In April 2018, due to a change in company strategy and priorities, it became necessary to change the number and make-up of our teams. As Agile Coach, I suggested the possibility of allowing the teams to choose for themselves, having seen presentations and articles by Sandy Mamoli and David Mole.

In the case studies found online, there is a general assumption that all team members make themselves physically available to take part in the exercises. Having a development team containing team members based in Cape Town as well as Taiwan, this would prove to be difficult for us.

This talk will be about how we adapted the process set out in Sandy and David’s book, as well as the various case studies done by others, to accommodate our team members who were not able to join the exercise in person. I will share the outcome of the exercise, the feedback received during and after the exercise, and finally, some important lessons we learned along the way.

By sharing our experience I hope to encourage more companies to give their teams the freedom of self-selection even when considering remote employees.