As Mark Kilby and I work through the images and text for the geographically distributed teams book, I wanted to clarify what collocated and distributed mean. Collocated teams sit near each other in space. However, not everyone agrees on what is “near.” In Developing Products in Half the Time, Smith and Reinertsen use the Allen […]
I’m writing a geographically distributed agile team book with Mark Kilby. We have a 30-minute timebox each morning to write. (We take time off for holidays, vacations, travel, etc.) Because we’re writing together, we first had to understand what we wanted to write in this book. We created a frame and a story map for
Last year, I was part of a geographically distributed team who wrote the Agile Practice Guide. Shane Hastie interviewed us during Agile 2017. His interview (which was a ton of fun!) is here: Johanna Rothman and Mike Griffiths on the Agile Alliance/PMI Agile Practice Guide. I learned a ton from that writing experience: Geographically distributed agile
I just read Zappos is struggling with Holacracy because humans aren’t designed to operate like software. I’m not surprised. That’s because we are humans who work with other human people. I want to talk with people when I want to talk with them, not when some protocol tells me I must. It’s the same problem when
People often ask me, “When is agile right or not right for a project?” I’ve said before that if the team wants to go agile, that’s great. If the team doesn’t, don’t use agile. That answer is insufficient. In addition to the team, we need management to not create a bad environment for agile. You
Lisette Sutherland posted a podcast we recorded about geographically distributed agile teams. See Organize Your Distributed Team over on the CollaborationSuperpowers site. We covered how you can think about your geographically distributed agile team: Why you want a distributed agile team (yes, there are some great reasons) How you might organize your team. Here are
If you’re the project manager for a geographically distributed team, you have likely encountered time zone challenges in running your meetings: 7 a.m. New York time is 8 p.m. in Singapore. Meetings at these times can exhaust everyone. Here’s a common scenario faced by managers of distributed teams: “We’ll have our next standup tomorrow, same
In my article, Which “Scrum Master” Are You Hiring?, I suggested you articulate the type of leader you might be hiring. Why? You might not be hiring a “Scrum Master” at all—but you are likely hiring a servant leader. In this article, let’s discuss the kind of qualities, preferences, and non-technical skills you might need
Have you looked at some of the ads for Scrum Masters lately? Some ads include the need for PMPs or they say they will give you a bonus if you complete the project at a certain time or to someone’s satisfaction. Some talk about hiring the team or about managing the customer’s expectations. Some talk
If you are organized as platform team, middleware, and front-end teams, you have a component team organization. That made sense at one point in your history. But if you are transitioning to agile or have transitioned, and if you want to use agile on a program, that might not make much sense now. If you