Imagine this scenario: you want to transition to agile, and you have a geographically dispersed team with people all over the world. You have two developers in the UK and two in Boston, two testers in Portland, Oregon, a product manager in Brazil, and you, the project manager are in Sweden. And, you are pretty
My column, Roll Your Own, about how to organize for teamwork for a geographically distributed agile project team is up. Please leave comments there. Enjoy! Oh, and I am just about to send the logistics email for our workshop next week on geographically distributed agile teams next week in Pleasanton, CA. I am sure we
I’ve had several conversations in email and with clients recently that have all been about this question: “What do we do about our infrastructure?” Either the project or the program has to create/update/upgraded their architecture or automated test infrastructure, pay down technical debt, or somehow do something that’s not part of a story. And, that’s
Tom Cagley interviewed me a few weeks ago on his Software Process and Measurement Cast. It’s posted now, as # 180. When Tom interviews me, he makes me think. This is good. I would love to hear your comments about this one. We started with transparency and wove our way around to several topics. I
Distributed? Yes. Alone? No. As I’ve sent these Pragmatic Managers about geographically distributed teams and received these responses from many of you, I keep hearing one theme: “I thought I was the only one dealing with this issue.” You are not alone. Many of you have sent emails and asked questions. I answered those privately,
A few weeks ago, Peter Armstrong interviewed me for Leanpub, to ask me why I enjoyed writing on Leanpub. That podcast is up now on the Leanpub Frontmatter Podcast page. What’s very funny is that the interview is a few weeks old. I had no idea he was going to post it right after I
Long ago, when I was single, one of my managers refused to give me new development work because I was dating a guy who lived out of the state. “You’ll go marry him and then where will I be?” he asked. “I’ll be down a developer.” “If you don’t give me good work to do,
In my role as technical editor for the Agile Journal and as a reviewer for my trusted colleagues, I have the opportunity to read drafts of articles and some books. I see some troublesome behavior. I know it because I exhibit it. In all cases, the author receives feedback the author doesn’t like, but doesn’t
I’m offering a public workshop about Transitioning to Agile in Stockholm, May 28-29, 2012, in English. Developers’ lives change when you transition to agile. Product owners’ lives change. Managers lives’ change. The organization’s culture changes. And, when a project and an organization transitions to agile, the testers and test managers lives’ change, too. Through our
Developing and Nurturing Respect in Geographically Distributed Teams Joseph, a tester, was reading an email from a developer in Germany. He exploded out of his chair, and ran to the product owner. “Those people have no respect for us! How can they ask us to do this?? Don’t they realize what they are asking for?