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
   

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3. all teams past a
   certain size become
   distributed
   

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4. why should you
   consider distributed
   teams?
   

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5. distributed teams are
   not better, they're
   different
   

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6. access to talent
   

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7. scalability
   

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8. representation
   

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9. cost
   

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10. how do you build and
    manage distributed
    teams?
    

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11. decentralized or
    hybrid?
    

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12. trust is not optional in
    distributed teams
    

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13. communication is
    fundamental
    

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14. explicit channels
    enable consistency
    and replication
    

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15. synchronous comms
    are best suited for
    collaboration and
    coordination
    

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16. asynchronous comms
    protect focus and
    enable eventual
    consistency
    

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17. encourage
    acknowledgement of
    communications
    

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18. whenever possible,
    keep comms
    accessible
    

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19. fault tolerance
    

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20. people don't read
    

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21. tools are your
    infrastructure
    

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22. invest in A/V software
    & equipment
    

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23. you'll need a chat, a
    forum, a wiki, a collab
    word processor and a
    project board
    

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24. you can use tools as
    interfaces within or
    between teams
    

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25. effective management
    routes, balances
    loads, and monitors
    your system
    

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26. standard practices
    make your system
    observable
    

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27. focus on the outcome
    of the practices, not
    the implementation
    

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28. culture is how you
    scale your behaviors
    

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29. in person time helps
    build strong
    relationships
    

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30. talent is equally
    distributed, opportunity
    is not
    Leila Janah
    

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31. thank you

    

    @buritica
    @theRemoteShow
    

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