Ten-Minute Conversations

This is a follow-up to my previous post about getting the offshore and local teams to work together. Armed with the results of my brainstorming session with the team, I met with a representative of the offshore group. I was prepared to bargain, to set limits, to look for a way to help them move forward without jeopardizing my team's sprint backlog. 

What I heard, in the course of ten minutes, was that the offshore group only has 2-3 stories every sprint that might benefit from our attention, and that while they do occasionally get stuck, mostly they want up-front guidance and code reviews -- things that can easily be scheduled and shouldn't, if all goes well, take more than a few hours of team from one or two people in a given sprint. 

That's what the big deal was? I thought as I jotted notes. 

More often than not, I have found that problems are not complicated to resolve if people just take ten minutes to discuss the situation.  

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