Agile Alternatives for a Geographically Distributed Team

Johanna Rothman, known as the "Pragmatic Manager," offers frank advice for your challenging problems. She consults with leaders and teams to help them learn about practical and possible options. They can then decide how to adapt their product development. Her most recent book is "Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility." See www.jrothman.com for all her books.

  Agile   Quality   Schedule Management   Scheduling   Testing/Test Management  

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 time, same location, okay?” Jen, the agile project manager was ready to finish the meeting.

“Uh, Jen…I have a question,” Yi Ling said.

“Sure, go ahead.”

“Do you realize the time here? You know we’re in Singapore, right?”

Jen thought for a second, and said, “Yes, I know. Three of us are in New York, Pierre is in Paris, and two of you are in Singapore. Is this about the time of the standup?”

Yi Ling answered, “It’s the time of all the meetings. You call them for 9 a.m. New York time. For us, it’s 10 p.m. here. We’ve been at work forever. We’re exhausted. We’re 13 hours ahead of you. It’s not so bad for Pierre, because he’s six hours ahead of you and it’s still the afternoon. We can’t keep doing this. We need to share the pain.”

Jen said, “You’re right. I’m so sorry. Let me think about alternatives and …

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