Mihai Mafteianu

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 5/5

Mihai — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:00:33 +0000

Fifth and latest post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Connecting remotely at a personal level

Working remotely is not working alone

Not being present in a physical work environment does not allow a member of the team to stop communicating actively with his colleagues. On the contrary one must ensure that all others know what he’s working on at all times, provides consistent status updates and helps the project manager track his or her progress.

Frequent video calls between team members

Video calls are closer to a physical interaction than emails or simple voice calls. Using video adds a personal touch and helps at better understanding each other. One on one video calls are possible via Skype and for more participants solutions like Dimdim or WebEx can be used. At least the weekly team meeting must have video, as well as most of the one on one Skype calls.

Meeting at the beginning of the project in person

While not possible for all teams, meeting at the beginning in person offers a boost hard to replicate otherwise. It is easier to agree on responsibilities and see each other’s communication and work style in such an environment, but it can as well take place later in the project. Many distributed teams meet in person at least once a year for this reasons.

All meetings are well documented with clear agenda and meeting notes

While a remote meeting has less human interaction this can be overcome by better managing the meeting process. Setting the agenda and sending back and forth some emails to clarify what is to be discussed will help set the focus better when the actual meeting takes place. A team member, taking the role of the meeting facilitator, will keep meeting notes and will ensure the agenda is followed and the meeting stays on time.

Corporate Culture at NeXT lead by Steve Jobs

Mihai — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 15:15:07 +0000

Attached below is a section from Wikipedia on the corporate culture Steve Jobs implemented at NeXT out of the frustration of working on a bureaucratic environment at Apple and eventually being removed from the company by the very people he employed to implement it. The result is a completely different approach, apparently similar to what one can find at Apple now.

Jobs had felt stymied by Apple’s corporate structure and was determined to avoid the bureaucratic infighting that led to his resignation. He created a different corporate culture at NeXT in terms of facilities, salaries, and benefits. Jobs had experimented with some structural changes at Apple but at NeXT he abandoned conventional corporate structures, instead making a “community” with “members” instead of employees. There were only two different salaries at NeXT until the early 1990s. Team members who joined before 1986 were paid $75,000 while those who joined afterwards were paid $50,000. This caused a few awkward situations where managers were paid less than their employees. Employees were given performance reviews and raises every six months because of the spartan salary plans. To foster openness, all employees had full access to the payrolls, although few employees ever took advantage of the privilege. NeXT’s health insurance plan offered benefits to not only married couples but unmarried couples and same-sex couples, although the latter privilege was later withdrawn due to insurance complications. The payroll schedule was also very different from other companies in Silicon Valley at the time: instead of getting paid twice a month at the end of the pay period, employees would get paid once a month in advance.
Jobs found office space in Palo Alto on Deer Creek Road, occupying a glass and concrete building which featured a staircase designed by architect I. M. Pei. The first floor used hardwood flooring and large worktables where the workstations would be assembled. To avoid inventory errors, NeXT used the just in time (JIT) inventory strategy. The company contracted out for all major components such as mainboards and cases and had the finished components shipped to the first floor for assembly. The second floor was the office space with an open floor plan. The only enclosed rooms were Jobs’ office and a few conference rooms. As NeXT expanded more office space was needed. The company rented an office in Redwood City, designed by Pei. The architectural centerpiece was a “floating” staircase with no visible supports. The open floor plan was retained although furnishings became luxurious with $5,000 chairs, $10,000 sofas and Ansel Adams prints. Temporary art exhibitions were mounted with an in-house curator; in at least one instance Jobs ordered the exhibition removed.

Source: NeXT – Corporate culture and community

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 4/5

Mihai — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:00:08 +0000

Fourth post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Online collaboration and sharing tools

Google Apps for Domain

With Gmail being the email option of choice for the vast majority of Internet users nowadays having Gmail for the domain name used for the company is a welcome addition. For this one can use Google Apps for domain for free by only setting up an account and changing the MX records with the domain register.

Google has thrown into the mix a number of other apps that the remote working team can benefit from like Calendar, Docs, Wave and a couple others.

Dropbox

For pushing files between team members nothing beats Dropbox’s simplicity. One just needs to install the Dropbox plugin and throw the files in the shared folder. Changes are automatically pushed to everyone who was invited to see the folder content.

