Tag Archives: distributed

what does “in-person” mean for teams that aren’t all in the same location

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I’ve been on a hybrid/distributed team for a long time. Immediately before the pandemic our team worked in the following arrangement (everyone worked 5 days a week regardless of location). Since this team was originally all in NY, I was very conscious of the language I used so NY wasn’t “the center of the universe.”

  • 3 people full time in the NY office
  • 2 people in another office in a different city
  • 1 person in yet a third office in a different city
  • 1 person in the NY office three days a week
  • 1 person in the NY office two days every three weeks
  • 1 person full time in her home office

During the pandemic we all worked from somewhere in our home. Some people had nice home offices. Some people worked from a creative arrangement in the middle of their apartment. I used language about myself like “I’m leaving work now” even though I was moving two feet away.

Right now, the NY office is doing a “back to the office” pilot and my team consists of

  • me physically in the NY office
  • one of my teammates physically in the NY office three days a week on a different floor (we weren’t on the same team when the pandemic started so our seats aren’t currently near each other.) It’s a pain to move so waiting until the department shuffles everyone’s seats for that.
  • everyone else at their home offices (I think everyone except the two of us choosing to be in the pilot has an actual home office)

Last week, I was using a bunch of different conference rooms in the NY office to test the new webcams and such. When I wrote up the experience, I used the phrase “in person.” One of my teammates immediately called me out on that. Which I appreciate. I certainly wasn’t thinking of the NY office as being the center of the universe when it was only myself and one other person from our team there. (at one of the meetings; the others I was the only one in the NY office for.) I was thinking “in-person” with reference to myself.

This got us talking and me thinking about various terms that can be used and various sensitivities that can exist around them. I’m using WFH in the comments column for brevity. If you don’t like that term, substitute another in your head to get to the gist. It’s hard to fully qualify every time. Especially in a discussion about terms and subtleties.

TermComments
in-personEveryone works in person regardless of location.
homeThis doesn’t usually bother people. However, it isn’t always home. I worked for a week from a hotel. In some companies, a person could be working at Starbucks. It varies. I do like that this term is part of the WFH abbreviation. One of my remote teammates said she prefers home office or remote over home.
home officeI like this term when talking about people who actually have a home office. However, it is a term that has sensitivities to me because it includes an assumption that one has a space for a home office. (My WFH area is smaller than a cubical and not anywhere near as conducive to work.
onsiteThis is a location. If there is only one onsite location and everyone is WFH, it could work. However, in my case, there are three “onsite” locations involved so it doesn’t clarify much.
remoteDepending on the context, this could be a good term. In some ways, it has the same problem as “onsite.” However, it could also mean simply that people aren’t all together if not viewed from the lens of a common location.
distributedI like this term because it shows that there are varying locations. And it doesn’t make assumptions about a primary site.
teleworking or telecommutingI like that this is location agnostic. But it also implies that you aren’t at an office. Whereas distributed could mean any location.
virtualThis term assumes that it is replacing an in person thing. It also treats the activity as an alias.If I’m having a meeting, I’m having a meeting. It doesn’t matter if we are in the same room or on Zoom or whatever.

Finally, my teammate brought up this episode from The Big Bang Theory

Sheldon-bot : Can you tell me the specials this evening?

Penny: Sheldon, I’m not waiting on you.

Sheldon-bot: Obviously. I don’t even have water yet.

Penny: Because you’re not here.

Sheldon-bot: That’s discrimination against the otherwise located. I’m going to have to go over your head. Manager, manager. Oh, Lord, look who it is.

more techniques for making agile games remote friendly

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Two years ago, I blogged on how make agile games friendly to remote/distributed teams, Last week, I went to a NYC Scrum User Group meeting and was inspired to repeat the exercise.

This time, I’m going through *how* you think about adapting games as well. The key is to identify the lessons the game is teaching and what makes it run.

Game 1: 60 steps in 60 seconds

Key lesson: the importance of self organized teams.

Description of in person game: The group is split into pairs. The “manager” of one pair gives the “worker” instructions – left/right/stop/go. They do this for a minute and count steps. It’s hard because there are lots of people walking around and the worker has no autonomy. Then the pairs repeat the exercise where the manager can give goals rather than literal steps.

My take: I’ve played this before. In fact, it was the first agile game we played when my team was new to Scrum and needed to see the importance of being self empowered.

Making it remote/distributed friendly: This one is hard. I used a similar idea with a puzzle. I made two puzzles and had people pair up to do them using the same technique as 60 steps in 60 seconds. In one, do exactly what is said. In the second one, provide more broad instructions. While I did this one in person, it is easier to adapt to remote teams. Just do online puzzles (like a children’s jigsaw) with screenshare. You’d want to use cell phones for the pairs to communicate and reserve the video conference/phone bridge for the instructions and discussion about how it went.

Game 2: The Name Game

Key lesson: People don’t multi task well.

Description of in person game: This site describe sit well (I didn’t actually play this game at the meetup because you had to choose two of four to play, but I have played a similar game).

Making it remote/distributed friendly: It’s the same game. There’s nothing inherently in person to this game. You can use screenshare for any charts you want to show

Game 3: Throw Throw Burrito

Key lesson: Working together provides better outcomes.

Description of in person game: This game was a variant of the party game throw throw burrito. The first round was the party game. Then we switched to invented rules with a more collaborative twist. The goal was to maximize the score. Finally, we brainstormed how to make it even more collaborative. (As an aside one of the people in my game noted that if your opponent misses when throwing the burrito at you, there is no need to throw it at them and hit. Just walk over and tap the person)

Making it remote/distributed friendly: This one I can’t make remote friendly. There’s no way to throw a stuffed burrito remotely. There’s going to be some like this. The key is to save this type of game up for team onsites. For example, my team threw ping pong balls at each other at on of our onsites. I mean we played catch until there was too much work in progress to sustain it.

Game 4: Deep Sea Adventure

Key lesson: Working together provides better outcomes.

Description of in person game: First we played the Deep Sea Adventure board game with regular rules. Then we played again with the goal of keeping all the players alive and maximizing the score.

Making it remote/distributed friendly: At first glance, this doesn’t seem remote friendly as it is a board game. But it definitely can. You can make an electronic version of the game board/pieces (on OneNote or an online whiteboard) and use a random number generator online to replace the dice. The players would interact with the OneNote or online whiteboard as they play.

Game 5: Space <something>

I didn’t play this one. It looked like it was about collaboratively building a spaceship by trading cards. I didn’t see enough of it to have an opinion on making it remote friendly.