Posts Tagged distributed teams
How to Create a Burndown Chart in Google Docs
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum, tools on May 3, 2011
A burndown chart can be used by an agile team to track their progress against a release plan. In its simplest form, the chart consists of time on the X axis and the amount of work on the Y axis.
You can choose to burn down on whatever metrics that are relevant to your team. Since I prefer burning down on story points against iterations, that is what we’ll use for this tutorial.
It only takes a Google Account, a few minutes of your spare time and best of all it’s free!
Create a Google Spreadsheet
Distributed ScrumMasters Update
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on March 30, 2011
It has been over a year since I first gave my Distributed ScrumMasters talk to friends & coworkers around Washington, DC. Since then I’ve learned quite a bit about myself, how I speak publicly and what people are most concerned about with Distributed Scrum. After careful consideration, inspecting and adapting I have updated my original [...]
7 Ways to Humanize the Distributed Team Experience
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum on August 17, 2010
If you are involved in a distributed software team, chances are you know just how difficult it is to create personal connections. This is especially true in larger organizations where team members are geographically dispersed around the world and rarely (if ever) meet face to face in person.
I placed the emphasis this problem recently during my talk on distributed agile. My audience received, perhaps unexpectedly, a heavy dose of organizational culture from me instead of “here’s the 1000 different tools you can use” speech.
My message was simple, team members are not resources or metrics, and we should not treat them as such.
I felt the need to build upon that talk. As a result, here are my 7 tips for a sustainable and healthy distributed team experience:… [Read More]
How to Create a Virtual Story Wall in Google Docs
Posted by David Bland in agile, scrum, tools on June 21, 2010
Google recently released an enhancement to Google Docs called Google Drawings. While you can use this is a kind of collaborative work space for wireframes as you might with Visio or Omnigraffle, I’ve found another use for it…
As a virtual story wall for distributed teams.
It only takes a Google Account, a few minutes of your spare time, and most of all it’s free.
Create a Google Drawing
… [Read More]