Basecamp / Pivotal Tracker

Both Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker are two simple tools that can help distributed teams maintain focus and have clear next actions.

While Basecamp is focused around To-Do lists and Milestones, on Pivotal Tracker the team can do Agile development on a story-based method. Pivotal Tracker calculates the team’s velocity and accordingly estimates how much work will be done in the next iterations.

Git Repository

Git is a version control system created by the same person who wrote the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds. He used this for the development of the Linux kernel, which is created by the effort of thousands of developers.

Using Git lets everyone easily make changes to the code, while keeping a clear record of every change and push and pull changes back and forth from other team members.

Keynote Presentation about Lean Startups

Mihai — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 13:35:45 +0000

I was invited to keep a presentation about lean startups and lessons learned implementing this set of processes in my startups. The presentation took place at Bucharest Hubb which is the HQ for the first and only seed fund for IT startup in Romania. I am also an advisor the seed fund and it was nice to talk to the teams about my area of expertise and what I can help them with.

Embedded above are the slides I used to support the presentation.

Lessons learned by attending OpenAgile Romania

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 3/5

Mihai — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:00:10 +0000

Third post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Skype and how to use it properly.

Open group chat

The Skype group chat is the direct correspondent of the open space in an office environment, with some nice extras.

Each domain group can have its own group chat, so messages don’t get mixed up.

When a team member needs to focus he can turn Skype on Do Not Disturb and stop receiving chat notifications.

Skype stores the messages on every client and automatically makes sure the chat session is synced among the participants. If the team is chatting in a group chat and all by one leave the session afterwards, the remaining participant Skype client will automatically broadcast the chat history to all group chat members that were offline at the time of the chat, but come online at a later date.

Screen sharing

Skype offers a cross platform screen sharing solution. This makes activities like remote pair programming and live discussions on design wireframes convenient and accessible.

Sometimes it’s easier to show something on the screen and make the modifications on spot as opposed to moving files back and forth and discussing via email.

Conference calls

Conference calls with up to 25 people can be easily done for free via Skype. By using the Skype-Out feature one can include in the conference landline or mobile phone numbers too, at the expanse of call credit.

Adding new participants in an existing conference is an easy as drag and drop from the contacts list.

One on One video calls

Connecting between team members requires personal communication done on a regular basis. With emails and group chat providing clear and efficient communication, video calls will be used between team members to better connect with each other and discuss topics that can be misunderstood otherwise. In a perfect world such video calls would not be necessary, as they are more time and energy consuming, but sometimes they also help at getting faster to an agreement.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 2/5

Mihai — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:00:09 +0000

Second post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Email communication done right.

Everyone should have world class email skills

Have clear and concise subject lines. Sending an email without a subject line makes it more difficult to asses the urgency of an email message and setting the right expectations before opening it.

Write short email messages. One or two paragraphs are enough most of the time, but one line emails that spark conversation about a topic that requires a decision later on are also a good idea.

Finish with a clear set of next actions. Don’t only state the problem, but also propose solutions.

Only CC people that have to be involved in discussing the topic. Don’t CC everyone and fill up their inbox with replies and long discussions. Try to inform people of the decisions and only involve in conversions people that are part of the decision making process.

Every day all members do Inbox Zero

If email is expected to be a reliable communication method among team members then all team members should make sure all email messages they receive are processed on a daily basis. Emptying the email inbox daily and including the next actions in the right place (a GTD system hopefully) is a process that can enhance the general reliability of the team communication.

On the other hand, email can be a source of constant distraction if used in a wrong way. For people that need to focus for longer periods of time (developers, designers, etc.) email notification systems with pop-ups and BlackBerries should be avoided. Reading emails twice a day (before and after the work schedule) is enough most of the time.

Team should agree via email on meeting agendas

Meetings are expensive. Getting team members to participate in team meeting that don’t have a clear desired outcome and a meeting agenda, previously agreed by the team, can make the meetings ever more expensive, sometimes to the point of wasteful.

To avoid getting in this situations, remote teams will gather topics discussed via email and include them for a brief discussion (to agree on something previously discussed, not to create lengthily discussions on topics that can be had on email in the first place) in the weekly review meeting.

