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Nice term.
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Knowing these details creates intimacy. (It also saves a lot of time when you finally do get to catchup with these people in real life!) It’s not so much about meaning, it’s just about being in touch.
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What does seems clear is that, for a lot of people, this ambient intimacy adds value to people’s lives and their relationships with others. I think we can expect to see a lot more of it… but if I was building a tool to support it, I’d be keeping it very simple and unobtrusive. Osmosis is one thing, hyper-stimulation is quite another!
Some early thought on the value of talking about what you're doing.
Good stuff here... I like the suggestion to eschew company-mandated tools.
in list: Wide Teams Linkroll
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Use a bring-your-own-tools (BYOT) model for equipping staff to work remotely:provide an equipment stipend and allow workers to choose their own equipment.
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The new comments system works like a conversation thread on a Facebook, complete with @replies. When someone is tagged in a conversation, they will receive an e-mail notification. The user can then either click-through to the document, or simply respond to the e-mail. All the conversation is captured and stored in Google Docs with the document. If the notifications become too much, users can mute notifications.
Terrific article about one team's experience with a very widely dispersed organization.
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It's awesome when the critical path moves seamlessly from North America to Western Europe/Asia. For example, say you have 80 hours of tasks that can't be done in parallel. A local team will need two weeks to do these tasks. A global team, on the other hand, can work separate 8-hour shifts and get them done in one week. That's twice as fast!
It's awesome when my code is tested while I sleep. A small team of local developers can be extremely efficient when paired with a remote QA. I spend my day fixing bugs and adding features, and by the time I come in the next morning, these issues have been tested and either re-opened or closed. Prioritizing tasks is a breeze, and we don't lose as much time on code freezes leading up to a release.
A telecommuting trial run isn't a bad idea, as long as it's not biased against success from the start.
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Telecommuting is becoming more common in organizations of every size. It makes it possible to work with the best people for your projects, no matter where they are based. It can be an opportunity to keep your team happy and it’s a privilege you may be able to provide without a lot of work or expense on your part. Even if telecommuting doesn’t wind up working for all of your team and on all of the projects you work on, it’s worth at least trying out to see when it will work and when it could be useful.
Don't forget to praise your coworkers just because you can't see them.
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One of my clients has a habit of tweeting her impressions of her team’s performance, particularly around project deadlines. She makes fairly general but genuine comments about the team’s work, what’s motivating them and the atmosphere of excitement prior to product release. This communicates her appreciation to her team members as well as others in the organization, and contributes to the sense of respect and vitality in this close-knit team.
Really good article about the importance of friendships in making teams more productive.
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Merely orchestrating virtual water cooler meetings on a regular basis does not address the issue, especially when management coordinates the meetings.
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No doubt, developing such shared experience among members of distributed teams takes longer than it does when employees meet in the hallway or on breaks. Nevertheless, shared experience, not just shared information, is fundamental to the social networks underlying collaboration and community.
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Script the important collaborations. Don't make collaboration optional between the teams when planning, tracking and reviewing (of course this doesn't mean everyone on all teams). The level of collaboration will be context-specific to the domain of the work, its complexity and the maturity of the team.
A Skype competitor - up to 6-way video chat with recording. Windows and Mac only.
The government's new rules on telework may start to push non-federal jobs outside of the office as well.
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paying attention to how this new law is implemented could be very valuable in many ways: for the business who wants a positive impact on the bottom line, for managers who want to find and keep talented employees, and for employees who are looking for some flexibility and balance.
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The best way to decide on what software to go for is to look at what capabilities you will need to have, this will help you decide whether you go for commercial or free software? The main software options such as Camtasia and Captivate have a cost (both monetary and in the skill required to use them). However there are a number of free online screencasting tools including Camstudio, Jing and Screenr. These have limited abilities but may do the job. Another option may be to use a lecture capture service if one is available.
For dispersed teams, Agile project management methods are the way to go.
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Teams often fall back on waterfall in these situations. The feeling is that if you write everything down in excruciating detail you minimize the need for collaboration. That is so wrong!
Bulky documents are hard to understand under the best of circumstances. Add in language barriers, just to make things interesting, and you have a failure waiting to happen. Do not try this at work!
Scott McDowell's wrap-up of the recent Net:Work conference in San Francisco.
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How to change default emotions from negative to positive in virtual relationships? This may be one for the psychologists. I think this has huge significance and it’s not really discussed all that much. Earlier this year I heard a presentation with Daniel Goleman, godfather of Emotional Intelligence. He stated that there’s a negativity bias to email – at the neural level. If an email’s content is neutral, we assume the tone is negative. I think this problem naturally extends from email to other virtual communication tools. In face-to-face conversation the content of the message, and the emotion, is enhanced by tone of voice, facial expressions, etc. Technology creates a distance that we humans fill with negative emotions as a default.
You can save a lot of money by working remotely, but that doesn't mean you should skimp on the tools that really matter. A few strategically chosen expenditures can dramatically increase your productivity and connectivity.
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Remote workers can’t escape talking on the phone, or its modern day equivalents. I personally have a fairly expensive handset hooked up to my landline, which I use when it’s important to have great call quality and a connection I can depend upon. You might not consider a landline a wise investment, but if everything else goes to pot, you can at least always get on the phone and call someone. Especially if you have a phone that will work even in a power outage.
Battle-tested advice from a company with workers dispersed across multiple continents.
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Now picture this: the project you're managing is launching in three hours. Your stakeholders just found a nasty bug and your lead developer is nowhere to be found. Is he at his desk? You have no idea, because his desk is 3,000 miles away. You look around and quickly realize that Rover is not going to be able to fix this for you. And there's no coffee because you haven't left the house in three days. What do you do?!
Not a new article, but I just came across it and I think a lot of the advice here still applies. Of particular note is the section on the importance of good network connectivity.
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As empirical evidence, for the first year or two at Pivotal I had DSL, which was pretty fast with low ping, but had continual problems with performance. Then, I switched to corporate-grade cable with a significantly higher bandwidth limit. My experience improved dramatically and my problems decreased greatly.
A great slide set by David Bland about implementing SCRUM in a distributed team.
A little unintentional humor for those who work from home. If you've ever wished you could fill your quiet, peaceful home office with all the noise of a traditional office floor - now you can!
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Thriving Office contains the sounds of voices, phones, computers, and much more. One 39-minute track is "Busy" and the other is "Very Busy".
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Created by: Avdi Grimm
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