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? […]
I’m offering public project portfolio management workshops in Sao Paulo, Brazil on May 8-9, partnering with Adaptworks. I will be speaking in English. This is a full 2-day workshop. On May 30, I will be in Stockholm, offering a special one-day version of the workshop, partnering with Citerus. I will also be speaking in English
As a consultant, I want the flexibility to adapt my work to take advantage of opportunities that might arise in a given week–to write an article or blog post, or to propose a project to a new client. And, while I try to plan a week’s worth work, I need the flexibility to adapt my
I’m tech-editing an article for the Agile Journal. I’m having a discussion with the author about the words “productivity” and “throughput.” I believe that what we measure in agile teams is throughput, the number of features through the team over time. I don’t think we measure productivity, the number of features per person or per
Register now, before the end of the day, March 15, for the best single-person and team rates for Shane Hastie’s and my Working Effectively In Geographically Distributed Agile Project Teams. If you don’t subscribe to my email newsletter, the Pragmatic Manager, you have missed a number of great issues where I discussed how to solve
Building or Maintaining Agility in Geographically Distributed Teams By now, with all of my tips, you have a good idea about how to start a project with your geographically distributed team. You have a project charter. You have a timezone bubble chart. That helps everyone see where people are in the world. Those two things help
Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams Your managers have asked you to start a project with people all over the world. What’s the first thing you might do? Draw a bubble chart of time zone dispersion to visualize your time zones to see who is where and offset by how much. I bet that
I just posted Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams. I have a funny story to tell about it. I’m in Belgium, getting ready for Belgium Testing Days. This weekend, the US changes to Daylight Savings Time. But Europe doesn’t. So, when do I talk to my husband? My husband and I are suffering by
Erran Carmel and Alberto Espinosa have written a gem of a book for anyone trying to work in a geographically distributed team: I’m Working While They’re Sleeping: Time Zone Separation Challenges and Solutions. They first start with an introduction to time zones, and explain why I am so confused when I travel. Everyone moves to
One of the problems in a geographically distributed team is the dreaded email chain. Someone has a problem and sends an email. Probably late in the day, when he or she is frustrated after pounding on the problem all day, getting nowhere–except more frustrated. Sally sends the email to the project team. I take offense