Remote vs On-site
The most efficient and effective method of?conveying information to and within a development?team is face-to-face conversation. - Agile Manifesto Principle
There are lots of stories in the news about companies mandating a return to the office and employees pushing back. Before remote work, open workspaces were the hot debate. In both cases, I think there is a principle at work: Individual work is more effective and efficient when the employee is isolated, but team work is more effective and efficient when they are collocated. And product team members provide value in both ways.
Notice the terms "collocated" and "face-to-face." There is no value, per se, to being in the office if your team is not there. I have a friend who is a manager for a product team that recently has been required to return to the office 3 days a week despite her team members each being at different physical locations. When I managed a hybrid team, we got to a point where it was not unusual to turn up at the office and nobody from your team was there.
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As a manager, I need to adapt to the environment and find the right mix of individual and group time. This mix is not only different for a given team, but for the individuals on that team. Finding the right locations, rituals, and processes to foster focused work and the right amount of communication can take some experimentation. For example, I had one team where we ended up working from the office 2 days a week and remote the other 3. This worked because we were all in the same area. On another team, we used an asynchronous standup bot on Slack with one synchronous meet up per week. On yet another team, I tried doing daily synchronous stand ups and that ended up supercharging our team because requirements were changing so quickly.
Finally, I cannot stress enough the value of some form of face-to-face time with teams. This doesn't have to be every day, week, or even month. But spending time in real life boosts trust between team members. I believe this is due to the spontaneous communication that happens with a group of people that just doesn't happen through written or video communication. And trust is the foundation that allows teams to be effective and efficient.
Project Manager at Nteligen
1 年Joel, great little read! One thing I will add as a tricky problem with remote management is onboarding a new team member or even the “forming” stage of a team. When a team is not co-located, you lose a lot of value in both technical and cultural training that comes from eavesdropping or asking quick questions. Instead, those quick questions get held onto for scheduled meetings which could be a full 24+ hours away. Anyway, thanks for the writeups recently. I have been enjoying them!