Lost on an Island: Building Remote Collaboration in Cross-Continent Distributed Teams

so apparently this is now official

anything you don't want being set on a

record uploaded to YouTube just write it

out in a subtle way thank you everyone

for being here for our presentation

state we are going to talk about how you

can build remote collaboration across

across continent distributed teams so

presumably you're here it's either that

you happen to like Adrian on I a lot or

you actually do want to figure out how

to collaborate a little bit better so

fun story of just you know showing up to

Chicago from mid cam I got off the plane

earlier on Wednesday Pat if I figure out

that I don't own a coat anymore that was

fun

Texas is warm Chicago is variable but

Adriana you also showed up from where

the weather is kind of similar actually

to Chicago but I'm traveling quite a bit

for the next month in the US I hope to

back a very big luggage or various

different types of weather so that's

what's fun but it comes better with this

and this is kind of a recurring theme

for you know at least our company and

how we work but also I think for a lot

of those of us in the room who work in

Drupal we have colleagues we've never

met in person who are in Asia Africa

Latin America Europe wherever I want to

do that I've seen a lot of is it's can

be very hard to actually build a

connection with those team members who

are you know an entire continent way

it's very different than being just you

know one or two time zones different

so with that we just wanted to give a

really short sweet presentation of just

ten tips of how to do collaboration a

little bit better there's a quiz at the

end M prizes or maybe not if you run out

of time yeah so the first one that we

wanted to start with is B and we're this

is very important when you work with it

both from all around the globe first of

all you probably should do some research

and getting to know them a little bit as

a culture or what they represent or what

does the geography that they are in

represent and how you should approach

them to have a better team cooperation

it's also important to be aware of

people's schedules and the differences

in time

is when you work with people across the

globe it's very important to make sure

that have points when you synchronize

but you're also respectful of everyone's

time and one of the other key things is

when you work with different team

members around the globe it's very

important to understand everyone's roles

and responsibilities make sure that you

have that very clearly defined and that

you're not misunderstanding anything

regarding that fun little side tip and

daylight savings time does not operate

at the same time everywhere so there's

some fun chaos a little while ago when

we realized half of our team's switched

and the other half did not an outlet was

less than helpful in making sure the

update worked you know seamlessly across

everyone's calendars but really on this

whole notion of being aware is also

we're gonna have to keep yourself

organized for that

one day I had to go and take out an

entire you know map map out every office

we have we work with and found out there

was only one hour one very special

effort from like 6:00 to 7:00 CST that

you know all of our teams were for the

most part off there 23 hours of the day

someone was on and working based on the

different regions

and once we kind of had done that we

wanted to you know essentially encourage

our teams to be more organized so we

established you know the rules and

responsibilities of what each office and

each person those offices are

responsible for and then we actually the

first time we get to chance to work

together outline you know what needs to

happen for collaboration between those

different individuals we make sure to

also go through and like here's the

tools were going to use if you need me

for an emergency text me if you need

this for a more casual thing updated in

slack or another chat system and one of

the things that ties to that in regards

to process details I actually got to

experience last year a lot when I was

traveling in the US for a pretty long

time because I was still working with

our team in Moldova where we have an

office it was hard to find a lot of

diamond we could connect so one of the

things that I was doing is that every

night I was kind of preparing the

document with some priorities for the

team that they should really work on and

try to pay attention to now there's one

thing regarding this because we use a

lot of tools and use JIRA slab and other

things to communicate but there are

situations when things

it's a little bit lost and it's

important to make sure that you're

always transparent you can document

things in different ways but the more

details you offer the better for

everyone to be on the same page and

besides doing that priorities document

there's always a lot of details that we

also try to do in terms of the processes

one of the key tools that we use is

calendars because everyone is spread

around the globe we need to find time to

connect we always make sure that we use

the calendar and schedule time for

various gems and try to be aware of the

different time zones if we use chat

tools instead of the statuses there we

also one of the three key things that we

do is that we try to add personal time

slots when we are busy in our calendar

so that you can just name them as easy

no one needs to know what you're doing

enough time but people will be aware

that you're not available to have a call

during that time and that's a key thing

that you need to to work and understand

when you cooperate with a big team okay

I'm gonna take for granted if we're in

an office with someone we know that

they're out to lunch but those little

breakdowns of someone being in another

region and you're expecting them to have

some over left with you but they're

actually out getting dinner or they

depict you know their kids up from work

it's a lot harder than it seems and

