Using AI for Agile in Multiple Geographies
Agile involves deep interaction between team members. When a team is distributed over multiple locations, extra care is needed to ensure things go well. Let’s look at activities to ensure your agile project delivers on its promise.
The initial planning or Envision stage of the project requires additional verification to avoid missing requirements. Different geographies involve different regulations and labor laws. A company’s clients in different geographies can vary along with their needs and expectations. Costs for raw materials or services such as transportation can also vary, so using benchmarks from “the home office” might not be accurate.
To ensure missing requirements or unexpected cost variations don’t hamper you, start by launching AI queries. Obtaining average costs for materials or services by region is straightforward, so you can determine if costs vary between geographies. Also, extra time should be allowed during the Envision stage to enable team members to share compiled requirements with a wider set of stakeholders. Make sure you cover influential stakeholders from each geography represented in the project, so you have complete and agreed-to requirements.
Multiple geographies can make staffing difficult during the sprint planning or Speculate stage. Agile’s power comes from the dedication and consistency with which team members work on the project. Given the different work pressures and priorities that may exist across geographies, extra care is required when choosing team members for the project. AI can assist if you have a consistent calendaring application and process throughout your organization.
During the execution or sprint iteration stage, ensuring that all geography's thoughts, concerns, and ideas are heard and reviewed can be a challenge. I worked on an international project where stand-up meetings meant some team members were working late, and some woke up early to attend. That’s challenging when team members are working on the same feature. I found that having team members from one geography develop the feature, and members from the distant geography test the feature worked best. That way, the entire team was involved, but the number of handoffs between team members was minimized. Switching roles across features, where the sub-team that develops one feature tests another one, spreads the knowledge contribution equitably.
Across multiple geographies, retrospectives become vitally important and need to be run diligently. During initial planning, it is vital to check with a wide range of stakeholders to ensure they are on board with what’s happening and in agreement with the backlog priorities to maintain engagement in the project.
While challenging, running agile across multiple geographies can still involve deep interactions. Take extra care throughout the entire project lifecycle, and you can still get the exceptional results agile is known to produce.
This article is based on my and Christina Charenkova's LinkedIn Learning course entitled AI-Powered Agile: Strategies for Modern Project Managers
___________________________________________________________
Coming up
Office Hours Live - Monday, March 24, 2025, 4:00pm US Eastern Time
We call them different things: bosses, managers, stakeholders, or clients. No matter the term, we must deal with them, their strengths, and the “personality features” they bring. How we deal with these characteristics determines our success. In this Live session, I will be joined by Dana Brownlee, the author of The Unwritten Rules of Managing Up, and the instructor of the LinkedIn Learning course Managing Up for Project Managers – Working with Challenging Senior Stakeholders. We’ll discuss methods for dealing with the varying personalities and characteristics our bosses present to us during our leadership journeys. Join us and bring your questions – we’ll answer them LIVE.
By attending this session, you can:
________________
Office Hours Live - Tuesday, April 8, 2025, 10:00am AEST Brisbane Time
It’s common for a leader to have to negotiate and negotiate often. Negotiation is a critical skill in the leader's toolkit that must be applied with managers, clients, team members (or even family!). Project managers must negotiate to get reasonable timeframes, budgets, scope, the right team members, and more. It’s a big part of the job, and if you hate doing it (or even if you want to get better at it), this LinkedIn Live session is for you! I’ll be joined by Sam Trattles, a negotiation expert, the Founder of The Other Side of the Table, and the author of two books, Negotiate Your Worth and I Love Negotiating. We’ll talk about how to prepare for negotiating, increase your chances of getting what you want, and walk away from a negotiation with positive relationships with everyone at the table. Join us, and bring your questions; we’ll answer them live.
By attending this session, you will learn:
- How can you best prepare for negotiating
- Pitfalls to avoid and how to change your mindset around negotiating
- How to use your project charter to back up your negotiation points
- Strategies you can use in any negotiation scenario
- Maintaining relationships after a negotiation
___________________________________________________________
Additional thoughts can be found in my project management and outsourcing classes on LinkedIn Learning, including:
__________________________________________________________
This article is part of Bob’s Reflections newsletter series, which discusses project management, outsourcing, and “intelligent disobedience”, a leadership approach. If you want more of this content, you can subscribe to receive notifications when a new article is posted.
Want to learn more about the topics I talk about in these newsletters? Watch my courses in the LinkedIn Learning Library or check out https://intelligentdisobedience.com/
___________________________________________________________