What are distributed teams?

Others might have their own definitions and criteria, but these are the key attributes I associate with distributed teams:

• Working towards a shared goal
• No requirement to be co-located
• Not restricted to a single timezone

Let me explain how I've settled on each item in this list.

A Shared Goal

The team should be aligned and focused on acheiving a certain goal - whether it's a short-term project that takes weeks or perhaps working on a product that might evolve over a period of months or years. Knowing the goal helps to know who is considered “core” to achieving the goal, versus those who fall into of a “stakeholder” role on the outside. Goals may also require collaborating with other teams inside a company - let's call those “partner teams”.

The configurations of teams will vary from situation, but being able to identify who belongs in each categories is helpful to keep in mind when it comes to things like communications and meetings:

• the core will likely be working very closely together
• the core may need to collaborate with partner teams to achieve their goal, but the partner teams will not need to be working closely with the core team
• stakeholders are not involved with details and exeution, but it should be easy for them to follow along from the outside

I'll expand more on this later on, as it's especially relevant to topics like communications.

Not co-located

Working in the same space does have it's upsides, but this doesn't need to be the default for a team. Being able to tap your colleague on the shoulder to ask a question is very convenient, but it'd be great to not require that sort of closeness when working together.

I believe there are plenty of tools available to subsitute for typical interactions that a team has, as well as enabling newer types of collaboration.

That's not to say that distributed teams should never meet and work in the same space. It's great to gather with your colleagues from time to time, and events like project planning or strategic meetings can benefit from the close, even intense, collaboration that occurs when you're all same space.

But that doesn't need to happen every day.

Multiple timezones

Not everyone has the same daily routine. Some people are early risers. Others may feel more productive in the evenings. And some people may like to adapt their work around other commitments, like taking their children to and from school. What if our teams were able to work like this?

It takes time, experience and cohesion for a team to be able to work together when spread over different timezones and I think it's within the realm of everyone to be able to work how they prefer, when supported by the company itself. And when timezone differences are no longer a limitation for employees, it becomes possible to hire from around the world.

A note on remote

I'm consciously avoiding using “remote” as a descriptor for these teams and employees which differs from how it's typically used in the industry as I see a host of anti-patterns that companies fall into that mean teams and employees can end up in a bad place.

I'll dig into this more as I expand on this topic, but the core of the problem as I see it is, without appropriate tools and habits, remote developers can be isolated within the an organization.

I'm skeptical when companies claim to supporting remote employees without hearing from the employees themselves, as poor or partial support of remote employees can limit them in many ways, leading to productivity, morale or communication issues over time.