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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
Micromanagement is Not Transparency! Do you want to know what your geographically distributed team is doing? Maybe your team has a sticky-card wall. Or a kanban board. And, maybe they post pictures of it on their wiki. Or, maybe they use a tool and talk about their status in their standup meetings. And, maybe because
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
Using Checkins to Create Transparency Do You Want to Work More Effectively in Geographically Distributed Teams? In preparation for our geographically distributed teams webinar last week, Shane and I asked people what their greatest challenge was for their teams. Many of the comments were about communication and trust. One question was this: “How can I help
Build Trust in Any Team (Distributed or Collocated) On agile projects, the daily standup is one of the ways the team members build trust. The team members complete work every day, and make micro-commitments to each other every day. Making and keeping these commitments builds trust. And, when you’re not all together, it’s just a
I have posted 2012’s Pragmatic Manager emails. I have been writing in themes this year: I am writing about geographically distributed teams in preparation for my Geographically Distributed Teams Workshop with Shane in April: Building Trust in Any Team Start Your Geographically Distributed Projects Right Earlier this year, I wrote about the project portfolio for