Better Remote Teams

By Jane Prusakova

Elevator Pitch

Right people, with appropriate technology and smart management, can make a distributed team competitive with collocated Agile teams. Remote teams have their advantages, like skills not found in the local markets, and lower turnover. This session talks about leading great distributed teams.

Description

One of the traditional Agile requirements is collocation, and this requirement is hard to meet. A lot of organizations choose to outsource anyway, and suffer the consequences. Yet, a remote team can be Agile, and very productive. Right people, with appropriate technology and smart management, can make a distributed team competitive with collocated Agile teams. Remote teams have their advantages: skills not found in the local markets, lower turnover. At the same time, distributed teams are harder to manage and require special handling, compared to teams that spend a lot of face time together. In this session I will talk about organizing and managing distributed teams. How to - find the right people - how to set up excellent communication and engagement - how to build social capital and ensure passionate performance for a team that rarely meets in person. We will talk about tools that help, and approaches that hinder. Different ways to overcome communication barriers, build trust and empathy, and create a supportive environment for a group of people who rarely, if ever, meet, yet work toward a common goal.

Notes

Slides are here https://www.slideshare.net/jprusakova/managing-remote-teams-62081248