SPaMCAST 540 features our interview Mark Kilby and Johanna Rothman. Johanna, Mark, and I discussed their new book, From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams, Collaborate to Deliver (Buy your copy here: https://amzn.to/2Omur23). Distributed agile teams are a fact of life; Johanna and Mark provide an extraordinary amount of wisdom for making distributed teams exceptional.

Johanna’s Bio

Johanna Rothman, known as the “Pragmatic Manager,” provides frank advice for your tough problems. She helps leaders and teams see problems, resolve risks, and manage their product development.

Johanna was the Agile 2009 conference chair and was the co-chair of the first edition of the Agile Practice Guide. Johanna is the author of 14 books that range from hiring, to project management, program management, project portfolio management, and management. Her most recent books are From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams (with Mark Kilby) and Create Your Successful Agile Project: Collaborate, Measure, Estimate, Deliver.

Read her blogs, email newsletter, and more information about her books at www.jrothman.com

Mark Kilby Bio

With over two decades of experience in agile principles and practices, Mark Kilby has cultivated more distributed and dispersed teams than collocated teams. He has consulted with organizations across many industries and coached teams, leaders, and organizations internally. Mark also co-founded a number of professional learning organizations such as Agile Orlando, Agile Florida, Virtual Team Talk, and the Agile Alliance Community Group Support Initiative among others. His easy-going style helps teams learn to collaborate and discover their path to success and sustainability. Mark shares his insights on distributed and agile teams in dozens of articles in multiple publications. Most of his latest ideas and developments can be found on www.markkilby.com

Re-Read Saturday News

We have been re-reading Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point over the past 10 weeks. When considering how I would wrap up the re-read I had to fight the urge to parrot back the findings Gladwell identified in the conclusion: a few people are critical and that people’s biases matter. Real life intervened and I applied the ideas in the book!

We need to choose the next book in the Re-read Saturday Series. Steven Adams has requested a referendum on the next book. Mr. Adams has always provided sage advice, therefore, a poll we will have! The poll will be open for two weeks. Vote for your two favorites.

Next SPaMCAST

SPaMCAST 541 will feature our essay on guardrails. We will discuss using guardrails in decision making. Guardrails are a tool to ensure alignment with the organization’s goals and objectives and to keep people on the right path. Well-formed guardrails conform to five attributes that help teams and individuals make decisions.

We will also have a visit from John M Quigley who brings his Alpha and Omega of Product Development column to the podcast.