The next post will be about ‘Skype and how to use it properly’. If you like this series please share the links with your friends using the ‘Share’ button inside the post page.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 1/5

Mihai — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:24:14 +0000

First post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Why working remotely?

Fewer interruptions and distractions

When done right, working remotely shows an increased level of productivity for the members of the team. Working in an Agile, open space environment, has lots of advantages but also some disadvantages. People can ask questions at any time and interrupt the focus of all team members, which has a negative impact on productivity. In the post on Skype we will discuss the best compromise between an open space environment and keeping team members focused on their current activity and only grabbing their attention when absolutely needed.

It is also important that each individual members can organize him or herself in a way to isolate from non-work related distractions. The great thing about remote working is that actual productivity assumptions about ones work output are replaced with measurements of velocity and team involvement, so a non-productive person will stand out sooner than later as compared to the other team members.

No commuting

Commuting every to the office often usually means a couple hours of potentially productive time used to get to and back from the work place. By avoiding commuting, the team members can concentrate better on the most important task and avoid wasted time, money and attention to getting to the physical workplace.

Can have the best team members no matter their physical location

As everyone says, good help is hard to find. Accordingly, when good help if finally found, he or she can be located hundreds or thousands of miles away. By implementing an effective remote working environment, the team can be distributed pretty much anywhere in the world and still provide better value to the project compared to working in a physical office.

The next post will be about email communication done right. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed!

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series

Mihai — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:23:58 +0000

In the next five weeks, on every Monday, I will publish a post on working remotely. It is based on years of experience on technology projects done via distributed teams, but I am sure that most if not all the techniques can be extended to other types of projects as well.

The five parts of the ‘Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely’ are:

Could we fight corruption in Romania like this?

Mihai — Wed, 19 May 2010 09:22:32 +0000

I do usually post TED videos on my Tumblr Blog, but this is more relevant than most to the social and economic situations we have in Romania.

Is it possible to find corruption in Romania a similar way to how Shaffi Mather, a social entrepreneur from India, does it in his country of origin?

This might actually be a great startup opportunity for a social entrepreneur involved in consumer Internet. Pasted below is a comment from the Ted.com comment section, written by a person named ‘Ted Miller’:

If I have a product that I feel cheats me, I write a bad review on Amazon. Inevitably, bad reviews accumulate, the manufacturer is shamed, sales decline and the product is removed.

Why can’t something similar be done with corrupt officials? Create an online database with their photograph and profile, their work location, etc. It may only be a first name to begin with. But preferably India passes a law that requires all public officials to have a name badge and identity number.

Then if such an official solicits a bribe, you go to the site and anonymously or publicly (just like on Amazon) and post your grievance with the official. Perhaps you even post video footage of the occasion. If an official accumulates hundreds or thousands of bad reviews, it then becomes quite simple for media to expose them and their supervisors for allowing it to continue.

How would you like to be the corrupt official who has to explain to his children why he’s the worst-rated official in the newspaper?

Lessons learned by attending OpenAgile Romania

Mihai — Tue, 18 May 2010 06:42:13 +0000

OpenAgile Romania 2010 took place in Bucharest between the 14 and 15 of May. The conference was aimed at putting the local Agile practitioners in front of some of the top international domain experts and speakers.

The organizers did a great job at inviting some of the people that were part of the Agile movement from the very beginning and this definitely made a difference in the level of experience and expertise showed by the speakers.

With the organizers being domain experts as well (experienced agile practitioners and coaches), they very well understood the need to have the talks focused on answering questions as opposed to raising new ones. All the talks were focused on practical approaches to improving Agile methodologies as well as methods to implement Agile in organizations just getting started. Not a single talk was focused on theory or theoretic approaches to methodologies or frameworks.

I’m sure that most if not all of the attendees left the conference with a clear view on how to improve on their company’s Agile approach. There were talks on coaching, writing user stories, testing, product ownership as well as other topics, but the most important aspect was the general openness of the speakers to give advice and discuss about problems one might have with implementing Agile to their organization.

More info on the conference talks and speakers can be found at http://openagile.ro/talks/. From what I understood from the organizers, sooner than later they will publish on the website the talks along with interviews with the speakers.

Photo made by Lucian Daniliuc