Remote work concepts in the office

After many years of working exclusively on-site in an office with colleagues who were also only familiar with this mode of work, the COVID-19 pandemic fundamentally changed how I work. Over a span of more than two years, I worked entirely from home. Now, I'm employed with a company that offers a hybrid work model, allowing both office work and remote work. Many of the principles and practices that I've learned during my time as a remote software developer are now being successfully implemented in the office as well. In this article, I'd like to share some of these concepts that seamlessly transition from a purely home-office setting into an office environment.

Daily Stand-ups

Previously in our office routine, daily stand-ups were not necessary as we were already in constant communication and convened team meetings as needed. However, this brief, daily meeting has proven to be an effective way to meaningfully start the workday. Initially, we faced some challenges with the format: our meetings were often too long, poorly timed, or overcrowded.

An important aspect of daily stand-ups in a fully remote team is to maintain personal contact with colleagues and stay informed about other teams' projects. These meetings regularly lead to further discussions. Originally, these discussions took place during the stand-up itself, unnecessarily prolonging the meeting for everyone else. We decided to move such in-depth discussions to a time after the meeting.

In the office, the focus of the daily stand-up shifts more towards organizational aspects:

• Alignment with the goals of the current sprint
• Checking whether all team members are working on the right tasks
• An opportunity for spontaneous questions or discussion prompts that can be delved into later
• A quick glance at the sprint board to maintain an overview of the goals.

Video Call Software/Hardware

I used to not even own a headset. Even when I did have one, it often collected dust in some corner. One of my former colleagues worked entirely remotely, yet the team was resistant to the idea of organizing meetings in a way that he could easily participate from home. Rather than out of unwillingness, this resistance was more out of habit—short discussions and technical talks were still often conducted over coffee, during lunch breaks, or through spontaneous desk visits.

However, having access to reliable video call infrastructure greatly simplifies the process of organizing online meetings. Is a colleague spontaneously working from home? No problem: the rest of the meeting participants simply put on their headsets, or appropriate video conferencing hardware is placed in the room. This flexibility to seamlessly switch between in-person and digital meetings lays the foundation for effective hybrid work.

Disciplined Project Management

In projects where I take on the role of the project manager, my goal is to keep administrative overhead as low as possible. Project management should guide the team efficiently and safely toward its objectives. With this in mind, I have often foregone detailed project documentation and issue planning in small teams that work entirely on-site. In the context of agile software development and smooth communication, the effort for planning and documenting individual tasks often seems unjustified. If a task is unclear, those ambiguities can usually be quickly resolved through brief meetings. After such a meeting, we can be confident that the team has absorbed and understood the information. For small tasks, there often isn't a need for documentation beyond good code comments.

However, in hybrid or larger teams, it's crucial to document tasks and ongoing changes, making them accessible to all team members—whether they're in the office or working from home. Discussion outcomes that were developed by only a portion of the team should be documented in a form that is accessible to the entire team. Changes to tasks should be communicated through, for example, email notifications. This additional project management effort in hybrid teams is justified because the costs of erroneous or outdated task descriptions can be substantial. Employees who spend several hours working on outdated or unclear tasks while at home incur costs that far exceed those of meticulous and up-to-date documentation of individual tasks.

2023-09-04