Managing a distributed team can be very challenging due to different time zones. In one of my projects, I got an opportunity to handle a remote team which was divided in two different time zones and here's how I handled the situation:
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Firstly, conducting a Daily Scrum in an overlapping time, where entire team would come virtually and have a discussion about their work by answering the 3 important questions. This helped to keep everyone on same page of the progress towards sprint goal. Also, if in case of any impediments, the counterparts can help each other after the scrum call for any resolution.
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Secondly, conducting retrospectives at a common time to gain the insights of each team member about the current process. This helped me understand where improvements were required to manage a distributed system.
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Thirdly, always making sure that ALM tools whichever being used(in my project it was JIRA) are up to date i.e. remaining story points added to the user stories, bugs and user stories are updated with required comments for the concerned teams.Â
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Communication channels like in my case it was Slack, having proper conversations with better clarity which made things easy for not just my team but any other dependent team as well. Any queries for the business or product owners were put with all relevant details so that they come up with apt responses which helps the team to work smoothly the next day.
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Lastly, but not the least as a Scrum Master I made sure to foster a positive environment where every team member felt heard and can come to me at any point of time for their concerns. Having a regular connects with them to understand if they are having proper growth both professionally and personally.