By Debra Lavell & Russell Martinell

Editor’s note: This paper is based on the experiences of the authors at Intel Corporation in the USA.  While it is not a case study in the strict academic sense, we feel that this paper comfortably fits in the case studies category of PM World Today better than in other sections.

As in many companies today, our program and project teams at Intel have become highly distributed across the United States, as well as the world, due to the globalization of our business and workforce.  Very few development teams are located in the same state or country, much less in the same building.  We have teams spread out among approximately 290 locations in over 45 countries. 

A significant part of the work we do at Intel is to engage with product development teams to improve their product development practices.  One such method we use is program and project retrospectives to identify practices that need improving as a team marches through the product development life cycle, and to reinforcing the continuation of good practices by the team (see part one of this series for the foundational elements of retrospectives).

Although it is always most effective to bring a team together to conduct a project or program retrospective, it is many times difficult to do so with highly distributed teams.  Just as we have adjusted many of our core product development practices to be effective in a distributed team environment, we have had to incorporate the ‘virtual retrospective’ as a method for discovering our key learnings from highly distributed teams.  We consider a virtual retrospective as one that at least one person is not in the same room with the remainder of the team.

Read complete paper in English