Let’s celebrate the end of a cycle!

How to keep a high performance team motivated after each project? The answer is simple and fun: Celebrate! After the team is formed and stabilized, working on a project after other may put the team on a never ending cycle, bringing stress and desmotivation. As we celebrate New Year’s Eve, ending a cycle and recharging …

Why cross-functional teams?

When we talk about cross-functional teams, we talk about people from different areas working together. We can have a project team with people from Systems, Database, Middleware, or even people from management areas working with technical people. And, why is this distinct from any other teams? First of all, cross-functional teams can provide not only …

Virtual Teams – Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

As every team or project, virtual work also requires performance indicators. These indicators need to be followed during the execution, to correct any problems that may be found, and after completion in case it’s a temporary task. To define a KPIS you need to know: What’s is going to be measured; Who’s going to do …

Creating user stories: an empathy exercise

User stories are an artifact of Scrum and they are used for requirements gathering at the begin of a project. It has a simple structure: As a (i.e. client, administrator) I want to (action) So that (goal) As all agile tools, this work needs to be done collaboratively and it’s a way to understanding your …

Kanban in virtual teams – visualize goals and collaborate

When I first started using daily stand up meetings on our virtual team, I was afraid it would be just another phone meeting. The fact that it was daily was even scarier as I thought my team’s acceptance wouldn’t be good. I believe what changed daily stand meeting from all other weekly one hour meetings, …

Knowledge share in virtual teams

When working on virtual teams, it might be a challenge to think of ways to reunite the team to share knowledge. First of all, it’s interesting to bring individuals together to understand what is required.  It’s important the team participates and understands the importance of sharing knowledge to improve team’s skills, performance and the quality …

What have you learnt today?

You can’t run from learning. You learn everyday, when you face a new challenge or talk to someone new. What really makes the difference is what you do with what you learn. It was a tip from my manager to note everyday something I’ve learned. I also read that good leaders keep a journal. All …

Be clear when communicating virtually

Today I had a great workshop about communication with my friend Walyson Oliveira from IBM. It inspired me to write about the importance of clear communication on virtual teams. Just yesterday I faced a challenge regarding communication with one of our clients. He sent an email asking for help and after a couple of days …

Virtual work is not about isolation

When working on a big company, you may work on a team that is part local, part virtual. It can bring challenges to team’s trust and collaboration, as individuals will tend to create subgroups between local and distributed resources. For local resources, it’s easier to ask questions and share knowledge with people that is beside …

Sometimes all you need is a little patience and a lot of empathy

When working with a team and different clients, we may find people with divergent opinions, ideas and experiences.  In these situations, it might be hard to get to an agreement, specially when we relly exclusively on virtual communication as telephone, email and chats. So, when it seems we are going nowhere, we need to take …