| > They need to understand the challenges posed by distributed teams, particularly if the team isn't entirely remote. Out of all of the fantastic points listed this is by far the most critical because it most likely will be the root of every other problem. The thing is, it's not entirely the challenge of being distributed, it's the challenge of having an inconsistent team dynamic where the needs of the colocated team members aren't aligned with the needs of the distributed members. Without strong leadership, discipline and culture it's all too easy to try and patch over the communication and collaboration issues with all kinds of workflows, Slack bots, and tools that ignore the essense of an interpersonal problem and turn it into a technical one. For example (in my own experience): - The expectations around availability aren't clear so individual flexibility takes priority over team flexibility and it's hard to set some healthy boundaries on it (e.g. remote or not the team wants to hear how it's going at 10.30 to see if expectations for delivery need to be adjusted) - There may be an isolated/individualistic mentality where you're building code on a production line (which is counter-productive for budding startups that need business/dev collab) - Colocated colleagues are privy to far more information than remote colleagues unless they remember to share it in public channels (e.g. Slack), _or_ it's all done through private channels and nobody is on the same page about anything - Half your work day is scanning productivity tools for updates (github, jira/pivotal/asana/trello, dropbox, slack integrations) instead of having a conversation - The remote side will almost _always_ be scapegoated or be the reason for something being more difficult than it normally would be - There might be an absense of serendipity that makes the space for creative and interactive problem solving because the connections aren't quite there for it It's pretty much the sort of thing that becomes a problem once the team or company matures beyond petty blame and starts to treat the remote part of the team as first class. The issue in a nutshell is that you might initially be dealing with an over-correction so rather than striking the balance that gets the team working well together whether they're in the office or not, you get one that stifles colocated activity. The fact it happens to be a clash of remote and colocated dynamics is irrelevant, it's the failure of leadership to bring the team together as one while also respecting its occasionally incompatible requirements that's important. |