How a Global Team Works in SmartNews

As a mobile lead in a cross timezone product team, I want to share some experience about how the team works on a daily basis and also how it changes before and after the pandemic. I hope some of the points could help you. And also hope to get more feedback.

Transcript

1. How a Global Team Works in SmartNews Yanan Cheng (a.k.a. Nick)
2. YANAN CHENG a.k.a. Nick @nickcheng
3. SmartNews
4. Our Team
5. Mobile Team from Tokyo Working for US features
6. Tokyo California PM Mobile Team Data Scientists Designers QA Team Backend Team
7. Day-to-day basis - One week sprint - One week release cycle in mobile team - So we def have a lot of meetings - Sprint Review Meeting - Sprint Planning Meeting - Demo Meeting - Retrospective Meeting - Company/Pillar/Squad Meetings, etc...
8. Wait… Looks we missed something...
9. Let’s do a simple calculation - Timezone - 9am == 5pm - 2 hrs overlap (3 hrs if not DST) - What can we do in TWO HOURS? -
10. Other Issues - Full of meetings - PM decision maker, aka blocker
11. Solutions - Respect the schedule - Be in one place - Travel both way - Refine the process - Combine some meetings - Decentralisation - Don’t fear of failure - We can fix quickly
12. Pandemic
13. Before the pandemic - Tokyo team could get together - Travel - Cross team work - Meet everyday
14. During the pandemic - Not change too much for a global team compare to other team - Some aspects just got enhanced
15. More virtual meetups - 1v1 - Team Online Gathering - Online escape games - Online party games
16. Work Asynchronously - Kinda missing all things carried by emails. - Respect / Empathy - Presence visibility - Focus/Flexible
17. Over-document - More questions from different stakeholders - A lot of similar questions - Better for Async - Organized, easy to reach
18. Thank you!!