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Designing a Remote Project |
I came across an article recently, which I have to admit made my blood boil a little. Yes, I know it’s the season of goodwill and all that, and I’m going to risk sounding a little Scrooge-like, but I couldn’t help it. It was written by someone who’d tried out ‘telecommuting’ (big sigh) a.k.a. remote or distributed working. They’d tested it in their company and decided it didn’t work.
Why did it enrage me so much? Well, this person sounded like they’d almost set it up to fail. To them, it was the latest buzzword, and they wanted to offer their employees a ‘perk’. But it was going to be risky, because, well, they just couldn’t trust their employees not to be lazy and sit around in their pyjamas at home, watching TV, occasionally flicking their mousepad to ‘appear online’. Sounds about right, doesn’t it?
Well, no. This attitude towards remote working is baked in the past, where working from one office and people all sitting around together in a cosy circle singing kum-by-yah* was a necessity not an option. We all know the reasons remote working and flexibility can happen more easily now: fast internet, numerous communication channels, and so on. But why are companies like Yahoo! and IBM backtracking on this? Why is there still such a negative perception of this way of working when it has so much real potential for the future?
*this might not have ever really happened in an office.
So what is remote working? It can come in various formats. It’s actually not just the typical office worker, working from home on a specific day. The nature of digital projects has been changing over a number of years. In this era where organisations are squeezing budgets and trying to find the best value wherever they can, it seems that the days of whole projects being tackled by one team, in the same place, is fast becoming the past. What I’ve noticed more recently is a much more fragmented way of putting together a project – a mixture of in-house and agency, or multiple agencies or organisations, or working with an offshore team. In the past we might have done the full integrated project from beginning to end, now, it’s a piece of the pie.
Which means that everyone is having to work with people who aren’t sat next to them even more than before. Whether that’s a freelancer you’re working with who’s not in the office, an offshore agency doing development or a partner company in another city tackling UX… the future is looking more and more like a distributed workplace.
So why the negativity, man?
As I’ve seen from this article, and from examples of large corporations changing their entire philosophy away from remote working, there’s a lot of negativity towards this way of working. Of course if you decide to let everyone work from home when they want, set them off and then expect them all to check in at the right time or be available 24/7 it’s going to be a bit of a mess. Equally if you just jump into work with a team on the other side of the world without any setup, should you expect anything less than a problematic project?
Okay, okay so what about these people who are going to sit on Facebook all day if we let them work from home? It’s the age old response to the idea of working from home. I can’t see the person, so how do I know what they are doing?
This comes up regularly as one of the biggest fears of letting people work remotely. There’s also the perceived lack of productivity and distractions at home. The limited collaboration and communication with distributed workers. The lack of availability. The lower response times.
Hang on a second, can’t these all still be problems even if you’ve got your whole team sat in the same place? “They won’t focus on work.” How many people will go on Facebook or Twitter whilst sat in an office? “They won’t collaborate as much.” How many people sit in the office with headphones on to block out distractions? I think we have to move away from the idea that being sat next to people automatically makes them work harder. If the work is satisfying, challenging, and relevant to a person – surely we should trust them to do it, wherever they are sat?
There’s actually a lot of benefits to remote working, and having distributed teams. Offering this as a way of working can attract and retain employees, due to the improved flexibility. There can actually be fewer distractions and disruptions at home, which leads to increased productivity. To paraphrase Jason Fried in his talk ‘Why work doesn’t happen at work’, at home there are voluntary distractions where you have to choose to distract yourself with something. At the office these distractions become involuntary. Impromptu meetings and people coming to talk to you all the time are actually a lot more disruptive. Often, people find it easier to focus away from the office environment.
There’s also the big benefit for a lot of people of the time saved commuting. The employee can actually do a lot that’s beneficial to them in this time, rather than standing squeezed into people’s armpits on public transport. Hence increased job satisfaction. With a distributed team, say if you’re working with an off-shore team, there could be a wider range of talent to pick from and it also encourages diversity. There can be a wider range of cultural differences and opinions brought to a project, which encourages more diverse ways of thinking.
Tackling the issues - or, how to set up a project with a remote team
But that isn’t to say running projects with a distributed team or being a remote worker is easy, and can just happen, like that. It needs work – and good groundwork – to ensure you don’t set it up to fail. So how do you help create a smoother remote project?
Start with trust
First of all, the basis of the team needs to be trust. Yes I’m going to sound a little like a cheesy, self-help guru here (perhaps in an attempt to seem less Scrooge-like and inject some Christmas cheer) but you do need to trust the people working remotely as well as them trusting you. This extends to a distributed team. You can’t just tell the offshore team what to do, and micromanage them, scared they won’t do what you want, how you want it because you can’t see them. You need to give them ownership and let them manage the tasks. Remember, people are less likely to criticise their own work. Make them own the work and they are more likely to be engaged and productive.
