Text Editors

Like most developers, I spend the majority of my time in an IDE reading and writing code. For years I’ve been a happy user of Visual Studio, building software for clients in .NET. More recently I’ve been working with clients who use IntelliJ IDEA for Java and Scala development. While both VS and IntelliJ may be perfectly suitable for JavaScript development, they are far from ideal. Both suffer from visual bloat, general slowness, and aren’t truly targeted for HTML/JS development.

My all time favorite text editor is Sublime Text, and it is by far the single best text editor I’ve ever used (no offense to vi/emacs folks, I’ve never had the patience to learn either). Sublime offers extremely fast performance, extensibility through a rich base of community plugins, easy customization, affordability, and many other great features.

What exactly makes Sublime Text so great? Here’s a quick list of tasks I regularly use it for:

• Multiple Cursors/Selections:
  • Ctrl+F, enter text to find, press Alt+Enter to select every instance of text in current file. Replace selected text, or move cursor to another place in line.
  • Ctrl+F, enter text to find, Ctrl+D to select next instance of the word. Ctrl+D until all sequential instances selected.
  • Place cursor on word, Ctrl+D to select the word. Ctrl+D to select next instances as above.
• Goto Anything:
  • Ctrl+P to open Goto Anything window. Type file name to open file in current project.
  • File searches are fuzzy, meaning any part of a filename entered will match
  • SublimeText instantly opens a file preview window for currently selected file, and closes it when next file is selected or Goto window is closed.
  • Ctrl+P to open Goto Anything window, @ to go to a symbol in file (method names, headers, etc.). Use : to go to line number. Both can be combined with file name to directly jump to a symbol/line number in a specific file.
• Command Palette:
  • Ctrl+Shift+P to open Command Palette. Start typing name of command to filter list of commands. Commands include every single menu item available in text editor.
• Plugins:
  • Install manually, usually by cloning git repositories or downloading a zip
  • Use Package Installer plugin to manage installed plugins
• Theming and customization:
  • Choose from a number of built-in themes, install a third party theme, or easily customize your own
  • Shortcut and UI customization available by editing config file. Instant config reload as soon as file is saved.

… and many other great features that someone could write a book about.

What makes my workflow in Sublime Text so efficient is the use of keyboard shortcuts to accomplish almost any common task. Mouse use is minimized, which decreases the amount of time I waste every day switching between using a keyboard and a mouse. I’ve always found the repeated movement between the mouse and the keyboard to feel unnatural, so I welcome the ability to accomplish tasks quickly with the keyboard.

Common Sublime Text extensions

Here’s a list of a few extensions (called packages in Sublime Text) I currently have installed:

• Sublime Package Control – the easiest way to install and manage packages.
• Markdown Preview – allows quick previews and copying of generated HTML from markdown. I wrote this blog entry in markdown, then copied the generated HTML into WordPress. Far more efficient than editing through the browser.
• Sublime Linter – I’ve only used it with JavaScript so far, though support for other languages is present. Highlights JavaScript errors as soon as the file is saved, reducing compilation and some other common errors.
• Soda Theme – dark UI theme for sidebar and tabs. Must-have if using a dark color scheme.

Console Replacement

Next on the list of development environment tools is a replacement to cmd.exe. The default windows console is barely useable – intelligent tab completion is absent, colors are not supported, there is no possibility of extensions, and you cannot resize the window easily. Microsoft provides a better alternative in the form of PowerShell, but it still feels clunky, and does not offer much in terms of improvement, though it is very scriptable. I’ve also tried using Console2 and MinTTY, though again, neither quite worked perfectly.

ConEmu is the best console replacement I’ve managed to find. It is quite extensible, offers the ability to add tasks it can launch on startup, and supports tabs. ConEmu isn’t perfect however, as I have found it uses more CPU than other consoles, and the ability to select all and copy all text is missing. ConEmu is actively developed, so new features are being added regularly, and bugs are being addressed relatively quickly. It is important to remember though that ConEmu is not a shell – it is a console emulator, and by default it will use cmd.exe as the shell.

