Luckily, Scrum presents for us a framework that can help us A LOT in creating great cross-cultural distributed teams. Let us look at some elements of Scrum that has been rated as helpful for cross-cultural and distributed teams in Culturewise's workshop and interviews.

Daily Scrum Meetings gives us an easily understandable tool to bridge to help us structure the daily communication of a team and thus to bridge the communication gap created by different communication styles and distance.

Scrum is famous for Creating Transparency, which can be difficult to obtain in distributed teams. For example Scrum set clear goals for each sprint. Transparency is also seen through tools like burndown charts by which you can follow the performance of a team. Due to this transparency, impediments are surfaced much sooner that in many other project frameworks, where impediments can hide for long and maybe not show up until the end of a project.

Retrospectives give distributed teams an opportunity to evaluate and to inspect and adapt our processes, which is needed just as much (if not more) in cross-cultural distributed teams.

The structure of the Self Organised Team helps team members to supports each other and break down the silos found in many other project frameworks and in many companies. The self-organised team creates high collaboration between different groups of a team, e.g. designers, business analysts, developers, testers, QA and architects.

How can We help Scrum?

Now let us take a look at where Scrum might not meet the demands for creating great cross-cultural and distributed teams. And let us find out how we can tweak Scrum and implement it in a way that fit the cross-cultural distributed environment best.

One crucial point that was mentioned in the workshop and in Culturewise's research is how important it is to create an environment in which it is possible to Build Trust and to get to know the other team members personally. Also, the opportunity for face-to-face communication is valued highly, since for many distributed teams this is not a part of the daily interaction - and they miss it. Some excellent suggestions that came up in Culturewise's interviews and workshop are to engage in more visits in between the ditributed locations. For example, the team could gather for kick-offs and for certain ceremonies. Also, exchange of team members is an important key in building up trust between the different locations of a team. When the whole team or members of a team meet, team building activities should be in loop as well as many other things. An important point is that if we work with the same team members in a team over a long duration, trust will last, once build up, and this is an important factor in breaking cultural barriers.

Retrospectives are very helpful and they are some of the most important elements in Scrum because they fulfill the value of 'inspect and adapt'. However, in a cross-cultural team it can be beneficial to enlarge the retrospectives to also be A Third Culture Retrospective in which your team work on defining a Third Culture based on the cultures involved in the team. Since we know that expectations to hierarhcy roles and communication style can be quite different in Nordic and Indian teams, we would have to define a third way that is the way by which the team as a whole work at its best. For example, your team can try to figure out whether direct or indirect - or a completely new - communication style work best in your team. Culturewise is currently working on creating a process for a Third Culture Retrospective.

Since the nature of distributed teams is less visible than co-located teams, we need to focus on gaining More Visibility and Connectivity in a cross-cultural distributed Scrum team. In Culturewise's research there is a united front on the key importance of video conferencing and other visual technologies. Video conferencing could also be supplemented with social media or forum for the team, for example using Facebook.

In order to create A Great Team Also, it has been suggested to work with the roles of a team. First of all it is important, in the beginning of a project, to be specific about what is expected of the different roles in a team and identiy roles and responsibilities. Another idea was to totate the Scrum Master Role between all team members. In connection with that we also discussed that it is important not to assument that a team is multiskilled and selforganised from start-up. Being self organised and multiskilled is a learning process, this also argues for having team work togehter for longer durations.

Some training Initial training initially might be needed when starting up a cross-cultural distributed team. Suggestions in the interviews and workshop were, amongst others, to create awareness about the different cultures participating in the team and offer training to improve communication skills.

Culturewise's research also calls for Cross-Cultural Distributed Scrum Teams to Be Flexible and adhere to the Inspect-and-Adapt value of Scrum. For example, Daily Standups Meetings could be held in a new and different way because sometimes it is not beneficial because of the time difference to meet at the samen time. In stead, we could use for example virtual boards to be updated by the team members once a day. Also particpant call for draing on and supplementing Scrum with other agile methods, such as pair programming (from XP).

