Wide Teams

Episode #85: Allen Maxwell of EmpowerIT

Jun 12, 13 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode, Allen Maxwell of EmpowerIT, talks about several remote tools and resources, collaborative drawing and design, and making remote working work. Show Notes: Allen Maxwell (twitter github [email protected]) 00:36 – Allen Maxwell Introduction 03:09 – Working Remotely 06:46 – “A Day in the Life” 07:24 – Working with Team Members 10:17 – The Evolution of Remote Tools and Pair Programming 14:25 – Making remote working work 16:43 – Collaborative Drawing & Design 21:10 – Face-to-face meetings and nonverbal cues

Podcast #38: Vassilis Rizopoulos of Zühlke

Jun 27, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

Vassilis Rizopoulos, of Zühlke, talks about what it is like to handle equipment that can be remotely operated, working within a company’s IT limitations, and the importance of setting boundaries when working from home. Show Notes: Twitter: @arcandros Google+ EuRuKo Zühlke 01:20 – Vassilis’ history and background 05:30 – Embedded hardware development 08:49 – Structure of Vasillis’ remote teams 11:17 – Iteration meetings 14:36 – Daily stand-ups 15:24 – Interaction with co-workers 18:30 – Information radiators 22:41 – Working with IT limitations 26:00 – Advice for working remotely 27:00 – Positives and negatives of working remotely

Podcast #35: Harvey Losin

Jun 6, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

Wide Teams field correspondent Keith Bennett interviews Harvey Losin, talking about outsourcing and the challenges that come with it; working with people in different time zones and cultures; and why knowing business is more valuable than any technical tool you can offer. Show Notes: 02:30 – Harvey’s background and information 04:40 – Working with time zones 05:22 – Communication issues 07:00 – Assignments 09:35 – Working with time zones 11:00 – Tools 12:30 – Providers should adjust to their clients 13:15 – Outsourcing challenges 15:41 – How Harvey got his start 19:35 – Keep a balance of local and overseas clients 20:43 – Never be complacent with technology 25:40 – Studying business 27:25 – Dealing with clients from a different culture 35:00 – Advice

Podcast #32: Louis Font of Zyncro

May 16, 12 • In Featured, Interviews, Podcast

In this episode I talk to Louis Font of Zyncro. We talk about his internationally distributed team and how they, as a company, seek to be available to customers 24/7 no matter what time zone they are located in, solving communication gaps between businesses and social networks, and how important physical communication is in the world of remote work. Show Notes: ZyncroBlog Twitter: @zyncro Facebook 00:40 – Introduction 02:22 – Louis’ background 04:20 – Distributed team structure and background 09:08 – Challenges working distributed 10:30 – Cultural differences between team members 12:00 – Zyncro as a company 16:22 – Advice for distributed teams 17:20 – Future of distributed teams

The Narrating Your Work Experiment

Aug 4, 11 • In Experiences, Featured

Hans de Zwart recently finished an experiment in which he encouraged his distributed team to “narrate their work”—to issue frequent updates to the team about what they were doing. In this article, he discusses the results of the experiment. This article was originally posted on Hans’ blog, and he has kindly granted permission to reprint it here. A few months back I posted a design for an experiment on my blog. The goal of the experiment was to find out whether it would be possible to use a microblogging tool to narrate our work with the intention of making better performing virtual teams. Over the last two months, the direct team that I work in (consisting of 18 people) basically participated in the experiment in the way that it was designed: They posted constant, daily or weekly updates

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

Podcast #27: Susan Tenby & Jessica Dally of TechSoup

Mar 16, 11 • In Interviews, Podcast

This podcast is a departure from the dispersed software development teams I usually cover. I interviewed Susan Tenby and Jessica Dally of TechSoup, a nonprofit focused on providing other nonprofits with the technology they need to better accomplish their missions. One way they assist nonprofits is in helping them to use Second Life, a massive on-line “virtual world”, to collaborate and build community online. I talked to Susan and Jessica about why TechSoup is a distributed organization, and why organizations are using Second Life to meet, network, and do their work. For someone who spends a lot of time doing remote collaboration, it was eye-opening for me to discover this whole new frontier of online interaction. After listening to this interview you may just be inspired to add a virtual world meeting space to your

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

Wide Links #18

Feb 25, 11 • In Links

Been a while since I did one of these… here’s a fresh helping of remote-work related links from all around the web. What to Do When An Employee Asks to Telecommute: Online Collaboration « A telecommuting trial run isn’t a bad idea, as long as it’s not biased against success from the start. tags: wideteams 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,