How to keep agile when agile is cross-company and cross-discipline

“Better done than perfect” cut the ribbon into a decade. When things get done more quickly, they can be tested and adjusted according to real time feedback. You don’t fail big, you learn and optimize.  

This was the motivation to Agile. But now it’s about more than testing digital products. It’s a way of work. Incompany, and why not, when you’re working with external teams and other stakeholders.  

Is it possible to be agile and pay attention to so many variables at the same time? Our interpreters, translators and PM’s do it all the time. Here are some thoughts on how it can be done.

Agile teams

An agile team is a cross-functional group of people that are organized to work collaboratively in order to deliver a product increment. Agile teams are more adaptable than traditional project groups, work in stages, and do a limited amount of concrete tasks at a time.  

It’s not that people are more organized now. But we’ve come to notice that when you take it all in in little bites, you don’t choke, and it doesn’t really take longer. So guided by the principles of self-organization and cross-functional work, agile teams took over the industry. 

Face-to-face communication is usually encouraged. But that’s not the world we live in. Does this mean that inevitably something is lost? No. You can still be as effective. Distributed teams happen all the time, we just need to adapt our routine.

How to share a space when there is no common space

The concept of agility is independent from physical workspaces. The core matter is to foster cohesion between decentralized teams by providing the appropriate resources, tools and communication. 

Digital resources and applications can fill the gap the office used to have. You can ‘huddle’ on Slack, meet via Zoom, share folders in Notion and so on. As long as everything is organized, open and available, there shouldn’t be a problem. And balance here is important: too many tools can make a mess, and lack of them can lead to miscommunication and make the team prone to make more mistakes. 

Of course, tools are only tools. And they are used by people. So leadership, teamwork and consistent team communication is essential.

How do I know it’s going well?

There’s a difference between getting the job done quickly and getting it done right. Agile remote teams can do both.  

Effective collaboration is achieved when: 

• There is a clear objective.  
• There is a clear division of roles and responsibilities. 

• There’s communication between teams, no work in silos, but teams are independent. 
• The tasks to be done are clear and possess due dates 
• Short, efficient meets to: plan, check and give feedback on the process. 

What tools and techniques facilitate collaboration across companies?

Whether you’re working with freelancers, people inhouse from other companies, collaborating with fellow colleagues or simply across teams, here are some helpful habits for agile work: 

Cross-Team Daily Stand-ups: only one representative from each team is needed to share high-level updates on their respective team’s work.  

Multiple Product Owners Check-in: for teams with multiple product lines, this approach enables product owners to agree on the highest priority tasks for the organization. 

Cross-Team Release Planning: a monthly review and planning session to define high-level requirements, map cross-team dependencies and help teams understand how all separate team efforts contribute and integrate into the final solution. 

Cross-Team Retrospectives: a moment to examine the process and seek improvements.

Agile qualities

Agile teams don’t all look alike. Roles may vary according to the industry, department, company size. An ideal agile team size is small—around three to seven people. Though you can create multiple smaller agile teams. The important thing is that they have certain qualities. Such as being T-shaped (everyone has basic knowledge about everything, but is deeply specialized on one topic or skill). Or being curious (always asking what would happen if…), team-oriented and committed to excellence. 

At Stillman, we love working with new teams. We always have a language expert that is the perfect fit for each client. Many times, we even find the perfect product manager to make sure everything goes smoothly. If you feel positive about agile working, and are looking for a translation, interpretation, multilingual campaign dubbing and subtitling, or any other language-related job to be done, contact us!

If you would like to learn more about this topic go to The whole world needs accessibility.