Zsh

I’ve tried bash as an alternative shell, and while it is good, there are better alternatives. Recently I’ve discovered the power of zsh, and I’ve grown to like it.

Zsh can be installed through Cygwin on Windows. When using Cygwin, changing the current directory to root drive becomes a bit quirky as there is no longer the concept of C:\; instead, root becomes /cygdrive/c/. I’ve using a custom ConEmu task, and set up Zsh to start in /cygdrive/c/ by default, so I typically don’t need to worry about remember to type the full path.

One of the two biggest draws for me was it’s extremely smart tab completion. If I need to switch to a directory several levels deep, I would typically type out the full path: cd projects/JavaScript/demo.js/scripts/views/, which is quite cumbersome. Zsh is smart enough to allow shorten of the path: cd proj/j/d/s/v + Tab. Assuming zsh finds the path without any duplicates, it will expand it to the proper path. In case zsh finds duplicates, it will give you the choice of which to choose. If you mis-spell the command or path, it may even be nice enough to prompt you with the correct alternative! It’s smart tab completion is by far the best I’ve used so far.

Extensibility of zsh

The second draw to zsh for me was ability to extend the shell. Oh-my-zsh is a framework for managing zsh themes and plugins, and once installed, gives the ability to use one of dozens different user contributed scripts to set up zsh visuals, command prompt, etc. I haven’t had much of a chance to try out the different plugins, but I use a custom dark theme, combined with a pretty git prompt to end up with a prompt that reads: ➜ Agent-Service git:(development) ✘. Interpreting the prompt is easy – the starting arrow indicates it is a command I type, and helps distinguish between commands I type and command results that get printed out. Next is the directory, namely Agent-Service. Since I am currently in a git repository, my current branch (development) and status (✘ meaning I have outstanding commits) are printed.

In addition to plugins and themes, zsh also allows for easy creation of aliases. I’ve set up a few so far that reduce long commands I frequently type to much shorter versions:

• Launch Sublime Text 2: alias subl2='"/cygdrive/c/Program Files/Sublime Text 2/sublime_text.exe"'
• Switch to my project directory: alias cdagent='cd "/cygdrive/c/Working/PDS/Agent-Service"'

Version Control

Not much to be said about version control. I’ve used several before, most notably CVS, SVN, TFS, and Git, and by far the one I liked the most has been git. Git is very easy to learn, though I do recommend spending time to learn branching/merging (far less scary than in SVN/TFS), and using the command line in general to truly understand what git is doing under the coveres.

As mentioned earlier, oh-my-zsh provides git plugins and custom git prompts that enhance git command line useability.

HTTP Server

For JavaScript/HTML development, using your local file system instead of an HTTP server may be fine, or at least will be fine until the day the application is hosted from an HTTP server. You will likely find broken links, scripts, images, etc. as soon as the application is migrated to a web server.

Instead, I suggest starting with hosting in an HTTP server right from the beginning. There are many choices, including the standard Windows IIS, Apache, etc. For most web development without the need for custom server-side code, all those are overkill. If you installed Sublime Text, you are guaranteed to have Python installed. And if you have Python installed, you have an HTTP server installed. Python comes with a simple HTTP server that can be started quickly in any directory.

Python 2.7

Launching an HTTP Server in Python 2.7 is simple – cd to root directory containing the web project, and type python -m SimpleHTTPServer 8080 (note: port is optional, 8080 is the default). As long as the Python process is running, so will the HTTP server. It can be accessed by browsing to http://127.0.0.1:8080 or the local/public IP of computer.

If I’ve convinced you to try zsh, go ahead and set up an alias:
alias server='python -m SimpleHTTPServer'

Python 3.0

In Python 3.0, the SimpleHTTPServer module has been moved to http.server, so starting the server is slightly different: python3 -m http.server (port optional)

Final Words

The above tools can be used to get a start on developing JavaScript/HTML applications, or can be used to get ideas on improving the current development environment. There are many more useful tools, Sublime packages, browser environments, automated and cloud testing solutions, etc. that can be used, however I will leave those for future posts. I hope the information has been useful to those that have managed to make it this far.

