Telecommuting Team
December 8, 2004 9:20 PM
Three continents, five time zones, fifteen+ developers, one million lines of code. What are the best tools to create a functional team in the age of telecommuting, home offices, outsourcing, cultural differences and twenty hours of time differential. [MI]
My company, and more specifically my team (A small tight knit development group), is becoming increasingly geographically diversified. We already have several team members tele-communicating from home and now an additional member will start working overseas. To top it off we are planning to start outsourcing some development work and we want to treat the new developers as regular members of the team. I would like to a have a tool set in place to allow as close to the off-the-cuff collaboration one gets with people local in the office that is possible with using low cost tools. Conventional audio-conferencing is good, but difficult to setup and expensive across national borders. We currently use crap-ola but secure and functional Lotus Sametime for basic IM and subversion for file sharing, code reviews and version control. However, none of these tools recreate the "water cooler" knowledge transfer you get by having people in the same place. I'm thinking something like always on video and audio conferencing, desktop and whiteboard sharing. We are a Windows XP shop and have server space available at a super-peered co-lo site. It would be great if the tools are 'professional' quality, easy to use and secure. Looking for any suggestions on specific tools or even general ideas on solutions on how to get a group of people spread out on three continents a five time zones to become a team.
My company, and more specifically my team (A small tight knit development group), is becoming increasingly geographically diversified. We already have several team members tele-communicating from home and now an additional member will start working overseas. To top it off we are planning to start outsourcing some development work and we want to treat the new developers as regular members of the team. I would like to a have a tool set in place to allow as close to the off-the-cuff collaboration one gets with people local in the office that is possible with using low cost tools. Conventional audio-conferencing is good, but difficult to setup and expensive across national borders. We currently use crap-ola but secure and functional Lotus Sametime for basic IM and subversion for file sharing, code reviews and version control. However, none of these tools recreate the "water cooler" knowledge transfer you get by having people in the same place. I'm thinking something like always on video and audio conferencing, desktop and whiteboard sharing. We are a Windows XP shop and have server space available at a super-peered co-lo site. It would be great if the tools are 'professional' quality, easy to use and secure. Looking for any suggestions on specific tools or even general ideas on solutions on how to get a group of people spread out on three continents a five time zones to become a team.
Well, our situation is not quite the same but we use a combination of Skype and VNC. Skype does the instant messaging and VOIP while VNC allows us to share screens at a moments notice.
posted by figment at 1:12 AM on December 9, 2004
posted by figment at 1:12 AM on December 9, 2004
Get used to it people, Transnational boarders mean squat these days, The first people to grok this process successfully are going to unbeaten.
Can you tell me who'll win in the 5th at Santa Anita today too?
posted by yerfatma at 4:12 AM on December 9, 2004
Can you tell me who'll win in the 5th at Santa Anita today too?
posted by yerfatma at 4:12 AM on December 9, 2004
there's no one magic bullet. you need different tools for different parts of the collaboration process, and for different people's tastes.
when things get in a mess, as they invariably will at some point, a personal telephone call is best, in my experience. better that videocon, i find.
for meetings, you need videocon, of course - probably a mix of conference room systems and webcams.
but, as you recognise, the hardest part is the water cooler effect. in my opinion the best solution is a decent mail client (to manage the volume of traffic), a mailing list (or several) and a "send everything" attitude. for a small team you might be able to use a chat client instead. either way, the tools are useless unless people understand that they are *not* wasting time by sending and reading emails about apparently trivial matters. that's the hardest part. some people will drop out of the distributed conversation and, a week later, they're isolated. typically, because they think it's a waste of time. somehow you have to convince these people that "chatting" is not just acceptable, it's what they need to do if they want to stay within the loop.
i can't emphasise enough - it's the attitude that's critical. if people understand they *must* communicate you can let them choose how.
(i worked from home for several years in england with a company in scotland; now i work in chile with an organisation spread across the usa.)
posted by andrew cooke at 4:40 AM on December 9, 2004
when things get in a mess, as they invariably will at some point, a personal telephone call is best, in my experience. better that videocon, i find.
for meetings, you need videocon, of course - probably a mix of conference room systems and webcams.
but, as you recognise, the hardest part is the water cooler effect. in my opinion the best solution is a decent mail client (to manage the volume of traffic), a mailing list (or several) and a "send everything" attitude. for a small team you might be able to use a chat client instead. either way, the tools are useless unless people understand that they are *not* wasting time by sending and reading emails about apparently trivial matters. that's the hardest part. some people will drop out of the distributed conversation and, a week later, they're isolated. typically, because they think it's a waste of time. somehow you have to convince these people that "chatting" is not just acceptable, it's what they need to do if they want to stay within the loop.
i can't emphasise enough - it's the attitude that's critical. if people understand they *must* communicate you can let them choose how.