Scrum is a miracle tool - when implemented with our help

Let us wrap this article up by answering the title question: Is Scrum A Miracle Tool for Cross-Cultural Distributed Team? The answer is yes and no. In many ways, Scrum offers us an easily understandable framework that helps in some ways when bridging three major impediments, hierarchy and the communcation and distance. However, Scrum is not from the beginning designed to function in a distributed team. As a result of this, in our implementation of Scrum, we have to focus on bridging the gaps of the distributed cross-cultural team. If we do that, we have the best platform for our GREAT CROSS-CULTURAL DISTRIBUTED SCRUM TEAM. 

Scrum is a framework for how to organize a team of workers - most often software developers - how to feed them tasks and how they should communicate between themselves and the rest of the world.

At the heart of Scrum is The Empowered Team - and herein lies also the biggest difference as compared with other project management frameworks. The Scrum team is self-organizing and has whole-team responsibility. Self-organizing means that the Scrum team will figure out itself how to solve the given tasks. No project manager is needed to plan out every detail of each developers tasks. The whole-team responsibility means that the whole team delivers the result - no single person has this responsibility. Either the whole succeeds or the whole team fails.

Scrum defines a number of artifacts and meetings to ensure and control the quality of communication flow into or out from the team and also between team members. 

All work must be performed in a series of time boxes called Sprints. A sprint is a period of time - typically 1-4 weeks. The period of time should be the same for each sprint throughout a project. This makes planning easier and more controllable. Each sprint must have a set of defined goals and tasks associated with these goals. The success or failure of each sprint is based on whether these goals have been achieved.

At the beginning of each sprint is a Planning Meeting. The team chooses a number of tasks from The Product Backlog (see below) that they can commit themselves to completing. In the end of each sprint is a Review Meeting and a Retrospective Meeting. The reviews meeting is where the team shows the external stake holders what they have achieved, what was completed and what was not. The retrospective is a team meeting where the team members can discuss what went well and what went not so well in the process and progress of the sprint. The goal is to get better at solving tasks - either by removing external and internal impediments or by extending the skill set on their team.

The Product Backlog is a list of all identified tasks in a given project or a products lifecycle. The tasks should be roughly estimated and prioritized. Highly prioritized tasks must be described in greater detail and must be broken down into tasks that can be completed in one sprint. This is important because the team will choose tasks from the top of the prioritized list in each sprint planning meeting. This collection of tasks are called The Sprint Backlog. This backlog should always contain the most important tasks in the project.

The Product Backlog is owned by The Product Owner. This role is a specific for Scrum and has the responsibility of connecting the team with the stake holders of the project. He collects new tasks or change tasks from the stake holders, puts them in the Product Backlog and grooms the backlog together with the team, making sure that the tasks are sufficiently described and estimated.

The Burn Down Chart is used to measure progress - within a sprint as well as in the project as a whole. The Burn Down will show the time on one axis and effort (measured in some kind of points) on the other axis. The chart tracks how much effort is remaining and by comparing the ideal, linear graph with the actual graph, anyone can tell whether the team is doing better than estimated or worse.

Finally, The Scrum Master is the guy on the team who keeps up the good spirit and makes sure everyone is following the processes of Scrum. It need not be a full time role and it can even be a role that is rotated between team members throughout a project. But it is important that there is someone with a deep insight of Scrum on the team who make sure that the formalities are kept even when the going gets rough - otherwise it can be very hard to get the benefits of Scrum.

Here follow some links to a more in-depth description of Scrum:

Scrum Primer

Distributed Scrum Primer

And for those who would rather read a full-length book, the following can be recommended:

Succeeding with Agile

Agile Software Development with Scrum

On this page you will find links to documents from Culturewise's workshop on the conference AgileIndia 2012 in February 2012.

Culturewise's slides

Impediments for Cross-Cultural Distributed Teams

How can Scrum help distributed cross-cultural teams?

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Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

Group 5

Group 6

Group 7

How can we help Scrum?