If there is one piece of advice I would give to a developer, it would be to download Sublime Text. Right now, just go and download it!

Installation
The installation process was pretty seamless for me, even if it took ages, just like every other Visual Studio installation I’ve ever waited for.  The only optional feature that most people will probably choose to install is the ‘Microsoft Web Developer Tools‘.  Otherwise it’s safe to leave the other options unchecked, since they can be installed at a later date by simply modifying the Visual Studio 2012 installation in the Control Panel \ Programs and Features window.

Don’t like caps?
The first thing most people complain about is the way the menu bar shouts at them in uppercase.  There are a couple of extensions out there that can adjust this for you.  If you go to Tools \ Extensions and Updates, you can search online for “caps” to find something that will help.  I installed the “All Caps Menu Option” extension which adds the ability to configure this setting in the Options dialog in Visual Studio.

There is also a registry setting you can adjust if you’re comfortable directly adjusting settings like this.  The setting can be found here:
HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\VisualStudio\11.0\General\SuppressUppercaseConversion

Appearance
The next thing people notice is the new somewhat monochrome appearance to Visual Studio.  It’s not a particularly inspiring default colour scheme, however there is an alternative Dark colour scheme you can switch to, which I prefer. However if you’re looking for more options, I recommend downloading the Visual Studio 2012 Color Theme Editor. Just like the extension I mentioned above, this is available in the Extensions and Updates dialog.

How-to videos
These appear to be a useful way to get a quick overview of some of the new features. Although some of the content relates to TFS 2012, which you may not have upgraded to yet. Also be careful with the video on ‘Improving quality with unit tests and fakes’. At first glance fakes this appears to be a Microsoft implementation of a mocking framework, however it is something quite different.  I wouldn’t recommend using fakes without first reading more about it.  You can find a good argument against using them here:
http://blog.pluralsight.com/2012/04/23/vs11-fakes-framework/
http://blog.pluralsight.com/2012/04/25/vs11-fakes-framework-harmful-part-two/

Preview window
A new feature with this version is the Preview Window, which is a single window for viewing files when you single-click on them in the Solution Explorer.  It’s not a feature I found I was missing before and so I assume most people are going to prefer this feature off.  Thankfully there is an icon for this at the top of the Solution Explorer, so you can easily play with the setting to determine whether it is actually useful to you.

Favourite new feature – Quick Launch
At the top right of Visual Studio is now a Quick Launch textbox that you can use for searching.  It will search for and open solutions, projects and files for you, however it is most useful for finding configuration options. Rather than digging through the Options dialog trying to remember where the setting is located in Visual Studio, now you can just search for the feature instead.

Performance
Projects and solutions now load asynchronously, so this should help with performance.  It feels a little snappier than previous versions in the short time I have used it anyway.

I recommend installing a copy for yourself and trying it out.  You can even continue to work with your existing Visual Studio 2010 projects without requiring any conversion of the project files.  You just might have to make a few adjustments to configure the look and feel, until you get something that you’re comfortable working with daily.

Mobile Development
Developing software to work on the many different mobile environments is a costly and time consuming exercise which many companies may decide they cannot afford. As a result I think many will probably end up choosing to build some form of cross-platform web app instead. This is where JavaScript comes in as the driving force behind the variety of tools that are available. Some of the common tools out there are JQuery Mobile, PhoneGap and Sencha Touch, which all use JavaScript in some form to control the web experience via mobile.

There is also another option to consider that falls somewhere in between the native vs. web app decision. Xamarin is a tool that allows for cross-platform development to be written entirely in C#. It is then compiled into the appropriate native code for the different mobile options. (i.e. iOS, Android, Windows Phone) This looks like a good alternative that allows people to steer clear of JavaScript if they prefer and build a user experience that is more integrated with the mobile device.

