Johanna Rothman is a management consultant for software managers and leaders. She is also the author of many books. She started working with geographically distributed teams in 1988. The breadth of communication tools was very limited in that time, so resolving conflicts had to be done mainly through coming to an understanding through conversations and trying to see each other points of view.

Geographically distributed teams were originally set up for saving money. And the teams were usually set up from West to East meaning the testers were East, and the developers were West, which is the wrong way for "follow the sun", especially if you are doing product development. It's not about the money you save, it's about the speed of the throughput of the features. Teams are now experimenting with organizing themselves more from North to South which gives more opportunities for collaborative team building. For more stories, visit CollaborationSuperpowers.com.

Inspired by something Tim Ferriss did on his podcast, this episode focuses on distilling remote work down to its essentials. I went through a huge list of ideas and came up with what I think are the essential things that make remote work... or not. For more stories, visit www.CollaborationSuperpowers.com.

Jessie Shternshus is the Founder at Improv Effect and the Co-author of “CTRL Shift – 50 Games For 50 ****ing Days Like Today”. She uses improv to help software teams with onboarding, communication, team building, and more.

Improv is a great tool for learning about and accepting each other’s uniqueness, thinking on the spot, and being self aware. It’s useful for finding similarities amongst team members, creative problem solving, understanding other peoples ideas and stories, and improving presentation skills. Improv ends up being a fun and powerful way to help teams practice interpersonal communication. For more stories, visit www.CollaborationSuperpowers.com. 

In the past, we had to go to a specific geographic place in order to access the information we needed for our work. Now, that information is likely accessible from anywhere. And this gives us the opportunity to play with new ways of working and new business models. We’re at a point in history where work and life are blurring. I want to share some stories with you. For more stories, visit www.CollaborationSuperpowers.com.