Group 1

Group 2

Group 3

Group 4

What does the nodding of the head actually mean? That is one of the questions Danes and Europeans/Americans often ask Culturewise because it is different from anything we make use of. Indians, however, are often not aware of how their head movements can be (mis)understood by their Western colleagues. 

Therefore Culturewise is happy to have received an account of Berit Enggrob’s experiences with these head movements. Berit has both lived in Bangladesh and India. You can read more about Berit Enggrob’s account of both Danish and Indian head movements here.

Berit Enggrob’s experience with the Indian head movement:

In the beginning it constantly experienced that I did not get clear confirmations. It happened when I went shopping, drove in richshaws or went to work: I simply experienced that the Indian’s body language spoke against the “yes” they uttered. That is how it was until I suddenly discovered the significant difference in the way Indians and Danes use head movements in a dialog. And then I really started to feel ashamed about my rude communication because I many times HAD received confirmation. I just wasn’t aware of it. To top it all off I had often stubbornly refused it by trying to force a Danish confirming nod. And the more i tried to force it – the more intensely I perceived the “maybe”.

In Denmark we have three head movements which are important in a dialog:

1.  A negative SHAKE OF THE HEAD where the head moves from side to side around the axis of the neck. In a Danish context it means “no”. The more forceful a movement the clearer a “NO”.

2.  A conforming NOD with the head where the chin moves towards and away from the chest. In a Danish context this signal means both”I understand” and “YES – we have a deal”.

3.  A TILT where the head tilts one or more times from shoulder to shoulder. This signal is individual and different from person to person, but the sideways tilting of the head is not perceived as a confirmation by Danes, rather the opposite.

In India it is common to use three very similar head movements but particularly one of them (3) has a very different meaning.

1.  A negative SHAKING OF THE HEAD where the head is moved from side to side around the axis of the head, which can be interpreted as a Danish no, but with Indians you rarely see a powerful movement, since it can be seen as inappropriate to signal a “no” that clearly.

2.  Some Indians use a confirming nod with the head like Europeans. However this often only expresses a non-binding confirmation along the lines of “I understand what you are saying” unless the person in particular has a thorough knowledge of European culture.

3.  A tilt with the head towards the right shoulder on the other hand corresponds to the Danish NOD in meaning “we have a deal”. The higher an Indian is in the hierarchy the more discreet the move will be. However this very important Indian tilt can be misinterpreted as a loud and clear Danish “maybe”. En series of fast tilts with the head from side to side during a conversation with an Indian can be perceived as the confirming Danish nod meaning “I understand”. However these many small tilts look more like a Danish “I’m not sure I understand you/I agree with you”.

Some Indians only use (1) and (3) and can only rarely be pressured to confirm something with the Danish nod (2). Others have worked in or with western cultures and use the nod in its European meaning. But almost all Indians make use of (3) which is the clearest sign of confirmation. The untrained Dane can during a dialog with Indians come across as most rude when he/she intuitively conceive the head-tilt as a sign of uncertainty or disagreement and thusly push for a “clear” nod as a signal.

Be attentive - and get more confirmations

As a Dane one will be wise to be attentive of the confirming Indian tilt with the head and if possible to use it one self. This will lead to discovering that Indians confirm more that first anticipated.

So by being attentive in regards to the head movements one often discovers more confirmations – or lack thereof – during a conversation between Indians than the untrained Danish eye will.

How come that every time some one asks a questions about India, it can only be answered with: "Well, it depends on how you look at it..." or "Do you speak about Urban India or Rural India" or "It is difficult to generalise about ..."?

It is because India is such a diverse and huge country. Many historians and scholars have written about the improbability that India stays together as a country. They say that India is too diverse, India is too large and India has too many conflicts.

Contrasts

 However, India has managed to stay together as one country since its independence in 1947. Many different factors that play a role here - political, historical and cultural. If we look at India today there are a couple of factors that play a role in defining idea as India as ONE country. One of these factors is cricket, the national sport of India, that is extremely popular in the whole country. Another is the fact that India is a country on the rise economically, defined as "Shining India" by the Hindu Nationalist Party BJP in 2003. 

