Shane Hastie and I have been working across timezones in preparation for a workshop: Working Effectively With Distributed Agile Teams. I’m keynoting at SDC in a couple of weeks, and am looking forward to being back in Wellington and Sydney.
First, Shane and I built a backlog in Google docs, so we could both see it. Then, since we hadn’t worked together before, we had to learn how to work together. We made a bunch of skype dates and collaborated on sections, exploring in timeboxes how the sections would look, the kinds of content we wanted to make sure we covered, the activities and simulations we wanted to use. Once we were more familiar with each other, then we could start splitting up the work. But we didn’t split the work until we trusted each other.
It’s funny. Once we started putting the workbook together, if you’d asked me how much work we had left, I would have said, maybe 10-15 hours. I think we spent at least twice that, if not three times that! I always knew I was a bad estimator, this just reinforces it. That’s why use I timeboxes and inch-pebbles.
So, if you will be anywhere near Sydney Australia March 28-29, 2011, please do join Shane Hastie and me, as we co-lead Working Effectively With Distributed Agile Teams. You’ll have fun and you will learn a lot. Please do join us for SDC too. I’ve been practicing my keynotes. I’ll be good!
If you’ll be in the area, even if you won’t be at the conference, do let me know. Maybe we can do a blogger dinner.