Web Development
JavaScript is obviously going to remain in use for web development for some time yet, however there are a number of tools and frameworks available that are making it easier to work with.

There are a number of frameworks available to support different user interface architectures with JavaScript, such as Knockout, AngularJS and YUI.

There are also tools such as LESS and Sass to make the CSS easier to work with as well, so the traditional webpages with basic JavaScript and CSS are definitely evolving.

Windows 8 Apps
Windows 8 introduces the concept of an app to Windows users. For people who are used to building software in Windows, they will probably continue to use what they know and use C# and XAML. However it also supports building apps that are written with HTML5 and JavaScript to perform the tasks required by the app.

Moving on from JavaScript
So are we stuck with JavaScript for the long term? Not necessarily. CoffeeScript is a popular tool that makes it easier to generate JavaScript code. Another alternative is TypeScript which extends JavaScript. While Dart is an attempt by Google to build a replacement for JavaScript.

I’m unsure how long it will be before these alternatives start to take over, or if they ever will, however I think we will still be using Javascript for some time yet with the increasing reliance on it.

System 1 & System 2.
(Not to be confused with Thing 1 and Thing 2)

I’m currently reading Daniel Kahneman’s book “Thinking, Fast and Slow” – a behavioural psychology and economics book that describes his research on how our mind thinks. In the book, Kahneman describes the two systems that make up how we think. System one is the unconscious, fast, intuitive, relational thinker. System two is the conscious, slower, lazier, and more logical thinker. For example, when I ask you what 2+2 is, system one jumps in and gives you the answer of 4. When I ask you what 453 * 23 is, system two jumps in to help you calculate the answer.

One of the experiments that Kahneman describes demonstrates how you can ‘prime’ system one and influence its answers. The experiment asked people to look at one word and then fill in the blank in a subsequent incomplete word. The first word they were shown was either “Eat” or “Wash” and the second incomplete word was “So_p”. When shown “Eat”, system one’s relational thinking kicked in and people more often said “Soup” for the second word. On the other hand, when shown “Wash”, system one more often produced the related word “Soap”. Showing the first word to the participants ‘primed’ system one and influenced it to think of a second word that was related to the first.

So, if you start a brainstorming meeting with “What can we do better? My idea is [X].”, you have now primed people to think about [X]. However, if you let people generate ideas on their own first you will start with a larger base of ideas to work with. Once people have written down their own ideas [X,Y,Z], saying those ideas out loud will allow system one to find relational words on the whole set rather than just one idea.

Generate ideas in silence, process the ideas out loud.

References:

• Daniel Kahneman’s Book: Thinking, Fast and Slow
• Slides and video from my related talk: The Silence of Agile

 Re-posted from http://winnipegagilist.blogspot.com

There were a few constraints that made this retrospective challenging. First, due to our volunteer responsibilities we had just under an hour to eat lunch and complete the retrospective. Second, there are about 50 volunteers – allowing everyone to have a voice in such a short time frame would be a challenge. Third, it was important to all of us to celebrate the things that went well and also give a clear, prioritized list of ideas to future volunteer teams.

After discussing the constraints and various facilitation options with some of you, here is what we did:

1. Instead of building a timeline of our experiences we held the retrospective in our volunteer room. Throughout the week we had plastered the walls with our schedules (including happy/sad faces), guidelines, issues, ideas for improvement, etc which then served as visual provocations for the retrospective.

Picture courtesy of Adam Yuret

2. We used silent brainstorming liberally in order to speed up the retrospective while still including every voice. In general we followed the Rising Patton Fusion retrospective model that combines silent brainstorming, silent grouping, and silent voting.

3. We split into 5 groups of 10. Each group would perform a retrospective step together before sharing their results with the larger group.