funny enough I also have found that if

you're working like yourself or changing

your schedule to fit into their offices

time schedule it's helpful to put in you

know just some general cadence of this

is what is going on in my life I have

the unfortunate honor of being the main

person ffw Vesta lists their sleep

schedule on the calendar because I will

travel frequently enough that even if

I'm in Asia my sleep time needs to stay

the same and different people in Europe

need to figure out when that is and

that's actually been it was kind of sad

putting in the first time was very

helpful tax you realize okay here's the

time when it's unreachable here other

times when I am

and that's helped Andrew and I actually

get a very good understanding of when we

can find time to connect and discuss

about different projects and when it

definitely needs some time to actually

recharge his batteries so that the next

day we can be more productive and

collaborate and communicate about all

those different things right especially

on a 24 hour cycle sometimes with

different offices taking different you

know responsibilities and part of that

is being just very very clear like when

you're talking with you know colleagues

and other offices it's a simple direct

communication adapt your language to

each audience and if there's ever a

doubt over explain yourself and I cannot

emphasize that enough it could be

painfully heavy to realize we put in an

extra page of notes to explain one topic

but the time saved can be huge

and enter and I can get some examples in

terms of like being clear though we've

done a few times I think there's a lot

of situation when duct can go in

different ways and think

yeah there's a lot of examples that I

could think of maybe we should discuss

about them a little bit later all right

bananas fits a lot throughout the

presentation right so those are just

easy to do these things every day right

just you know up and ended they don't

require a huge change in life but the

next set is a little harder and one of

the other key things that we've learned

across the time that we collaborate sit

together it's the importance of being

flexible bunch of different people we

need to understand that everyone is

different they were brought up in two

differently they have different ways of

working with one another so it's very

important to adapt and adopt abilities

actually key today's one of them

technology and how everything works so

we try to make sure that we are

conscious of that and that we understand

that you know this is very important in

our collaboration and one of the other

things that we do is that we try to take

it a step further and put ourselves in

someone else's shoes when we actually

try to understand how they are thinking

or you know how can we make this better

so that things will work out in the long

run

you know that's actually the goal to

make sure that the work relationship is

it would work over the long lasting time

and really being flexible sometimes

plans change especially when we're

dealing with you know large enough

projects or you know big enough tasks I

mean anyone who's been in Drupal

contribution space now is that plans

change right working on a module so one

puts in a nether twenty different

features and buds and also in the next

four months of your life look radically

different to really get around this

though the other value that we like to

think about is being curious when you

need to change me flexible like asked

why writes ask a lot of questions again

a lot a lot of questions I know the

first few times Adriano were

collaborating there was often a gap of

you know what is it that we should be

doing together what are we trying to

accomplish we'd have a project or have

some tasks but figuring out what the

value of us being able to collaborate

and build our teams together it was a

little more unclear and that required -

opening yourself to think differently

and different perspectives and on the

nodes of different perspectives those

there's actually saying that I really

like When in Rome

so you have to really ask a lot of

questions to prepare yourself before

going to Rome so that's when you get to

Rome

we were actually present in the moment

and that's a very important feature to

actually spell up about ourselves so one

of the things that we tried to do as a

team is also trying to meet a fly that's

in Rome because we don't have an office

there but sometimes we are lucky enough

to be present at conferences like these

or visit different other opposite that

we have around the globe and we try to

create shared experiences there and the

vocabulary that we can use to understand

each other better we also have regular

champions with various team members when

we work ideally we do videos or at least

we should do audio and that's very

important for building all of these

connections and this is something do you

think it's ever looked a lot right with

email chat systems we can all check in

message someone really easily get an

update move on it's a little bit

different though than being able to

actually you know talk to someone and

spending the time even when that bear is

a little harder at first this actually

opens up you know new experiences and

sometimes they can be very interesting

ones a kind of fun side story when I

went to our Hanoi office for a little

while it turns out that I accidentally

booked the same Airbnb that another

member of our company from Europe was in

because it was apparently the closest

one to the office

so naturally we both ended up in the

same spot

we ran into them again in California and

Boise Idaho in New York and there's some

people who worked with Adriana for a

long time so the small offline

experience is piece by piece add up when

a lot of us would come to camps like

this we see people we see you know once

or twice a year in person that's part of

what makes to the Drupal community you

know really worthwhile but since this is

about more than just a Drupal community

yeah there's a couple of final tips that

