How to manage distributed teams successfully
In Hugo’s workshop, participants will create a best practice board in teams of 5-6 people. The teams go through each block of ‘The Bridge Canvas’. The goal is to share best practices, ideas and experiences. Per block, each team selects the ‘best best practice’. At the end of the workshop, each team will present the best best practices for each block.
At the start of the workshop, Hugo shares a few best practices (personal ones + from other distributed agile experts). Each person gets a handout with clear instructions. This includes some questions to stimulate thinking within the team + some best practice examples per block.
Outline/Structure of the Workshop
Duration: 45 minutes
Introduction 5 minutes
Hugo will introduce himself, the goal of the workshop and instructions + agenda.
Group brainstorming 5 minutes
- Everybody will put his business card/name on a board on the wall indicating on the y-axis the size of the company and on the x-axis the level of experience with distributed teams.
- Everyone can individually put post-it notes on the bridge canvas (large size on the wall), indicating what challenges they have experienced with managing distributed teams. The notes are put in each block of the canvas, so they’re grouped.
Concepts and materials 10 minutes
Hugo will share some best practices from his own experience and other’s related to each of the blocks of the Bridge Canvas. The main topics within each of the blocks, which we'll go through are:
- Performance & metrics: Discuss with your team members how you measure company/team/individual performance and how you report the kpi’s to one another.
- Culture: Discuss what impact you found cultural differences to have on your work
- Team Spirit: Discuss with your team members what you (can) do to create a sense of being ‘one team’
- Roles and responsibilities: Discuss how you have assigned roles and responsibilities within your team
- Virtual office: Discuss how your virtual office looks
- Tools: Discuss what tools work wonders to collaborate with your remote colleagues?
- Communication Rhythm: Discuss how and when you hold meetings within your team
- Process: Discuss with your team how you take a project from A to Z
Best practice sharing 20 minutes
The group will be split into teams of 5-6 people. Each team discusses the best practices they have learned (or which they find online/from other people), for each block. They can use the handouts for stimulating questions and examples of best practices.
Conclusion & action plan 5 minutes
Each person creates an action plan for his team. People can take the things they learned and put specific actions in each of the bridge canvas blocks. These actions can be taken as soon as they’re back in the office.
Learning Outcome
Key learning points:
- Practical experiences from seasoned distributed team managers/coaches
- Learn how to communicate smoothly across culture, distance and time
- How to bridge cultural differences in distributed teams
- How to apply agile methods to a distributed setting
Target Audience
Product owner, scrum master, project manager, team member, developer
Video
Links
My blog articles are on http://blog.ekipa.co
For more information about me: http://www.hugomesser.com ; https://nl.linkedin.com/in/hugomesser
Some additional videos: http://www.hugomesser.com/videos
Here are 2 canvasses filled by participants during a workshop I did in Berlin in november: challenges in distributed teams; best practices in distributed teams.
schedule Submitted 7 years ago
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