Set a structure
Distributed teams and remote workers can fail when there is no structure – just as much as teams sitting together fail without it too. It’s not so much setting rules, as having a framework to work within. Eliminate blockers before they happen. Think about what could cause issues for the team, and think of ways to solve this. For example, what do you do if you won’t be able to get hold of someone for a few hours because of a time difference? Put together a contingency, e.g. is there someone else on your time zone you could go to with queries after assessing the priority? Would it be put aside until that person is back in? Define team roles and responsibilities clearly. Sit down at the beginning of the project and clearly set out expectations. Also ask the team, what are their expectations of you?
There won’t be a one size fits all framework either. Think about your team, the people in it, the type of project you’re working with, the type of client and stakeholder. This should give you an idea of what sort of communications you’ll need on the project. Daily calls, video calls, Slack channels, the choice is yours.
Decide on the tools
To be honest, I could spend hours talking about the different tools you can use for communication. But you know them, right? And in the end it’s not the tool that’s important here - it’s the communication that’s being done on the tool. Tools need to match the type of communications needed for your team. One caveat here though, never rely solely on email! Emails are silos, and can become beasts to manage communications on.
Transparency in communication
Good communication is key. Make sure there are clear objectives for communication. Set up one time during the week where those people meet together, discuss all the work during that week that they’ve done. If decisions are made between team members who are together, make sure everyone knows what these are. But try to make collective decisions where you can, when it doesn’t impact on people’s time.
Have a face-to-face kick off
Yes, I know this might seem to counter my argument, but face-to-face comms are still really important. If it’s feasible, have an in-person meeting to kick off your project, and to kick off your team working together. An initial meeting, to break the ice, discuss ways of working, set the goals, can go a long way to making working with distributed teams successful. If this is really not viable, then hold a video call with the team. Try to make this a little more informal. I know, I know, not the dreaded cringey icebreakers… but something to make everyone relax and get to know each other is really important. Bring everybody together physically on a regular basis if you can, for example with quarterly meetings. You’ve got to really make sure people still feel part of a team, and it often takes a little more work with a remote team. Connect with new team members, one-on-one first, then you can have more of a ‘remote’ relationship.
Get visual
Visual communication is often a lot better tool to use than just a written sentence, and can help bring ideas to life. Encourage people to sketch things, take a photo and add this to your written communications. Or use a mockup tool to sketch ideas.
But what about Agile projects?
The whole premise of Agile projects is to have face-to-face contact I hear you cry. The Agile Manifesto itself states “The most efficient and effective method of conveying information to and within a development team is face-to-face conversation”. However, this doesn’t mean the death of remote working. In fact loads of successful companies still run Agile projects, whilst having a distributed team. With all the collaborative tools you can use for centralising code, tracking tasks, visualising products, it’s not difficult to still communicate in a way that works. Just think about how to replicate the principles of Agile remotely - working together daily, a supportive environment, trust, and simplicity. How can you translate these to your remote or distributed team?
One last thought to leave you with before you run off to eat your mince pies (in your pyjamas, whilst working). A common mistake in working with a remote project team or working remotely yourself, is replacing distance with time. If you’re away from the office you think you need to always be ‘on’ – messaging, being online, replying to requests. If you have a distributed team, you might think a lot of meetings, calls, and messages will be good to foster communication. But don’t overload these meetings, calls, and communication. This can be disruptive in itself. Give people the gift of some uninterrupted time to actually do some work, and not feel like they have to check in every second. |
2017 |
Suzanna Haworth |
suzannahaworth |
2017-12-06T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2017/designing-a-remote-project/ |
business |
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All That Glisters |
Tradition has it that at this time of year, families gather together, sit, eat and share stories. It’s an opportunity for the wisdom of the elders to be passed down to the younger members of the tribe. Tradition also has it that we should chase cheese downhill and dunk the nice lady to prove she’s a witch, so maybe let’s not put too much stock in that.
I’ve been building things on the web professionally for about twenty years, and although the web has changed immeasurably, it’s probably not changed as much as I have. While I can happily say I’m not the young (always right, always arrogant) developer that I once was, unfortunately I’m now an approaching-middle-age developer who thinks he’s always right and on top of it is extremely pompous. What can you do? Nature has devised this system with the distinct advantage of allowing us to always be right, and only ever wrong in the future or in the past. So let’s roll with it.
Increasingly, there seems to be a sense of fatigue within our industry. Just when you think you’ve got a handle on whatever the latest tool or technology is, something new comes out to replace it. Suddenly you find that you’ve invested precious time learning something new and it’s already old hat. The pace of change is so rapid, that new developers don’t know where to start, and experienced developers don’t know where it ends. With that in mind, here’s some fireside thoughts from a pompous old developer, that I hope might bring some Christmas comfort.
