The squad I manage is fully distributed, like most of
Canonical's employees. We are all in relatively overlapping timezones--ranging from Italy to the American east coast--but none of us work in the same building, or even the same city.
We also are on the
Lean journey. We're not nearly as far along as others you'll find blogging on the web. However, maybe we're interesting because of the combination: lean, plus a distributed workforce.
I suspect that working in a distributed team increases the importance of good practices. When they are not followed, the pain is more intense. For example, I think that writing everything down is important for running a business well; but it is essential, or more obviously essential, for a fully distributed team.
Another good practice like this is
a daily meeting. We've done this for many years now, and it is essential to our coordination. We combine it with
an online kanban board, which
is central to our daily workflow and coordination.
We've also recently combined it with another good idea, checklists, and that's what I want to share right now.