we wanted to share which are actually

very important for building all of these

remote connections in first one that we

thought out is about being humble and

that's an important trait for everyone

to have but especially important when

you work with a team and you learn that

you know sometimes you can be wrong and

that's the normal process in life it's

something it's an experience and you

have to go for all of these learning

lessons and they build you up as a

character and also as a better human

it's important not to make assumption

always think in a positive way and

assume the positive situation and

reaction for everyone but also it's

important to acknowledge when you are

wrong or were someone else on the team

is wrong and learn from that experience

and understand how do you

analyze that and how you can move

forward and actually improve the next

time and prevent that from happening or

how you can make this as a better

process in the future

and you know it it's an interesting

activity to actually acknowledge when

you're wrong or someone else is wrong

we'll be able to talk through it to be

very honest when Adrian I first started

working together there were a lot of

differences of opinion I mean it's been

four or five years now so that's to be

expected

but it took a lot to realize that one

thing that has worked very well for us

building collaboration is you know we

all make wrong calls if you're not

actually being wrong at some point it

means you're probably not trying and

trying not to push the envelope a little

bit and being able to bring that out in

the open and talk through like okay yeah

that was that call on particular modules

that did not make sense let's try

something different

especially before we had a chance to

meet each other in person that dialogue

actually builds a lot of trust whether

you're working with you know contractors

or clients or someone else on your own

team it's a difficult but interesting

activity to try out

then that's what is about being happy

which is very important in our culture

so there's a couple of things that we do

about that we try to celebrate the

different small wins or big wins that we

have and we try to make work fun yeah

piece by piece

this is again one of those things that

the reasons for the end is this is not

something we always do day in and day

out this is something harder to get in

digital collaboration right figure out a

way to communicate positive and joyfully

and when I say that positive and

joyfully I mean it took us about an hour

to figure out what exactly are we trying

to stay with that one bullet points

right humor doesn't always translate

across borders doesn't translate across

cultures or even just across peoples

vocabularies but trying to keep them

more positive meant the communication be

able to throw in some form of a joke is

useful as long as it's gonna be

understood this really comes down to you

know can you make a shared digital space

until you have a physical one -

reconnect with the team and we also

encourage people to share their

accomplishments even if there could be

personal ones so we have a lot of who

have different chat rooms and

various tools that we use like a fast

shadow or and people share pictures of

their dogs in additional space and as

you can see little glimpses of their

life and how they go on on their daily

basis people also share their personal

accomplishments like we have people that

have rapid marathons that they are happy

to share that with someone else in the

team and in some cases people use that

as an example to actually you know take

that as a mentor type of tool and

actually apply that moving forward

however one of the important things

about people sharing those experience is

actually the quality of being vulnerable

and this is I would say the most

important thing and quality that

actually is key to building all of these

connections in a room all its way in an

offline way it's all about how we

interact as humans with one another so

when we actually we have a fun story to

share about this last year Andrew was

visiting Moldova our office there and we

took a trip to Odessa in Ukraine right

around the time the Russians had

actually also put their fleet outside of

Odessa in the Caribbean that was fun

yeah so we had the car we were driving

to a discus

when you're stuck for a couple of hours

in a car there's really no way to get

out of the car you have to discuss with

the people that aren't there so you have

to actually be interested in New York

limb you know in the people that are

there in your co-workers or your friends

you have to ask questions you have to

answer the questions that they ask so

it's all about trying to you know find a

lot of common interests that you have or

trying to figure out what does the other

person like or what should I be aware of

that the other person is doing or how do

I get to build all of these connections

with them and you know but there's no

way to get out you have to learn how to

do that and you have to be comfortable

with also being vulnerable because it's

about reciprocating you share something

the other person shares something and

then you

in a stuffed there's not a lot in

between Moldova and Odessa so there's

what you want to get out not allow you

to get out to go to also for the best if

you don't speak Ukrainian or Romanian

that maybe stay in the car people who

can help you translate but Adrian's

right like it's a funny story aside it

was a good time because we were also had

one of our technical leads and some

other colleagues from you know key

schnell we were able to join us and once

you're stuck with some group for four or

five hours you do end up actively either

avoiding them or trying to make an

effort to get to know them

the act of avoidance parts a little hard

when there is also no 4G signal for the

entire drive and there is no radio

station so that's leaves we all actively

decided to get to know each other this

also led to you know talking about