Reliable and boring beats shiny and new
There are so many new tools, frameworks, techniques, styles and libraries to learn. You know what? You don’t have to use them. You’re not a bad developer if you use Grunt even though others have switched to Gulp or Brunch or Webpack or Banana Sandwich. It’s probably misguided to spend lots of project time messing around with build tool fashions when your so last year build tool is already doing what you need.
Just a little reminder that it’s about 100 times more important what you build than how you build it.— Chris Coyier (@chriscoyier) December 10, 2017
I think it helps if we understand why so many new solutions exist. Most developers are predisposed to enjoy creating new things more than improving established systems. It’s natural, because it’s actually much easier and more exciting to create something new that works exactly how you think it should be than to improve an existing, imperfect solution. Improving and refactoring a system is hard, and it takes real chops, much more than just building something new.
The consequence of this is that new tools appear all the time. A developer will get a fresh new idea of how to tackle a problem – usually out of dissatisfaction with an existing solution, and figure the best way to implement that idea is to build something new around it. Often, that something new will do the same job as something old that already exists; it will just do it in a different way. Sometimes in a better way. Sometimes, just different.
xkcd: Standards
That’s not to say new tools are bad, and it’s not bad that they exist. We shouldn’t be crushing new ideas, and it’s not wrong to adopt a new solution over an old one, but you know what? There’s no imperative to switch right away. The next time you hit a pain point with your current solution, or have time to re-evaluate, check out what’s new and see how the latest generation of tools and technologies can help. There’s no prize for solving problems you don’t have yet, and heading further into the desert in search of water is a survival tactic, not an aspiration.
New is better, but also worse
Software, much like people, is born with a whole lot of potential and not much utility. Newborns — both digital and meaty — are exciting and cute but they also lead to sleepless nights and pools of vomit.
New technology contains lots of useful new features, but it’s also more likely to contain bugs and be subject to more rapid change. Jumping on a new framework is great, right until there are API changes and you need to refactor your entire project to be able to update. More mature solutions have a higher weight of existing projects on their shoulders, and so the need to maintain backward compatibility is stronger. Things still move forward, but in a more controlled way.
So how do we balance the need to move technology forward with the need to provide mature and stable solutions for the projects we work on? I think there’s a couple of good ways to do that.
Get personal
Use all the new shiny tools on your side-projects, personal projects, seasonal throw-aways and anywhere where the stakes are low. If you know you can patch around problems without much consequence, go for it. Build your personal blog on a CMS that stores data in the woven bark of a silver birch. Find where it breaks. Find where it excels. Find yourself if you like. When it comes to high-stakes projects, you’ll hopefully have enough experience to know what you’re getting into.
Focus on the unique problem
That’s not to say you should never risk using a new technology for ‘real’ work. Instead, distinguish the areas of your project where a new technology solves a specifically identified, measurable business objective, verses those where it won’t.
A brand new web application framework might be fun to use, but are you in the business of solving a web application framework problem? That new web server made of taffeta might increase static file throughput slightly, but are you in the business of serving static assets, or would it be better to just run up nginx and never have to think about that problem again. (Clue: it’s the nginx one.)
But when it comes to building that live sports interface for keeping fans up to date with the blow-by-blow of the big game, that’s where it might make sense to take a risk on an amazing-looking new JavaScript realtime interface framework. That’s the time to run up a breakthrough new message queue server that can deliver jobs to workers via extrasensory perception and keep the score updates flowing instantaneously.
Those are the risks worth taking, as those new technologies have the potential to help you solve your core problems in a markedly improved way. Unproven technology is worth the risk if it solves a specific business objective. If it doesn’t, don’t make work for yourself - use something mature and stable.
Pick the right tools
Our job as developers is to solve problems using code, and do so in an effective and responsible way. You’ve been hired to use your expertise in picking the right tools for the job, and a big part of that is weighing up the risk verse the reward of each part of the system. The best tools for the job might be something cutting edge, but ‘best’ can also mean most stable, reliable or easy-to-hire-for.
Go out and learn (and create!) new tools and experiment with them. Understand what problems they solve and what the pitfalls are. Use them in production for low-stakes projects to get real experience, and then once you really know their character, then think about using them when the stakes are higher.
The rest of the time? The tools you’re using now are solid and proven and you know their capabilities and pitfalls well. They might not always be the fashionable candidate, but they often make for a very solid choice. |
2017 |
Drew McLellan |
drewmclellan |
2017-12-24T00:00:00+00:00 |
https://24ways.org/2017/all-that-glisters/ |
business |