The Pros and Cons of Distributed Teams

Posted by Mike Ramm on December 3, 2007

I got this article recently, called 5 Reasons Distributed Teams Suck. This is an answer to another article that argues that distributed teams are great and gives us 5 reasons for that. The funny thing is that using the same arguments both authors come to different conclusions. For example:

Reason Number 5:
Pros: It saves energy. While you work at home you don’t waste time and effort for traveling.
Cons: It wastes energy. When you have to travel, you waste a lot more than if you worked in the same country and in the same office.

Where is the problem? Why these guys think so differently upon the same situation? My answer is very simple. The very definition of the “distributed team” they use is different.

When I ask myself the question “What does a distributed team mean?” I divide it into the following questions:

1. How distributed is the team? If the team works in the same town and they don’t work constantly in the office but instead they work at home I believe it really saves money and energy and this kind of distributed team works effectively because they don’t spend time traveling, they use their own computers and they only need a good internet connection to do their work (especially if the team doesn’t need any other special technical equipment). But if the team is disbursed through the globe then it might not be cost-effective at all. Especially if there are long time differences and there is a need to meet face-to-face frequently.

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Project Management 3.0

Posted by Mike Ramm on July 31, 2007

It seems it became a fashion these days to put version numbers to everything. When I saw Bas de Baar’s post with the title Project Management 3.0 I was first shocked. Wow, how could I miss the all those versions?

But in a while, after reading his post and the article he cites I started to realize that there is nothing new under the sun - it’s just a new, fashion name for the thing we already know.

Obviously, the version numbers 1.0 and 2.0 were created by the agilists. To put it roughly, PM 1.0 refers to the classic or heavy methodologies in project management. They focus on large projects, large budgets and big teams. Ugly Gantt charts, many stakeholders, horizon and beyond timelines and (note!) expected failure! PM2.0 respectively has only positive characteristics: small teams, made of smart and motivated people (does it mean that the large projects are performed by dumb people?), fast pace, feedback, responsiveness, etc.

It smells like a religious war from very far and isn’t worth mentioning. As Glen Alleman says in his blog Herding Cats, if you want to show the advantages of the agile methodologies you shouldn’t compare it to Waterfall because “Waterfall is dead, dead, dead“. The modern version of the “classic” PM approaches like PMBOK and Prince2 also embrace change and calling them “heavy” or “rusty” is not relevant anymore.

What caught Bas’s (and mine) attention is the idea of “Social Project Management”. As he states:

The Project Management style, and the supporting tools have to be “social”, and now more then ever. The project landscape is turning mobile, multi-cultural, 24×7, highly distributed and in ever flux.

But this situation will increase the risk of getting into some social “booby” traps and he points out the three most important ones:

  1. Communication trap: proper understanding of what the other stakeholders need in the project;
  2. Trust trap: letting go of control and hoping people still do what they are supposed to do;
  3. Isolation trap: no sense of belonging to the project through geographical, cultural and timezone differences.

This is the Project Management 3.0 and the real challenge for it will be a social one. According to Bas, this is the place were social software can help a lot. Not only in collaboration but more in building a sense of community, enhance trust and stimulate open communication.

You can read his entire post here.

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