If we look for "Shining India", we will find it. We will see the economic success in the huge metropols with lots of high rise buildings, flyovers and metro lines... However, (as earlier stated) we cannot generalise about India. And if we take one more look at India, we will also see a part of the country that is not shining so much. Outside the large metropols in the rural areas, we see people who live in a very traditional (oldfashioned?) manner with no modern equipment in small villages.

We do not even have to look at the urban areas to find these huge contrasts. Even inside the metropols, we find contrasts. For example street kids with their dirty hair and clothes begging to get money and living under the flyvovers constructed so that large airconditioned cars with drivers can take global Indians from their large air conditioned houses to glass covered 10th floor office rooms, where they do business with the rest of the world.

Three sentences of advice

When we do business, live or work in India, how can we understand a country like this? Here are three sentences from Culturewise that can help you in the process of grasping India

- India is in principle too large and too diverse to be one country

- Despite of that, India is ONE country

- Therefore, remember that you CANNOT generalise

Commonwealth Games Theme Song released Saturday 28th August 2010. The song is written and performed by world famous Indian music artist A.R. Rahman.

Hear the Theme Song and see video here

Use the links below to find Culturewise on Facebook and Twitter:

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On October 11^th. 2010 Line Mark Rugholt moved to India along with her family. Culturewise is moving as well.

Culturewise will continue its work from India and you will be able to meet Line in Denmark a few times a year. Contact Culturewise to hear more about the next trip to Denmark.    

How can we define karma and what does it mean to us as humans? The movie below has captured some comments and illustrations regarding the definition of karma. You can see the movie at the end of this section.

Karma is, as the movie puts it, a way of describing that a human's actions influence the next rebirth. If you "do good karma" you will achieve a better rebirth and thusly come closer to mukti/moksha/nirvana, which is release from rebirths and becoming one with the divine. Culturewise took special notice in the sentence "Everyone has done some karma and according to his karma he gets".

The most well known passage in Indian litterature where karma is described is in Bhagadvadgita, which is the heroic tale of Mahabharata. In Bhagadvadgita Arjuna is ready to go to battle against his family when he feels pangs of concience. His carriage driver counsels him regarding karma and tells him that it is his karma to go to war because he is ksatriya (warrior caste). Thusly he must fight even though he does not like it.

Linguistic explanation: Karma actually means "act" and comes from the verb "KRI" in Sanskrit. "KRI" is of Indo-European origin and comes from the same origin as our "to do".

This is Karma from Erling Hoveid on Vimeo.

 Hierarchy in society

The hierarchy in Indian society is omnipresent and very visible. It can be seen in peoples jobs, the way they dress, their means of transportation (or lack thereof), their size and much more. The hierarchy is completely accepted and a natural part of the lives of Indians. As a matter of fact they have a had time picturing everyone being "equals".

Hierarchy in Indian business culture

The hierarchy has a big influence on what goes on in a company. In tis context the hierarchy is also very common. I the Indian business culture the hierarchy can -strictly formally - be seen through seniority, job titles, and roles in the company. Furthermore there is a line of informal factors, for instance social skills can be a part creating roles and hierarchy in a group of employees, just like it does i Denmark. Gender can also be a factor, but not nearly as great as age. In India the senior age group is greatly respected.

How does it show?

Hierarchy is very influential when it comes to decisions being made in a company. Even our Danish flat corporate culture and hierarchy is a part of what happens in a company. The hierarchy in an Indian company can influence how people interact and communicate, and how assignments are distributed and problems dealt with.

For a recently qualified Indian employee it is common - due ti the hierarchy - to ask the employer "what can I do next?", "can I go to lunch now?", "has the assignment been executed properly?" and other questions like this. In India it is implied that the employer or manager knows best and thusly has the authority to make decisions. In Denmark - and parts of the western world - we are used to the individual employee making decisions on his or her own.

Here you find a list of links with information about India. The list is constantly updated and you are very welcome contribute by contacting Culturewise