Build Intentional Remote Collaboration - Like GitLab
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Join For FreeThe office of the 20th century is a testament to design. A great deal of thought goes into the layout of a building. How are the offices laid out? Where are the elevators located? Where will teams meet? But the focus on co-located office space is quickly becoming a relic of the past.
To meet the challenges of the 21st century, GitLab's Head of Remote, Darren Murph, is pushing organizations to put just as much thought into their remote work structure as they would an office building.
For many companies, the transition to this mindset comes with difficulty. They've shifted into remote work as a necessity but maintain the 20th-century ‘office-first’ mindset. While this is passable and can work, it's not ultimately taking advantage of the key benefits of a virtual atmosphere.
To take advantage of the shifting dynamics, GitLab is using its platform to consolidate all of its virtual collaboration. Providing a single source of truth, GitLab has designed the virtual version of a central hallway where all work is funneled. This breaks down organizational silos and enables the GitLab team to collaborate with maximum efficiency by ensuring that everything is as visible and transparent as possible for everyone in the organization.
A company's central hallway will look different from organization to organization, but the takeaway for all remote organizations and engineering leaders should be the importance of de-siloing information across your organization. This will encourage virtual collaboration and boost creativity.
How to Collaborate in a Remote Work World
People are still adjusting to the fact that so much work is done these days remotely. It is not something we expected to deal with until the COVID-19 pandemic changed the world so dramatically for so many people. It was a surprise and a shocker for many, and it has led many business leaders to rethink how they collaborate with a team of workers stationed all over the world.
One of the most important things to remember from the start is that you need a plan. Many people come at a problem like this without fully thinking through exactly how they will work at solving it. The problem is that it ultimately leads to poor decision-making, hindering progress on all fronts.
It is best to design an office that can work well with international and remote collaboration. It should be where people can freely share their thoughts and ideas without fearing being ignored. Thus, you need to consider every policy you put in place today to provide your workers with the exact environment they need to get their job done in the most satisfactory way possible.
Please understand that remote work is likely to be a facet of life for some time to come, so it is best to accept this fact and understand that you will likely need people to continue to work from their home offices for the foreseeable future. You might as well plan for that reality.
Meetings that Support Remote Culture
A Chief People Officer once asked Darren, “How do we make our meetings better?” His response? “Make them harder to have.”
Darren believes that you should have as few meetings as possible because people deserve to be able to focus on their work. This belief flows from the practice of using tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams to gather consensus asynchronously and then reserve synchronous time for meetings where only decisions are made, or important status updates are shared.
This has the effect of focusing a team’s attention which is important as teams become distributed around the globe, and time zones become a greater issue. It's far too easy for your entire day to meet with teams across your organization, with people coming online in various time zones to fill your day. Instead, the focus should remain on having critical day-to-day functions performed asynchronously - with meetings taking a back seat.
In addition to focusing an organization's efforts, being thoughtful about structuring remote work also reduces meeting fatigue. We’ve all experienced being on Zoom or other video conferencing software throughout the day. Not only is it inefficient and distracting, but it can lower your company morale and leave you exhausted and feeling like you didn't accomplish anything during the day.
Darren’s ideas may have seemed radical just a couple of years ago. But he and the folks at GitLab are pioneering - and thriving - in today’s remote environment. The office of the 21st century is undoubtedly going to be virtual, so remember to put as much rigor and thought into your virtual work structure as you would if you were designing a building.
To learn more about how GitLab and other companies transitioned to remote work, check out Dev Interrupted's Remote Work Panel on August 11, from 9-10am PST.
Interested in learning more about implementing remote work best practices at your organization?
Join us tomorrow, August 11, from 9am-10am PST for a panel discussion with some of tech’s foremost remote work experts. This amazing lineup features:
Darren Murph, Head of Remote at GitLab & Guinness World Record Holder as the most prolific blogger ever
Lawrence Mandel Director of Engineering at Shopify & Hockey Enthusiast
Shweta Saraf, Senior Director of Engineering at Equinix & Plato Mentor
And the Panda himself, Chris Downard, VP of Engineering at GigSmart
Dan Lines, COO of LinearB, will be moderating a discussion with our guests on how they lead their teams remotely, how the current workplace is changing, and what's next as the pandemic continues to change
Don't miss the event afterparty hosted in discord from 10-10:30am with event speakers Chris and Shweta and LinearB team members Dan Lines and Conor Bronsdon.
If you haven't already joined the best developer discord, WYD?
I know we talk about it a lot, but we love our developer discord community. With over 1500 members, the Dev Interrupted Discord Community is the best place for Engineering Leaders to engage in daily conversation. No salespeople allowed.
Published at DZone with permission of Conor Bronsdon. See the original article here.
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