$30 off During Our Annual Pro Sale. View Details »

Managing a widely distributed team

Managing a widely distributed team

Companies more and more embrace working in a distributed environment. While it allows for attracting talent and working with great people around the world, it also means it comes with new challenges.

Based on my experience as an engineer manager at GitHub for a team of 20 people across 3 continents in 7 countries, 6 states in the US and 7 timezones I would love to share the things we do to build a strong and cohesive team. Would like to share how we embrace asynchronous workflows where we can, use synchronous time we do have very effectively and meet up in person regularly as well.

Dirkjan Bussink

June 28, 2018
Tweet

More Decks by Dirkjan Bussink

Other Decks in Technology

Transcript

  1. Managing a widely
    distributed team
    Dirkjan Bussink
    @dbussink

    View Slide

  2. View Slide

  3. Senior engineering manager
    Principal engineer

    View Slide

  4. Why?

    View Slide

  5. First some context

    View Slide

  6. 28 people

    View Slide

  7. Original from 5 continents

    View Slide

  8. From 11 countries

    View Slide

  9. View Slide

  10. View Slide

  11. !"#$%&
    '
    (

    View Slide

  12. View Slide

  13. View Slide

  14. Psychological safety
    https://rework.withgoogle.com/blog/five-keys-to-a-successful-google-team/

    View Slide

  15. Meet in person

    View Slide

  16. Regular cadence

    View Slide

  17. Use the time together well

    View Slide

  18. Long time strategy

    View Slide

  19. Team structure

    View Slide

  20. Iterate on collaboration processes

    View Slide

  21. No day to day development

    View Slide

  22. Do non work activities

    View Slide

  23. Grab dinner together

    View Slide

  24. View Slide

  25. View Slide

  26. View Slide

  27. Keep talking

    View Slide

  28. Continue to build trust in 1:1s

    View Slide

  29. Talk to people regularly

    View Slide

  30. Non work video chats

    View Slide

  31. Virtual water-cooler

    View Slide

  32. Be timezone aware

    View Slide

  33. Asynchronous communication

    View Slide

  34. View Slide

  35. View Slide

  36. No instant gratification

    View Slide

  37. Unblock others

    View Slide

  38. Don’t block yourself

    View Slide

  39. Over-communicate

    View Slide

  40. Use restraint

    View Slide

  41. View Slide

  42. Hardly anything is urgent

    View Slide

  43. “Durch Einfach Liegen Lassen Erledigt”

    View Slide

  44. Use timezone spread

    View Slide

  45. Recap

    View Slide

  46. Everyone is distributed
    Work hard on building team bonds
    Enable asynchronous workflows
    Use the power of distributed teams

    View Slide