Succeeding with Agile

Traveling Ambassadors

The common practice of Management By Walking Around (MBWA) is replaced on distributed projects by MBFA—Management By Flying Around. Of course, on a distributed Scrum project, it needs to be more than just managers flying around. In many ways, individuals flying from one city to another can be thought of as ambassadors. Martin Fowler defines ambassadors as “semi-permanent people who spend several months in the ‘other’ location.” Although spending several months in another location may be ideal, I’ve found that I often need to compromise, sending ambassadors more often but for shorter visits.

I’m not very familiar with the work of actual ambassadors. So I usually think of these project ambassadors in much the way that jazz ...