Building Distributed Systems of People

Past a certain size, all teams become distributed. Whether it's across rooms, floors, or office locations, collaboration becomes harder as organizations grow. In this talk, Juan Pablo will cover the most important lessons he's learned while building distributed engineering teams for fast-growing startups, which you can apply today to improve the effectiveness of your teams, whether they're in the same city or not. 

Transcript

1. building distributed systems of people juan pablo buriticá
3. all teams past a certain size become distributed
4. why should you consider distributed teams?
5. distributed teams are not better, they're different
6. access to talent
7. scalability
8. representation
9. cost
10. how do you build and manage distributed teams?
11. decentralized or hybrid?
12. trust is not optional in distributed teams
13. communication is fundamental
14. explicit channels enable consistency and replication
15. synchronous comms are best suited for collaboration and coordination
16. asynchronous comms protect focus and enable eventual consistency
17. encourage acknowledgement of communications
18. whenever possible, keep comms accessible
19. fault tolerance
20. people don't read
21. tools are your infrastructure
22. invest in A/V software & equipment
23. you'll need a chat, a forum, a wiki, a collab word processor and a project board
24. you can use tools as interfaces within or between teams
25. effective management routes, balances loads, and monitors your system
26. standard practices make your system observable
27. focus on the outcome of the practices, not the implementation
28. culture is how you scale your behaviors
29. in person time helps build strong relationships
30. talent is equally distributed, opportunity is not Leila Janah
31. thank you
 
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