4. The two major prompts we used in the retrospective were:

The combined “greats”

- “It was great because…”. Each table wrote these in silence, read them out loud to each other, grouped them in silence and then named the groups. The named groups were then shared with the rest of the tables and consolidated into one larger list.

- “Do differently”. Once again, each table wrote these in silence, read them out loud to each other, and then voted in silence. The top 3 items from each table were again shared with the rest of the tables and consolidated into one larger list.

5. Finally, we posted pictures of all the results (yes, every single post-it note) on the Agile Conference Volunteers Facebook page for later reference and comments.

It was a lot of fun and seemed to work well given the constraints. We achieved our goal of giving everyone a voice in a short time period, celebrating what went well, and also producing a nice list of actionable ideas for next year. Anything you would do differently?

Re-posted from winnipegagilist.blogspot.com

I can still picture Mr. Loewen leaning on the desk at the front of my grade 9 class and settling in for a speech. The tone of his voice and even his posture indicated that what he was going to say was important. I think I expected a lecture on the importance of the subject, paying attention in class, working hard at the assignments, or being respectful to the teacher. Or maybe he was going to give his ‘outstanding student’ joke – students who crossed the line would end up ‘out standing in the hallway’. Instead, he confessed to us. He confessed that he didn’t know it all. Of course I can’t remember the exact words, but it went something like this:

“In this course I’m going to teach you what I know to the best of my ability. I’m going to tell you truths as I understand them today. But, someday you will encounter ideas and truths that might make more sense than what I have taught you in this course. You will discover that some of what I have taught you is wrong. When you encounter those ideas, embrace them. And even as you embrace those new truths, remember that you, also, might be wrong again.”

Those words sat with me for a long time before I saw the wisdom in them and embraced them. They have served me well and taken me through some challenging times. Thanks Mr. Loewen.

Re-posted from winnipegagilist.blogspot.com

In late 2012 when Dylan Smith suggested a blog challenge in order to encourage each of us to write more often, I quickly agreed. I don’t find it easy to write but I love the thought process that goes into it and I was hopeful that some extrinsic motivation ($ and deadlines) would help me write more often. I’m still in the competition as long as I finish this post by midnight tonight so it looks like extrinsic motivation is “working” in this case.

And yet, as a proponent of flow in personal and work habits I find that deadlines sometimes seem to be the wrong focus. If we can prioritize and visualize our work effectively then we should always be working on the most important items – regardless of deadlines. Even if some of our items have legitimate deadlines we should be able to add that to our prioritization criteria. If you have ever played the getKanban game, their inclusion of Fixed Delivery Date cards for auditing deadlines illustrates one way to do this.

Beyond Deadlines by Jabe Bloom

I met Jabe and some of his co-workers at TLCLabs last year at various conferences. What makes them unique in my mind is that they courageously try out agile and lean ideas within their company. So when Adam Yuret sent along a link to Jabe’s presentation “Beyond Deadlines” with the text “TLC spent a year telling employees not to set deadlines. We wanted to know, can you run a business without Deadlines?” – I was eager to watch.

Here are the notes I took from the video:

1. Deadlines as [temporary] extrinsic motivation

Deadlines have their roots in motivating workers who were thought to need extrinsic motivation in order to avoid slacking off. Jabe contrasts this view with Deming’s view that extrinsic motivation (deadlines, fear, money, etc) can actually rob us of our intrinsic motivation. I did a quick search on Psychology Today and found agreement on this point – “External motivation, while sometimes helpful, can also undermine intrinsic motivation.”

2. Deadlines as influencers of ‘crap’

Jabe credits Jim Benson for the diagram at the right. Simply put – as your deadline approaches your options are reduced and you choose options to fit the deadline rather than satisfy your customer. As I’ve been watching March Madness this weekend the 35 second shot clock is a good reminder of this – as the shot clock approaches zero the players end up rushing their shots and miss at a higher frequency.

3. Deadlines are a lesser goal

“We are kept from our goal not by obstacles but by a clear path to a lesser goal” – Robert Brault. Deadlines are clear goals – this may nudge you to make choices based on the deadline instead of customer need.

