I don't have one yet although I'm slowing transforming my existing team into one.
I'm doing so by.
Communication, communication, communication.
Documentation, documentation, documentation.
Ask HN: Has anyone had any success with distributed development teams?
11–13 of 13 posts
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had any success with distributed development teams?
#12The company I work for, has devs/teams in multiple countries (at least 4 that I know of) and most of us work on the same product. The only people who will find it hard to survive are those who need to be hand held. Personally, I follow "asking for forgiveness is better than permission", except in production and money related activities. If I have an idea to test it, a new library (or design or whatever) to use etc, I rarely ask, I just do it. Once in a while it will be a waste of time, but no one gets upset because I tried something new.
Communicate effectively, be a self starter and above all, organize everything well so people aren't scrambling to find stuff when you are not around. Those would be my tips
Of course, everything in moderation and all that...
Re: Ask HN: Has anyone had any success with distributed development teams?
#13I worked on one for nearly 2 years. We were distributed, but across the same time zone.
Every day for standup we would skype into a standup call. After the meeting we would all leave the call open but put out mics on mute. If I needed someone all I had to do was unmute and say their name.
It gave the benefit of working remote, but being able to communicate like we were working next to each other. It also let us have an "open environment" where I can listen on any conversation but also turn my volume down if it was distracting.
There was also an added benefit that if part of the team was doing a screen share (trying to fix a bug, or go over UX) anyone was able to watch if they were interested.
We two rules and they worked well.
1. If you were going to turn your volume off or leave the call you had to leave a message so the team knew. If someone needed you they could call you directly. 2. Be considerate of chatter. If a conversation or screen share was going to exceed 30 minutes, take it to a private call and leave an open invitation to others. This was so a single conversation couldn't dominate the main call
It was the most effective and performant team I have ever worked on