I just posted Managing Timezones in Geographically Distributed Agile Teams. I have a funny story to tell about it. I’m in Belgium, getting ready for Belgium Testing Days. This weekend, the US changes to Daylight Savings Time. But Europe doesn’t. So, when do I talk to my husband?
My husband and I are suffering by the off-by-one-hour time zone problem described by Carmel and Espinosa in their book, I’m Working While They Are Sleeping. One of my Pragmatic Manager readers, sent me an email that said,
“I manage everyday activities with at least 3 time zones, and sometimes 4 (it depends on customer’s location) – and I know what are you talking about in this post. I decided to reply this time to share one additional point, which, in my humble opinion, is worth mentioning in the below context:
Some countries switch to daylight saving time and some do not. Thus, the timezone charts should be updated twice a year (and sometimes more than twice, since in Israel we have “our own” schedule, different from Europe).
For some reason, people tend to forget this fact…”
Well, I knew that the US was moving to DST this weekend. I did not investigate whether Belgium was moving to DST or not. So, Mark and I missed each other last night. We’ll see whether we connect tonight. I do think this is very funny, quite topical, and ironic.
So, I’m human. If you would like to meet more humans, and take a human approach to working more effectively in geographically distributed teams, join Shane Hastie and me in our geographically distributed teams workshop April 17-18, 2012. We can help you with these and other issues. We would love to have you. The last day for the early registration is March 15. Hop to it!
