Wide Teams

Podcast #37: Justin Searls of Test Double

Jun 20, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Justin Searls of Test Double, shares his experiences – both good and bad, in working with distributed teams, how to turn the tides when things are going noticably sour within a project, and the importance of forming habits that stick. Show Notes: Test Double Twitter: @searls Beautiful Front End Code Conference 01:14 – Justin’s history and background with remote work 01:53 – Bad experiences with distributed teams 05:30 – Turning the tide 07:50 – Good experiences with distributed teams 11:25 – Normalization 13:33 – Communication cost is significantly higher within distributed teams 16:06 – Warning signs that the cost of communication is becoming too expensive 19:50 – Advice for dispersed teams

Podcast #34: Ron Evans of The Hybrid Group

May 31, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Ron Evans of The Hybrid Group talks about being a part of a consultancy and the importance of reputation, balancing family and distributed work, and a wonderful project aimed at our youth to introduce them to coding at a young age and keep the Ruby community alive and thriving! Show Notes: Twitter: @deadprogram The Hybrid Group Kanban Pad The Kids Ruby Project Clutch 00:51 – Introduction 01:50 – Interview begins 02:05 – Ron’s background 04:05 – Sustainable development 04:38 – Communication practices 06:00 – Being extreme 06:40 – Tools 11:45 – Consultancies 14:10 – Building a remote culture 23:40 – History of The Hybrid Group 29:35 – Pair programming and when to do it 36:48 – Does agile development work? 38:30 – Family and distributed work 41:50 – The Kids Ruby Project

Podcast #31: Joseph Moore of Pivotal Labs

May 9, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talk to Joseph Moore of Pivotal Labs. We talk about the challenges of moving from a collocated team to being a “satellite team member” thousands of miles away. What’s especially interesting about Joseph’s story is that he still pair-programs all day, every day with other members of his team despite being remote. Show Notes: 00:55 – Introduce Joe 01:41 – Interview begins 01:58 – Joe’s background 04:50 – Pair Programming 06:55 – Pair Programming 100% of the time while remote 09:10 – Patience and Social Skills while Pairing 13:55 – Keyboard back & forth sharing 23:08 – Daily Pair Swapping 25:09 – Going from co located to remote (Joe’s experience) 27:18 – Daily Standups 32:01 – Daily check-ins with clients 33:56 – Social impact of going from co located to remote 36:40 – Advice for

Podcast #29: John Hawkins of 9Seeds LLC

Apr 27, 11 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, an interview with John Hawkins, one of the founders of 9Seeds, a company that specializes in custom WordPress development. The 9Seeds team is fully dispersed, with every team member working from home. We talked about how 9Seeds came to be a distributed company, and why John intends never to set foot in a brick-and-mortar office again. Show notes: John Hawkins is @vegasgeek on Twitter 9Seeds LLC The Event Ticketing and Affiliate Manager WordPress plugins 9Seeds sponsors WordCamp conferences

Podcast #28: Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter

Mar 23, 11 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talk to Shane Pearlman of Shane & Peter, a fully dispersed software consultancy. We talked about recruiting the right kinds of people for a distributed team, and how to stay connected as friends as well as coworkers. Show notes: Shane Pearlman is @justlikeair on Twitter Shane & Peter Check out the Shane & Peter Lifeblog Redmine Adium Coworking Freelance Camp

Encouraging Involvement in Distributed Teams

Mar 14, 11 • In Basics, Featured, Practices, Tips & Hacks

One of the biggest challenges in remote work is simply making sure everyone has a strong sense of involvement. In this article Steven Baker, a veteran of dispersed agile software development teams, shares his experiences and recommendations for keeping the communication, camaraderie, and personal connections alive in a distributed setting. When you don’t occupy the same office for the same period of time every day with your co-workers, you can’t walk to your co-worker’s desk, or turn around in your chair to have a chat about what you’re working on. There is no water cooler to mill around get in the loop on what’s happening, and having lunch together is difficult. Differences in location, timezone, and working hours, can all combine to make you and the members of your team disconnected from each other. This

Podcast #26: Sahil Parikh of DeskAway.com

Mar 8, 11 • In Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talked to Sahil Parikh of DeskAway.com, a web-based collaboration tool for distributed teams. This is another episode recovered from near-disastrous technical malfunction, and as a result all of my audio has been re-dubbed. Thankfully, Sahil’s insights into he advantages of a dispersed team have been fully preserved. Show notes: Sahil Parikh is @sahilparikh on Twitter. Check out DeskAway at DeskAway.com / @deskaway

Podcast #24: Derek Wade

Feb 15, 11 • In Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, a conversation with Derek Wade, a collaboration expert and Team Coach at Kumido Adaptive Systems. We talk about building “high-gravity” distributed teams, work-scapes, and the benefits of simple, free-form tools for collaboration. This episode is “back from the dead” — all of the audio from my side of the interview was lost, but I reconstructed and re-dubbed my questions so that I could share this interview. Show notes: Derek can be found at derekwwade.net, and is @derekwwade on Twitter. Slides for the presentation “High Gravity Distributed Teams“ The #lrnchat hashtag on Twitter I did a video demo of the Cardmeeting tool

Wide Links #17

Dec 10, 10 • In Links

Some of my favorite reading on dispersed teams from the last week. In this edition: investing in your home office; staying in touch with your team; agile software practices for distributed teams; giving a presentation over the internet, and much more. Where to Invest for the Biggest Productivity Gains 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. tags: wideteams 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

Celebrating Six Months of Wide Teams!

Dec 8, 10 • In Site News

It’s our 6-month anniversary! Come join us for a look back over our first half-year of existence, and tell us what you want us to cover in the future. Six months ago (technically, six months ago yesterday) I published the first Wide Teams blog post. Since then I’ve interviewed dozens of remote workers, made a lot of awesome new friends, and confirmed that a lot of people are interested in the subject of geographically dispersed teams. We’ve even been featured in the Wall Street Journal! Some stats as of today, for the record: 82 posts, and 122 comments. 21 episodes of the Wide Teams podcast. 119 RSS feed subscribers. 227 people follow @wideteams on Twitter. 37 Facebook fans. Here are our five most popular posts over the last six months: Ironically, the most popular post