Managing Distributed Teams

Globalization, open source software, and cheap communications have forever changed the structure of software development project teams. Project managers face a new set of challenges with geographically distributed work teams. Unclear expectations, language and idiom differences, lack of direct supervision, and a lack of accountability are just a few of the issues that project managers must overcome. As the leader of a development team with members and customers all over the world, Keith Casey is intimately familiar with the character of distributed teams. He explains why you need a coherent strategy-and that means more than email, instant messaging, conference calls, and software tools-for effectively executing a distributed development project. Join Keith for a discussion of the strategies you can use to avoid the disasters awaiting those who ignore the needs of a distributed team.

• The differences between distributed and co-located teams
• Distributed team problems and mitigation strategies
• Tools to assist in managing a distributed team