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NFJS2025

Eight Principles for Successful Distributed Agile Teams

The common advice for a distributed agile team is, “Don’t do that!” And, we know that at least half of all agile teams are distributed. The common advice isn’t working or useful.

However, many agile teams have problems using agile approaches. Too often, that’s because they don’t understand the principles of successful distributed agile teams. You’ll learn the eight principles of successful distributed agile teams, and how you might take small steps to increase your team’s success. We’ll discuss hours of overlap, transparency, experimentation, communication and more.

We'll walk through these principles and discuss your options as we proceed:

  • Establish acceptable hours of overlap.
  • Create transparency at all levels.
  • Create a culture of continuous improvement with experiments.
  • Practice pervasive communication at all levels.
  • Create a project rhythm.
  • Assume good intention.
  • Create a culture of resilience.
  • Default to collaborative work.

Bring your distributed agile challenges, and we'll explore options.


Johanna Rothman

About Johanna Rothman

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” offers frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams learn to see simple and reasonable things that might work. Equipped with that knowledge, they can decide how to adapt their product development.

With her trademark practicality and humor, Johanna is the author of 18 books about many aspects of product development. She’s written these books:

  • Project Lifecycles: How to Reduce Risks, Release Successful Products, and Increase Agility
  • Become a Successful Independent Consultant
  • Free Your Inner Nonfiction Writer
  • Modern Management Made Easy series: Practical Ways to Manage Yourself; Practical Ways to Lead and Serve (Manage) Others; Practical Ways to Lead an Innovative Organization
  • Write a Conference Proposal the Conference Wants and Accepts
  • From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby)
  • Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver
  • Agile and Lean Program Management: Scaling Collaboration Across the Organization
  • Manage Your Project Portfolio: Increase Your Capacity and Finish More Projects, 2nd edition
  • Project Portfolio Tips: Twelve Ideas for Focusing on the Work You Need to Start & Finish
  • Diving for Hidden Treasures: Finding the Value in Your Project Portfolio (with Jutta Eckstein)
  • Predicting the Unpredictable: Pragmatic Approaches to Estimating Project Schedule or Cost
  • Manage Your Job Search
  • Hiring Geeks That Fit
  • The 2008 Jolt Productivity award-winning Manage It! Your Guide to Modern, Pragmatic Project Management
  • Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management (with Esther Derby)

In addition to articles and columns on various sites, Johanna writes the Managing Product Development blog on her website, jrothman.com, as well as a personal blog on createadaptablelife.com.

More About Johanna »