common interests and learn to respect

you know how people want to define what

relationship they want maybe interested

in sharing everything about their life

but there's other people that are a

little bit more closed and they are a

little bit more introvert they're not

exactly comfortable sharing some aspects

of their life until they actually get to

know me better

so I think being that understanding in

regards to that is also very important

because otherwise people you know will

not let you in

future and they will try to keep their

guard up and it's a little bit more

difficult to get through it yeah right

so if you want to bring all this

together we have trademarked this

wonderful news you know slogan it was

presented all agile conferences I think

the way to pronounce it is be a topic

food but outside of trend figured if

that means something and Klingon I don't

know if that's really the easiest way to

summarize instead Adriana had a much

better version yeah so our summary of

this was just the humans cooperation and

growing trust and our goal and kind of

describe the necklace is you know simple

tips when you're working with a client

when you're working with a partner when

you work with your on team member just

try to go through the same exercises

then when we build relationships they

span a lot of different you know

professional life levels but every time

that we've gone through this you know we

end up Adrienne and I in particular

working with you know the same clients

or four or five years in a row and we

try to apply these same values to you

know how we work with them as we work

with each other

so questions

you go back to tip seven sure

that's a request not question right

next one inside

yes there was very little yeah compress

that's okay there we go

have you had a question yeah so you know

it's like we're both here in Chicago and

like you know we're involved the

community here in Chicago but kind of

how do you like get involved these are

communities if you want to build the

team that's more distributed like where

does that start like at least where you

guys were all right it's interesting so

actually the Drupal in general kind of

you know slack instance is really nice

and that you can find different

communities in different states to join

we found it really interesting that when

there was a Drupal Idaho channel set up

known early things about Idaho Drupal

however shocking a number of Drupal

developers are actually in and around

that area we were able to build some

connections over into like Washington

Denver and places just joining that and

in other great ways if you have

particular pieces of the community

you're working on like you know

particular modules

go through and tried to set up like some

time to talk through like the maintainer

zor-el anyone else who's active in it

the trip world is actually very

interconnected and we kind of

organically built a lot of those piece

by piece so performing connections

online and then

technical applications but is there a

specific software that you use to

collaborate online like GoToMeeting or

anything else similar to that Adriana

only had a presentation on this yeah I

did a presentation a while back about a

lot of the tools that we use it's

somewhere online if you go go it is

called project modern project management

toolkit session that I needed here but

there's you know a couple of core tools

afia's the number one of them for team

collaboration and communication in slack

so there we organize a lot of things in

a very specific way like we have four

different projects Def Jam oh and cyan

channel

accounts channel appliance channel so we

try to focus the conversation for

various topics so that we keep the

people that are involved in a specific

role concentrated around that

communication we don't need to swap them

with a lot of other useful information

if it's not helping them to do the work

beside that we use Basecamp or a lot of

clients communication we use go to

meeting for meetings that we do remotely

we use slack calls as well for more

team-oriented communication but when we

need to get more people together we

usually default to go to meeting we use

of course JIRA for task management and

all the things related to that and

there's a lot of communication happening

there and Google Drive or the documents

and

Thank You github and bitbucket for

actually sharing feedback

unlike coding features were working on

together and there's various key actions

and tools that you know we're like

labels that we use for that if you have

different processes set up for how to

learn better with those tools great

thank you and then what was this task

management plan JIRA how do you spell

that

very much towards questions

No then great so do you have a follow-up

what about the old OVA camping does that

happen again or what other camps over in

Europe so there is an upcoming camp in

Kiev that's happening in May there is a

triple damned phase happening in Romania

I think it's in shelf for September

they're like foolish I don't remember

exactly to see we had a couple of old

camps I am not sure if there's another

one coming back soon

but generally there are various events

tupelo related event is happening in the

area I think one of the the one that

happens most frequently is the Kiev one

and then in Romania there's also a

bigger community that also

helps organize down inning those are the

closest to countries that you have

around but we have got their offices in

Western Europe so there's other events

happening there too like it London I

think there's things happening and

golden handgun carries as well yeah kind

of everywhere where everywhere there's a

Drupal developers and people interested

there's always some events thank you

have you ever invoiced Idaho we have

wonderful time from a tour office to

actually go through we do pizza I think

that we put it on the map that is the

most remote Drupal meetup because Boise

is actually rather far from it a little

bit of everywhere cool any any others

thank you