Work\u00ading on remote, widely-dis\u00adtrib\u00aduted teams has its advant\u00adages (I can work from home in my base\u00adment, wear\u00ading whatever I feel like) but also, of course, its dis\u00adad\u00advant\u00adages. In par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar, when the team is work\u00ading against a hard dead\u00adline, being sep\u00adar\u00adated means not able to gath\u00ader in front of a white\u00adboard, or eas\u00adily meet to dis\u00adcuss the prox\u00adim\u00adate cause of some bug.<\/p>\n
For the latest dead\u00adline-driv\u00aden push to com\u00adplete the test\u00ading and bug-fix\u00ading on time to deliv\u00ader to the cli\u00adent, with a five-per\u00adson team work\u00ading in timezones from East\u00adern Canada to Bris\u00adbane, Aus\u00adtralia (with a couple of us on Pacific time in the middle and the pro\u00adject man\u00adager on Chica\u00adgo time), we star\u00adted a group chat using skype. Teams have done this for years, of course, using IRC<\/span>, so the tech\u00adnique isn\u2019t new. Skype has the nice fea\u00adture that you can switch cli\u00adents (in my case from PC<\/span> to Mac laptop to Android phone), and the chats auto\u00admat\u00adic\u00adally sync so you can catch up on what happened since you last logged on (in my case also answer ques\u00adtions while sit\u00adting in a con\u00adcert at my son\u2019s school, or at the air\u00adport). Yes, I\u2019ve heard the con\u00adcerns about secur\u00adity back doors with skype but the choice of chat sys\u00adtem isn\u2019t mine to make. <\/p>\n Sev\u00aden days, 2351 lines, and 29964 words later, we shipped. Coordin\u00adat\u00ading the test files, regres\u00adsion test\u00ading, bug fixes, and doc\u00adu\u00adment\u00ada\u00adtion updates with the com\u00adpet\u00ading pro\u00adjects, late nights, and timezone issues would have been much more dif\u00adfi\u00adcult with any oth\u00ader means of com\u00admu\u00adnic\u00ada\u00adtion. Yes, the chat got con\u00adfus\u00ading at times with vari\u00adous issues being dis\u00adcussed sim\u00adul\u00adtan\u00adeously amongst the three of us who were most involved, and there was a cer\u00adtain amount of \u201ccan you remind what that issue was about again\u201d, but some of that was due to the late nights and dead\u00adline pres\u00adsure rather than the medi\u00adum of communication.<\/p>\n And it was fun, more fun than email mes\u00adsages. Chats are more imme\u00addi\u00adate, less form\u00adal, we made each oth\u00ader laugh and wandered off top\u00adic at times, which does\u00adn\u2019t hap\u00adpen much in email in a cor\u00adpor\u00adate set\u00adting. It\u2019s some\u00adhow easi\u00ader to write \u201cwell done!\u201d or \u201cI need cof\u00adfee\u201d or \u201ccan you explain that again\u201d in a chat than email. And in some ways it\u2019s almost easi\u00ader than being in the same room with people. With the amount of work in a short time, and late nights\/long days, tem\u00adpers occa\u00adsion\u00adally get short and irrit\u00ada\u00adtion rises. In a chat it\u2019s easi\u00ader to step away and not say some\u00adthing you\u2019ll regret later; easi\u00ader to say \u201cI need a break, I\u2019m going for a walk\u201d than if you\u2019re in the same office as someone else work\u00ading on the same deadline. <\/p>\n Remote teams are often said to not be as pro\u00adduct\u00adive as teams in the same office. After this exper\u00adi\u00adence, I think some of that lack of pro\u00adductiv\u00adity is due to the people, and some to not fig\u00adur\u00ading out how best to use tools (even simple ones like chat) that are avail\u00adable. Of course, every\u00adone has to for\u00adget their ego, and be pre\u00adpared to say when they don\u2019t under\u00adstand or need more details (often easi\u00ader in chat than face-to-face). And be under\u00adstand\u00ading when things go wrong, while still work\u00ading to put them right again. A good pro\u00adject man\u00adager who knows when to keep out of the way and when to offer encour\u00adage\u00adment also helps, thanks AM<\/span>!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Work\u00ading on remote, widely-dis\u00ad\u00adtrib\u00aduted teams has its advant\u00adages (I can work from home in my base\u00adment, wear\u00ading whatever I feel like) but also, of course, its dis\u00adad\u00advant\u00adages. In par\u00adtic\u00adu\u00adlar, when the team is work\u00ading against a hard dead\u00adline, being sep\u00adar\u00adated means not able to gath\u00ader in front of a white\u00adboard, or eas\u00adily meet to dis\u00adcuss \u2026 Con\u00adtin\u00adue read\u00ading \u201cDead\u00adline Chatting\u201d<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wp_typography_post_enhancements_disabled":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1039","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1039"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1051,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1039\/revisions\/1051"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.laurenwood.org\/anyway\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}