Successful Distributed Agile Teams

Successful Distributed Agile Teams

Successful distributed agile teams, while not common, do exist. If you've been lucky enough to work on one of those teams, you discovered that the team members aligned on the work. It's not actually luck. These teams collaborate to deliver value and satisfy customers.

Created by:

Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman

Mark Kilby

Mark Kilby

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Build & Grow Your Successful Distributed Agile Team

More than half of all agile teams are distributed. Each team uniquely collaborates across different timezones and locations.
What makes them successful?

Our eight principles can guide your team to success, not just for agile success, but for team collaboration and delivery.

Use the eight principles to assess your current practices and then build and grow your successful distributed agile team.

Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Today's Reality, Not Unicorns

With a combined 50+ years of experience, Johanna and Mark captured the key concepts that allow distributed teams to succeed as agile teams. While technology has accelerated the opportunities for collaboration, the behaviors of teams and leadership becomes the key deciding factor in how distributed teams leverage agile approaches.

Successful distributed agile teams collaborate as a team, regardless of where the people are in time and space.

  • Collaboration at all team locations

  • Collaboration at all levels of the organization

  • Collaboration goes beyond collocation to enable value delivery across the globe

Sample Questions

Establish Acceptable Hours of Overlap

We have a minimum of four hours of overlap for all team members without mandated timeshifting.

Team Transparency

No one on the team hides problems.

Cross-Team Transparency

When more than one team collaborates, they can see each other's backlogs, roadmaps, and what blocks any team from finishing.

Continuous Improvement

Teams use appropriate experimental methods to test improvement hypotheses.

Pervasive Communication

The team members use video to see everyone's faces when they work together.

Collaborative Work

The team collaboratively looks for ways to reduce WIP (work in progress).

Top Features

  • Principle-based assessments to assess your team's present and visualize a possible future.

  • Benchmark your distributed agile success against peers in the industry.

  • Decide where to invest—and not invest—in an agile approach for your products based on your teams, programs, and organization.

  • Applies to all levels of your organization - team, program and entire organization.

Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman

Mark Kilby

Mark Kilby

Johanna Rothman and Mark Kilby collaborated as a geographically distributed agile team on their groundbreaking book, From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams.

Their eight principles explain how team members can be physically apart and still highly collaborative. With the eight principles, teams can fulfill the agile promise: deliver high quality, customer satisfying software, with the ease and speed that companies want.

book

From Chaos To Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate To Deliver

course

Prepare For Successful Distributed Agile Teams

website

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Johanna Rothman
Mark Kilby