Lo-Tech Is (Still) King

Digital remote collaboration tools enable human remote work environments. 

They are indispensable for agile ways of working. They provide a virtual way of fulfilling the Agile Manifesto’s Principle #6:

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

I used to think “face-to-face” meant it had to be in-the-flesh, physically face-to-face, but the Covid pandemic changed all that.

If there ever was a case for change, the pandemic was it. Overnight, it threw our simple, paper-based human-centric agile ways of working into disarray.

The pandemic had no plan to follow. All other plans were thrown out the window. Shoes were dropping everywhere.

Perfect!

This was what Agile ways of working (WoWs) were built for. Time for the Agile Manifesto’s Value #4 to  step up and shine:

“Responding to change over following a plan”

With stay-at-home and social distancing edicts in full force, we adapted and leveraged our Agile WoWs to support remote virtual engagement and collaboration.  

How did it go?

Here’s a list of benefits and challenges that I experienced.

Benefits: 

• It provided a lifeline for business continuity and  Agile. Both survived.
• It guaranteed Work/Life balance. Hard to avoid your significant others when they’re within shouting distance.
• It enabled access to people, meet-ups, and conferences globally all from the comfort of our homes. 
• It accelerated work-from-home infrastructure upgrades 
• It amped up creativity and innovation beyond what was possible in the physical  world
  • Remote and hybrid versions of everything started springing up everywhere
  • Digital copy/paste cloning of workshops made setup and takedown a breeze
  • Pixelated interactions eased psychological safety
  • Convenience and visibility of asynchronous, anytime collaboration 

Challenges:

• Unprecedented bandwidth demands led to unresponsive systems 
• Technology became our single point of failure
  • Unreliable Wifi
  • Unreliable applications 
  • Guaranteed to break at the worst possible time 
  • Spending more time learning or fixing digital collaboration tools than actually collaborating 
• “Broken telephone” communications especially with the camera shy led to low fidelity interactions 
• “Zoom fatigue” took a physical toll
• Missing the water cooler forest  for the pixelated trees

No doubt the combination of hi-tech innovation and agile adaptation saved our bacon during the pandemic in our remote-only world. It continues to do so in our hybrid world.

Despite that, when it comes to  simple, reliable, frictionless collaboration, plain old lo-tech is (still) king

• Atoms over pixels
• 3D over 2D
• The feel of paper Post-It notes over virtual stickies and definitely over Azure DevOps or Jira boards

The hum of hi-tech may rule the day but once in a while, a little lo-tech and pressing of the flesh can go a long way to reminding us of our humanity.