InfoQ Homepage Distributed Team Content on InfoQ
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Using Measurement to Optimise Remote Work
Dave Longman of HeadForwards wrote about using data to demonstrate the effectiveness of remote work during lockdown. Michael Schrage of MIT’s School of Management also wrote about the importance of using data-driven insights to improve performance in the current climate. Laura Giurge of London Business School talked about how isolation is teaching individuals and firms to be remotely effective.
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Trust and Safety in High Performing Teams: QCon London Q&A
People want to feel included in teams, and feel safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo. The first thing for each of us to do is acknowledge that we have a partnership with each of our team members. Like all relationships, care and attention are needed to strengthen the bond and work together effectively.
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Pandemic Programming Survey Results Show Negative Impact of COVID-19 Changes
The Pandemic Programming survey looked at the ways that developers' lives have been impacted by the lockdowns and changes caused by COVID-19. Over 2200 people from 52 countries answered the questionnaire to assess their wellbeing and productivity before and while working at home. The results show that wellbeing and productivity are suffering with some groups more impacted than others.
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Conflicting Reports on Remote Worker Productivity and Contentment
Remote working is becoming normal for the tech industry, with most tech employees working remotely due to the ongoing impacts of COVID-19. Studies and surveys are trying to measure the impact on productivity that organisations are seeing as a result of the shift. The results are conflicting and illustrate the complexity of the times we find ourselves in.
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Tech Giants Shift to More Remote Working for the Long Term
As the impacts of COVID-19 continue to be felt around the globe, and many tech industry employees get used to working from home, large tech companies are making long-term decisions about allowing and encouraging their people to work remotely. Facebook, Twitter, Shopify and others are making plans to have most or all of their workforce permanently remote.
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How to Supercharge a Team with Delegation: QCon London Q&A
Delegating work can result in getting it done better and faster; it increases team autonomy and creates opportunities for learning. Delegation is a continuum: it begins by doing a task yourself and ends by having somebody else take on that task. James Stanier, VP of engineering at Brandwatch, spoke about delegating to self-organizing teams at QCon London 2020.
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Successful Remote Working
For both employees and employers, remote work requires intentional design and implementation to be effective. People find remote work challenging because the established mindset says that being in an office is how work gets done. Despite the challenges, when remote work is done well, the advantages to employees and employer are sufficient to make it worthwhile.
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Remote Work Flourishes and Enables Business Continuity
Buffer.com and AngelList recently published the 2020 State of Remote Work survey results. The survey coincides with a report by the Wall Street Journal on a sudden boom in remote working within China. Remote work has enabled business continuity across companies like Alibaba, in response to mobility restrictions imposed due to the COVID-19 virus.
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Making Remote Mob Testing Work
Remote mob testing can be done successfully, but requires suitable communication technology, a moderator who keeps everyone on board, and you need to frequently change the driver between local team members and remotes.
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Developing Cultural Sensitivity in Working with Other Cultures
Cultural differences can be a challenge in an international workplace, but at the same time cultural diversity can also be fascinating, said Rachel Smets. At Positive Psychology in Practice 2019 she suggested we prepare ourselves when working with other cultures or moving abroad, and develop our cultural sensitivity by learning about new cultures as much as we can.
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DOES London: Team Topologies and Cognitive Load
At the DevOps Enterprise Summit in London this year, authors of the soon-to-be-published 'Team Topologies', a book that aims to offer a practical, adaptive model for organisational design, Matthew Skelton and Manuel Pais, took to the stage to share their thoughts with the audience.
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Defining Bounded Contexts — Eric Evans at DDD Europe
A bounded context is a defined part of software where particular terms and rules apply in a consistent way, Eric Evans explained in his keynote at DDD Europe earlier this year; it should have a refined model and a language with unambiguous definitions. In a recently published presentation, he describes different kinds of bounded contexts, including some that involve microservices.
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Experiences from Working with Distributed Agile Teams
Not being able to frequently connect with your colleagues face-to-face makes successful communication more difficult in distributed teams, said Shabi Shafei, Scrum Master at ABN AMRO Bank. A Q&A about how distributed teams can transform into great agile teams.
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Building High-Quality Products with Distributed Teams
To ensure the quality of the products and services, Intermedia uses a common test & pre-production environment for all distributed teams. Lilia Gorbachik, product manager at Intermedia, mentioned at European Women in Tech that having a mature testing process, working with risks, and making daily decisions from a high-quality product perspective are key aspects to build high-quality products.
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Experiences from Remote Mob Programming: Q&A with Sal Freudenberg
At Cucumber, mob programming is done remotely by using a cycle in which the driver pulls down the latest code and then shares their screen, the team mobs for 10 minutes or so and commits the code. Next, the driver’s role rotates. “Remote mobbing works really well for me”, says Sal Freudenberg, “because it lets me tailor my working environment and work in a spot where I feel comfortable.”