Simone, a French project manager, emailed me. “Johanna, we are having trouble getting the people together. These people worked together before on the previous release. But on this release, they are not working together. I've done these things,” and she listed a number of smart ideas.
I replied by email, “Where's the project charter with the vision?”
“Oh,” she said. “I didn't write one this time, because it's another release of the same product.”
Sometimes you can get away without writing another charter if the people know each other well and it is another release. But in a geographically distributed project? Almost never. And that's because the vision is the glue that holds the people together and provides the reason for the people to stick together.
And, chartering your distributed projects is not a trivial task, because the people are not in one place. What can you do?
Consider These Ideas for Collaborative Work
- Ask, beg, plead, whine, cajole, do what you need to do to get everyone in one place for the start of the project. At that time, write the project charter together. This is the cheapest time to get everyone together and is much cheaper than fixing defects later in the project.
- If you can't get everyone together in the same place, see if you can get everyone to work together at the same time. If you have a relatively small project team, this may be do-able. If you are spread out across many time zones, and you are the project manager, offer to be the one who makes the biggest sacrifice in terms of staying up late or waking up early to charter. Your team will appreciate you for that sacrifice, and you will shown the example of what the team members need to do for the project.
- If you have too many team members or you really can't get everyone together for the chartering effort, draft a strawman vision and discuss it electronically. This is the weakest of the three options, and it's better than plunking down a charter and saying, “take it or leave it,” or having no charter at all.
Working effectively in a geographically distributed team is a challenge. And, it starts from the very beginning of the project, even if the team has worked together before.
Simone chartered the project with her team, and once the team understood their project vison, they started working together as a team. They all understood where they were headed, and they were headed there together.
Related 2012 Newsletters
I wrote these newsletters in preparation for a workshop Shane Hastie and I delivered in 2012. That was a tremendous success and led to my work with Mark Kilby on From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver.
The newsletter series:
- Start Your Geographically Distributed Projects Right With a Project Charter
- Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams (Time Zone Bubble Chart)
- Building Trust in Any Team
- Using Checkins to Create Transparency
- Micromanagement is Not Transparency!
Useful Links
- The Pragmatic Manager newsletter archive
- My books
- Managing Product Development blog
- Create an Adaptable Life blog
Johanna
Vol 9, #4, ISSN: 2164-1196
© 2012 Johanna Rothman