(i worked from home for several years in england with a company in scotland; now i work in chile with an organisation spread across the usa.)
posted by andrew cooke at 4:40 AM on December 9, 2004
also, do your timezones have overlap? if so, that time is critical - all meetings and "realtime" communication has to be in that gap. it's worth shifting working hours a little to maximise it and if you have flexitime you might make that (rather than a fixed clock time in different places) the compulsory core hours. local meetings should be scheduled outside the gap. within the gap, chat can be used. outside you need something more like email. returning to email, you have to balance the volume with structure. subject line conventions and different mail lists help.
meeting face to face can be valuable, but should be carefully planned. if it's going to happen you may want to make people develop on laptops rather than desktops so that they continue working when together. you may find that by offering american rates to overseas developers you can get them to finance airfares for meeting! (seriously, i almost accepted such a deal recently - i would have had an excellent wage by chilean standards, even after paying for 8 trips/year to the uk).
and, of couse, it's a lot easier if you've experience working together before you separate.
don't know if any of this helps. it's all obvious really.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:42 AM on December 9, 2004
meeting face to face can be valuable, but should be carefully planned. if it's going to happen you may want to make people develop on laptops rather than desktops so that they continue working when together. you may find that by offering american rates to overseas developers you can get them to finance airfares for meeting! (seriously, i almost accepted such a deal recently - i would have had an excellent wage by chilean standards, even after paying for 8 trips/year to the uk).
and, of couse, it's a lot easier if you've experience working together before you separate.
don't know if any of this helps. it's all obvious really.
posted by andrew cooke at 5:42 AM on December 9, 2004
the tools are useless unless people understand that they are *not* wasting time by sending and reading emails about apparently trivial matters. that's the hardest part. some people will drop out of the distributed conversation and, a week later, they're isolated. typically, because they think it's a waste of time. somehow you have to convince these people that "chatting" is not just acceptable, it's what they need to do if they want to stay within the loop.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I always make a little mental note when I hear coworkers say, "Did you get my email?" because it means somebody is not holdiing up their end in that mode of communication.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:25 AM on December 9, 2004
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I always make a little mental note when I hear coworkers say, "Did you get my email?" because it means somebody is not holdiing up their end in that mode of communication.
posted by Mo Nickels at 8:25 AM on December 9, 2004
Any specific recommendations for ad-hoc desktop video conferencing. We really need to host and control it ourselves, since this is going to be highly propriety information.
We have the capability to setup some of the open source DIY solutions, but any highly capable software would be interesting to look at.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 10:28 AM on December 9, 2004
We have the capability to setup some of the open source DIY solutions, but any highly capable software would be interesting to look at.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 10:28 AM on December 9, 2004
we use the ms thing (netmeeting?) which also talks to our conference room hardware (macs have a problem though - can't remember the details, but something that is supposed to be compatible, isn't - both netmeeting and the hardware (can't remember the name, but you know what i mean) work with some protocol and last time i looked the only open source implementation was either flakey or non-existent). for one-to-one skype is great. i don't think skype does conference calls though (skype is a lot easier to get through a firewall than netmeeting and also allows chat).
posted by andrew cooke at 11:11 AM on December 9, 2004
posted by andrew cooke at 11:11 AM on December 9, 2004
Groove Networks (Ray Ozzie's company) has Groove, which supports a few key things --
1. repositories of content (past access to whiteboards and stuff). I don't know how this would work for CVS systems, but the real code is probably in a CVS already, so I imagine that hte conversations are *about* the code (reivews, discussions, meta-discussions, code snippets for alternatives, etc).
2. peripheral awareness - see "who's around?" and "who's doing what?" at a glance (and without pinging anyone).
3. integrated (and industrial strength) chat. The chat client can instanly lanuch VNC-type stuff, whiteboards, switch from text to audio or audio + video (don't know if this is out of the box).
The produce seems to have shifted even more towards your general needs, but it was, at its inception, a platform instead of a product. It was made for people to write their own applications on top of it, so I imagine that it's still extensible. I'm not sure what the cost/benefit analysis of designing your own modules would be, but it probably still supports that.
posted by zpousman at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2004
1. repositories of content (past access to whiteboards and stuff). I don't know how this would work for CVS systems, but the real code is probably in a CVS already, so I imagine that hte conversations are *about* the code (reivews, discussions, meta-discussions, code snippets for alternatives, etc).
