Scrum Agile Project Management

Leading High-Performance Distributed Teams

In this blog post, J.D. Meier shares his experience of leading high-performance distributed teams for more than ten years at Microsoft. He describes a weekly schedule that begins with identifying 3 wins for the week on Monday to discussing 3 things going well and 3 things to improve on Friday.

His secret for success is to save administration overhead by putting a few key processes:
* Weekly Wins / Daily Wins
* Weekly / Daily Calls
* Mid-Week Course Correction
* Show and Tells
* Friday Lessons Learned

The post provides detail explanations and examples for each of these processes. It provides also some good advices like shipping on Wednesdays to avoid problems, pain, and bad weekends associated with shipping on Fridays. His conclusion is that “process is what kills the necessary innovation and learning for growth and survival in a changing landscape. That’s why the key is always “just enough process” while keeping a focus on learning and on flowing value in a continuous way.”