Posted on

Creating Time for Collaboration with Distributed Teams and Agile Approaches

Summary: Many of us have horrible experiences with distributed teams where we can find no possibility of collaboration, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Even if a team is distributed, those team members need collaborative opportunities and space. What’s important is the team’s time for collaboration, not time zones. Here are some ways …

Continue reading “Creating Time for Collaboration with Distributed Teams and Agile Approaches”

Posted on

Distributed Agile Approaches Optimize for the Team over Individuals

Summary: Consider how your team currently organizes: for resource efficiency, optimizing for the individual; or for flow efficiency, optimizing for the team? Successful agile teams—distributed or not—should collaborate to optimize the flow of work through the team. This approach lets you understand your capacity, learn together, and deliver more effectively. Too many “teams” feel like …

Continue reading “Distributed Agile Approaches Optimize for the Team over Individuals”

Posted on

Decide When You Need to Meet, Workshop, or Write to Save Energy and Time

You’re a busy product person, a Product Owner. You have information the team needs, and you want to meet. A lot. You see the need for these meetings: Standups Backlog refinement Iteration planning Strategic updates, so the team knows what’s going on. Sounds reasonable. Except, the team thinks you want to meet too often. What …

Continue reading “Decide When You Need to Meet, Workshop, or Write to Save Energy and Time”

Posted on

Backchannel Discussions Might Create Serendipity

When Mark Kilby and I wrote From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, we suggested teams add a text backchannel. Even when the backchannel is asynchronous, the information in it increases the value of all the team’s communication. The backchannel helps everyone see all the information. That helps all the team’s communication. Some of my …

Continue reading “Backchannel Discussions Might Create Serendipity”