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Four Years of Lessons Learned About Successful Distributed Agile Teams

Before the pandemic, “everyone” said, “Agile approaches don't work for distributed teams!” Then came the pandemic and everyone figured it out—more or less.

However, now, many teams work in ways they call “hybrid.” Those are the most challenging forms for any distributed team: the satellite team or the cluster team. When those teams assume that they can work as if they were all collocated, the teams tend to lose their agility.

Instead, teams can use the eight principles for successful distributed agile teams and optimize for those principles, instead of location. The eight principles are:

● Establish acceptable hours of overlap.
● Create transparency at all levels.
● Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments.
● Practice pervasive communication at all levels.
● Create a project rhythm.
● Assume good intention.
● Create a culture of resilience.
● Default to collaborative work.

In this presentation, Johanna will address just four of the principles—the ones that focus on and enable collaboration—to help you create the best environment for your distributed agile team.

  1. What “hybrid” might mean to you and why that means too many hybrid teams have the worst of all possible worlds.
  2. Realistic assessment of what the team can control and what that means for agility.
  3. Four principles in this presentation:
  4. Acceptable hours of overlap
  5. Pervasive communication
  6. Culture of resilience (in the team)
  7. Default to collaborative work
  8. How cycle time and value stream maps can help you see how well your team is working.

Johanna Rothman

About Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable things that might work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. She’s written these books:

  • Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
  • Become a Successful Independent Consultant
  • Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
  • Modern Management Made Easy series: Practical Ways to Manage Yourself; Practical Ways to Lead and Serve (Manage) Others; Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization
  • Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts
  • From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby)
  • Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
  • Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
  • Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
  • Project Portfolio Tips: Twelve Ideas for Focusing on the Work You Need to Start & Finish
  • Diving for Hidden Treasures: Finding the Value in Your Project Portfolio (with Jutta Eckstein)
  • Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost
  • Manage Your Job Search
  • Hiring Geeks That Fit
  • The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
  • Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)

In addition to articles and columns on various sites, Johanna writes the Managing Product Development blog on her website, jrothman.com, as well as a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

More About Johanna »

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