4. Deadlines are a measurement of our estimating accuracy

Deadlines measure your estimating accuracy, not your project success. As the Buhler study from 1995 demonstrated, even with experience we are still inadequate estimators. If this is true then when we use deadlines we are increasing our rate of failure based on something that is potentially arbitrary.

5. Use the 5 Whys on your estimates

Some deadlines are legitimate and Jabe talks about creating an ad for the Super Bowl game as one example. He recommends doing a 5 Why assessment on your deadlines to find the real reason. If the deadline is only there as a motivational tactic, then perhaps you have other better options.

6. Flow as an alternative to deadlines

One of the advantages of kanban over iterations is that you don’t run out of options for a particular item as it passes through your board. With time boxed iterations, as you approach the end of your iteration and haven’t yet met your commitment, you start making choices that cause ‘crap’. Flow enables multiple decision points which increases the options available to you and the satisfaction of your customer.

7. Their story

Yes, they actively worked towards abolishing deadlines for a full year and made it. The video only goes into part of their story and I wish he had said a little more about this. However, from my conversations with them I understand it was a pretty big hit with both their employees and their customers. One of their employees stated: “For us, switching to kanban was great emotionally, because we don’t have to fail every two weeks.” From a customer stand point they changed their release cycle from 6 months (with a list of promised features) to 6 weeks (delivering whatever was ready). Their customers appreciated receiving updates more frequently and the opportunity to provide feedback on features more often. As a company, moving towards flow also enabled them to introduce 20% slack time (“do what you think you should do – you are the expert”) which they believe increased their overall productivity. A side effect of abolishing deadlines is that it helped them to find their real (and few) deadlines.

In Closing

Many of us use deadlines to motivate ourselves or our teams – they are easy to use and often seemingly effective. Given both the dangers and the alternatives as described by Jabe, I’m going to try to keep this tool in the bottom of my tool box. Please be patient with me if I give you a funny look when you ask me: “When can you have that done by?”

To end this post I’d like to take you back to the blog challenge with our bi-weekly deadlines.One of the members of the challenge dropped out earlier this year. His reason? He felt the bi-weekly deadlines were influencing his content choices and quality. The deadlines were influencing him towards ‘crap’.

Further Reading

• Beyond Deadlines – Jabe Bloom
• How Deadlines can be Murder on Motivation – Psychology Today
• The Surprising Truth about what Motivates us – Dan Pink
• Deadline Dread – Psychology Today

 Re-posted from winnipegagilist.blogspot.com

We’re all so busy processing so much information and interruptions these days. It is easy to forget not only that organizations are all about people, but that the key to influencing people is based on truly understanding them and their point of view.

A great book came out recently, Real Influence: Persuade Without Pushing and Gain Without Giving, by Mark Goulston and John Ullmen.

In addition to great case studies and sections like “the dangers of the disconnect”, the book outlines how to bridge the communication chasm.

We often make the mistake of starting with how WE see things. To help another person move, we need to start with how THEY see things. The book suggests three ways to do this:

1. Situational Awareness: Show that You Get “It”
Can you offer ideas that show you truly understand the opportunities (including ego) and challenges the other person is facing?

2. Personal Awareness: You Get “Them”
How can you connect on a personal level to show that you understand their goals, hopes, priorities, needs, limitations, fears, and concerns?

3. Solution Awareness: You Get Their Path to Progress
How can you do to show shed light on a positive path that lets them make progress on THEIR OWN terms. What options can be made to empower them? Based on their situation how do the possibilities you offer make things better nad help them think more clearly?

When you start practicing all three forms of awareness you begin to understand who people are and what they need to move forward. Often others can’t even see the path in front of them and need a second pair of eyes who understands what’s important to them to see it.

In influencing, instead of pulling others to where you are at, why not go to where they are? In other words, invest the time and effort to walk a mile in their shoes.

