1. Decision Support for Weather Sensitive Operations
3 steps to successfully set up and work in
distributed teams
Hussam Ahmad hahm@stormgeo.com

2. Who is StormGeo?
Managing Risk
One of the world’s leading suppliers
of Decision Support for Weather
sensitive operations. .
Solutions
Transforming know-how into cutting
edge products together with our
customers.
Core Competence
Meteorology
Oceanography
Information Technology
Naval Architecture
Statistics

3. Who am I?
• 10 years from social care and education sector
• >20 years from IT industry
– System Architect, Developer
– Project manager, Product owner
– CTO
– CEO
• Coaching
– Lean & Agile Implementation
– Waste management
– Communication & Motivation
– Goal setting & Achievement
– Personal development

4. Where can distributed teams help?
• The ultimate goal for a business/project is to create
profit by exchanging value for money
• Prerequisites for success:
– Clear mission
– Manpower
– Time
– Technology
– Materials

5. Ingredients of excellence
• Motivation
– A reason for acting or behaving in a particular way
• Communication
– The exchanging of information using some medium

6. Step 1: Know where you are
• Analyze your current situation
– Decide on where you are today
• Capacity, quality, availability, cost
– Decide on Target/goal
• Capacity, quality, availability, cost
• Remember: Motivation and communication
Goals
Current situation Current results
What to
change?
What to
change
to?

7. Step 2: Make a plan
• Create a stepwise plan for how to
reach the target
– Plan should only details the closest steps
• Remember: Motivation and communication
Goals
? ?
Next step ?
Current situation Current results
What to
change
?
What to
change
to?

8. Step 3: Start going the way!
• Go the way step by step, evaluate and
adjust!
• Remember: Motivation and communication
Goals
? ?
Next step ?
Current situation Current results
What to
change
?
What to
change
to?
How to cause
the change?

9. Remember!
• Motivation:
– Goal setting. Focus on End goals
– Goal achievement. Focus on Means goals
• Communication.
– Focus on End goals. This is the big WHY
• Aim on creating great teams
– Communication is easiest when working in cross
functional teams
Product owner
Potentially shippable product
Customer specific
function
ArchitectTester
Developer
Developer
Business analyst

10. Great teams comply to
• Same goals, same agenda
• Team members are passionate
• They trust each other and do not have to guard each
word in their discussions
• They are willing to sacrifice for the success of the team
• They do whatever it takes to prevent letting their peers
down
• They do not seek credit for their own contributions

11. Main challanges
Challenge Solution
They vs. we - Cross boarder teams
- Team is accountable
Cheaper vs. better - Can also be combined
- Good and bad skilled people are
everywhere
Cultural differences - Team building & visits
- Respect people
Time zone - Distribute the burden
Belonging

12. Most valuable tools
• Cross boarders cross functional teams
• Have a dedicated “Build master” who understands
interhuman relations, but also technology
• Reviews:
– Daily standups (audio & video)
– Product owner review
– Backlog grooming
• Available business domain knowledge and access to it.
Preferably inside the team
• Process retrospectives: Evaluate & Adjust periodically

13. StormGeo does it overall the globe.
Decision Support for Weather Sensitive Operations

14. Gains for StormGeo
• Accountability to the organization
• Quality increased
• Issue blowback reduced
• Ability to determine project risks quickly
– Red flags raised earlier
– Identification of blocking issues, bottlenecks,
dependencies etc.
• Software production predictability and reproducibility

15. No success comes for free
Hussam Ahmad hahm@stormgeo.com