2. peripheral awareness - see "who's around?" and "who's doing what?" at a glance (and without pinging anyone).
3. integrated (and industrial strength) chat. The chat client can instanly lanuch VNC-type stuff, whiteboards, switch from text to audio or audio + video (don't know if this is out of the box).
The produce seems to have shifted even more towards your general needs, but it was, at its inception, a platform instead of a product. It was made for people to write their own applications on top of it, so I imagine that it's still extensible. I'm not sure what the cost/benefit analysis of designing your own modules would be, but it probably still supports that.
posted by zpousman at 12:09 PM on December 9, 2004
Oh, and I'll chime in and say that videoconferencing is NOT a magic bullet. It's barely ready for prime-time, and without serious (and specialized) hardware / software from Polycom or Tandberg, it's basically useless. I'll tell you why:
It's hard to say why it's better than the phone.
In fact, phones have many more features. Say you want to discuss something with somebody overseas. You fire up the vc gear (in a different room perhaps). You make a call. But it rings in *their* conference room. So you also call their desk phone and have them run down the hall. Oh, the gear is unplugged. Please try again. This will happen even if the vc gear is on the desktop ("sorry, I needed the USB port for something last week, and never plugged back in my camera, let me get that plugged in and call you.... oh the camera just crashed my machine! Give me 5 minutes....")
At this point, once you've got the person that you're looking for on the phone, why not JUST ASK THEM THE DAMN QUESTION?! (oh, and tell them that you have a read striped sweater on).
Phones also have great features like easy conference calling, call waiting (multiple lines), and they have VOICE MAIL. How do you leave a message with a vc system? Back to the phone, that's how.
So VC systems are bad for use for ad-hoc conferencing, for the reasons mentioned above.
But they're also not very valuable (or not as valuable as you might imagine) for planned conferences. For the following reasons:
If it's desktop - everyone will have trouble with the hardware (and not just once). Bandwidth will be a problem (especially overseas without Internet2 connections). Fan noise and general clatter (especially typing at a keyboard) will force everyone to use headsets. The lighting in cubes / offices is really bad for video conferencing (lighting for vc suites is especially designed -- you don't want florescent lights coming from the ceiling as your only light source).
If it's conference-room based vc conferencing, it's better, because some of those problems from desktop "kits" can be improved upon (especially lighting and sound quality). But it's still only marginally better than a phone call. There will be lag, so you'll still talk over each other (a big problem in conference calls that's mitigated by vc, but not eliminated). If you have more than two sites, you'll want to "brady bunch" the display (show quadrants or even smaller sections with 1 site in a section). But this will make every person so small as to be all but useless. Plus, if you have something to share (a document, a presentation, an agenda, a physical item), you'll have to give up a screen for this. This can be inside the vc channel or outside it, but either way it's a pain to set up and not a very good experience once it is set up. We had Tandberg VC gear with 2 32" TVs plus a digital projector (and the host site could drive the presentation) at each site. This cost about $35,000, and it was only passable in terms of people getting something out of meetings.
All that said, I'd recommend getting a few smartboards if you've got all the money in the world. These integrate really well with videoconferencing systems. They're also cool because they can be always on and this can be good for ad-hoc conference room style meetings. The problem is that for them to be useful, you need one at every site... and it looks like your application has a central location with a few people as satellites instead of small teams distributed in space (but co-located with others from the company in whatever far flung spot).
On preview: damn this is long! Sorry, I spend close to a quarter of a million dollars on state of the art videoconferencing equipment in 2002-2003 and I saw what that gets you.
posted by zpousman at 12:30 PM on December 9, 2004
It's hard to say why it's better than the phone.
In fact, phones have many more features. Say you want to discuss something with somebody overseas. You fire up the vc gear (in a different room perhaps). You make a call. But it rings in *their* conference room. So you also call their desk phone and have them run down the hall. Oh, the gear is unplugged. Please try again. This will happen even if the vc gear is on the desktop ("sorry, I needed the USB port for something last week, and never plugged back in my camera, let me get that plugged in and call you.... oh the camera just crashed my machine! Give me 5 minutes....")
At this point, once you've got the person that you're looking for on the phone, why not JUST ASK THEM THE DAMN QUESTION?! (oh, and tell them that you have a read striped sweater on).