A few questions from the book that can be used to check yourself include:

• Do I ‘get’ who this whole person is?
• Do I ‘get’ their world?
• Are my options going to help this person?
• How do I know this person gets that I get them?

Related articles

• Harvard Business: For Real Influence, Listen Past Your Blind Spots (blogs.hbr.org)
• First Observe, Then Serve (summerdmiller.wordpress.com)
• Understanding awareness, training, and development (securitycatalyst.com)
• Making Your Leadership Come Alive (operationlive.com)

“It’s the system, not the people” – Deming

And, paradoxically:

“It’s all about the people” – a statement heard often at Protegra that we try to use to guide how we work together.

An event this weekend helped me to understand these seemingly contradictory ideas. My brother (as coach) and nephew (as player) are participating in the junior varsity (gr. 9/10) provincial basketball championships. Last night I was able to watch them play in the semi-finals and could see both of the quotes above at work.

“It’s the system, not the people”

After an exciting victory by my nephew’s team, I overheard a conversation between two neutral parties as they did a postmortem on the game. In their assessment they agreed that both teams were skilled, gave it everything that they had, and played with passion. The main difference between the two teams was that the winning team had a better defensive system – not better players, but a better system. While the opposing coach did his best to exhort his players to play smarter, take better shots, make better passes, avoid the red beads, and play harder defense, ultimately they were defeated by a better system. They didn’t lose this game because of “resources” (coaches, players and refs), they lost to a better system.

“It’s all about the people”

Let’s look at the game from another angle. It was my brother the coach (a person) who researched, introduced, and taught the system to the team. It was the players (people) who bought into and committed to playing within the system. Both the offensive and defensive systems used by the team are well chosen and effective because they depend on teamwork and collaboration. Their systems require all of them to act together – if one person steps outside of the system it breaks down. The systems do not rely on one or two heroes but on the team as a whole. The systems require people to learn together, improve together, and be engaged together. The systems are all about the people. A pretty neat life lesson for a group of gr. 10 boys.

So, yes “It’s the system, not the people”, and yes, “It’s all about the people.”

“We believe it’s all about people. We believe by systematically focusing on people, treating them as the heart of organizational systems, that success will follow for all.” – Protegra.

If you haven’t seen the story. Here is a link to one of the many articles on the subject:

Yahoo Reaction

Individual versus Team

My thoughts on this matter revolve around the concept of individual versus team performance. In fact, the link to the article provides a perfect quote:

“They didn’t lose my productivity,”

As someone who has a 6 and 7-year-old, I can’t see how someone who works from home could be as effective by working the same amount of time. Little questions and requests have context switches inherent in them. We always talk about the impact of task switching at work. We have to be consistent and also recognize the impact of task switching at home. So let’s assume that the person in question puts in the extra time to be as productive at home as they were at work.

OK.

What about the Team?

But what about team productivity? Unless you are working on a solitary project, having a remote member has to affect the team productivity. People work around the missing person. Instead of an immediate in-person discussion they have to make a phone call, instead of white-boarding they either create an electronic diagram or set up a video-conference. Now what happens when the remote person may not be available due to an urgent issue on their side? Technology can help, but the experience isn’t the same and there is an effect on the team.

But what about remote Agile teams?

My opinion, and it is only my opinion, is that I would prefer to not have to deal with a remote team. Now this isn’t possible in some circumstances, but we can’t pretend a remote team will be as efficient as a co-located team. The only question is how bad it will be.

I’d prefer Agile teams to always be co-located in one room. I don’t want to be in a separate room in one building, never mind some people being at home or across the continent.

Summary

I think Yahoo is correct. The company and teams work best when everyone is together. The collaboration and innovation that happens when people are together can’t be replicated.

I understand that are complexities that make everyone co-located a challenge. But if you gave me the choice, I’d choose everyone in same room every single time.

Every quote I had seen on this topic also had the individual aspect as the primary focus. The quotes proposed that “I” was still as productive. No one ever stated that the “team” was still as productive.