Phones also have great features like easy conference calling, call waiting (multiple lines), and they have VOICE MAIL. How do you leave a message with a vc system? Back to the phone, that's how.
So VC systems are bad for use for ad-hoc conferencing, for the reasons mentioned above.
But they're also not very valuable (or not as valuable as you might imagine) for planned conferences. For the following reasons:
If it's desktop - everyone will have trouble with the hardware (and not just once). Bandwidth will be a problem (especially overseas without Internet2 connections). Fan noise and general clatter (especially typing at a keyboard) will force everyone to use headsets. The lighting in cubes / offices is really bad for video conferencing (lighting for vc suites is especially designed -- you don't want florescent lights coming from the ceiling as your only light source).
If it's conference-room based vc conferencing, it's better, because some of those problems from desktop "kits" can be improved upon (especially lighting and sound quality). But it's still only marginally better than a phone call. There will be lag, so you'll still talk over each other (a big problem in conference calls that's mitigated by vc, but not eliminated). If you have more than two sites, you'll want to "brady bunch" the display (show quadrants or even smaller sections with 1 site in a section). But this will make every person so small as to be all but useless. Plus, if you have something to share (a document, a presentation, an agenda, a physical item), you'll have to give up a screen for this. This can be inside the vc channel or outside it, but either way it's a pain to set up and not a very good experience once it is set up. We had Tandberg VC gear with 2 32" TVs plus a digital projector (and the host site could drive the presentation) at each site. This cost about $35,000, and it was only passable in terms of people getting something out of meetings.
All that said, I'd recommend getting a few smartboards if you've got all the money in the world. These integrate really well with videoconferencing systems. They're also cool because they can be always on and this can be good for ad-hoc conference room style meetings. The problem is that for them to be useful, you need one at every site... and it looks like your application has a central location with a few people as satellites instead of small teams distributed in space (but co-located with others from the company in whatever far flung spot).
On preview: damn this is long! Sorry, I spend close to a quarter of a million dollars on state of the art videoconferencing equipment in 2002-2003 and I saw what that gets you.
posted by zpousman at 12:30 PM on December 9, 2004
This thread is closed to new comments.
a) The plan would be to convince the datacenter guys to let me run the collaboration server in our production datacenter. To put it in perspective while bandwidth is expensive, we are already paying six digits for our space and have direct peering connections that are epecially good to the PacRim. I would want the international team members to have broadband in their respective countries and try to go with an all public IP or VPN solution.
The point of this question is not about replacing voice conferencing. As far as I'm concerned, our voice conference provider is as good as free. Its that I don't think that conference calls provide the same level of informal knowledge sharing that you get in an office. If someone has a question thats best answered by pooling a bunch of peoples wisdom, its a pain in the ass to set up the number and the meeting and to get everyone on at the same time. I know nothing can replace everyone being there, but I'm interested in other people's success stories doing distributed collaboration. I mean, look at the open source projects out there. There you have people who don't even know each other. But they have set up a very successful system thats gets good work done.
Perhaps a better phrasing would be, what and how would you replace IM for off the cuff questions and discussions for a separated group.
One of my fevered ideas is giving everyone a phone mic and USB camera and providing a stupid easy way of saying "I want to video conference with John and Jane and share screens right now"
As for the second part. I know your trying to be helpful, so please realize that I'm and asshole out of the goodness of my heart.
Thats really fucking insulting. We have a team thats built what I consider one of the most complex pure HTML based web applications on the web today, supporting customers in 16 countries with many hundreds of millions of USD going through that code every month. All of which was done with a core technical team of under 10 people. The decision to diversify the team geographically was not taken lightly . But with the the requirements on the ground, the need to be as nationally diverse as our clients and the ability to add 5 offshore develpers for every 1 system architect at home, the risks are worth the reward. Additionally, I disagree with the entire premise that only piecemeal well defined functionality can be tossed over the wall to offshored team members.
I fully intend to make these new team members full fledged technologist. Just because they happen to live in India or Israel does not mean that they're incapable of doing the same work that that gets done here. What I'm looking for though, if the 'lubricant' that could make everyone gel together. Whethers its an infrastructure solution, and process (Maybe sending rotating home developer out to the satellite offices 2 or month of more)
Get used to it people, Transnational boarders mean squat these days, The first people to grok this process successfully are going to unbeaten. I just want to if anybody has has some success with a situating like this, where'er gadgets or a progress.
posted by PissOnYourParade at 11:57 PM on December 8, 2004