Presented at PycCon 8, Florence 7 April 2017 – Remote working and “smart working” is very much in fashion these days, but what does it entail for the daily routing of a distributed development team? We will talk about tools, the disputed use of email, Skype, Slack but more specifically about time management, what you can expect from yourself and from other members of the remote team. Is your company “remote-friendly” or rather “remote-first”? When it’s time to spend a few days in physical proximity with your colleagues? We will share some examples out of the experience of a distributed team actively working with Python and Django on a daily basis, and show how you can make it all work, if you work on it.

1. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Out of Sight, Out of Mind:
Survival tricks and tools for remote developers
(especially Python and Django)
Alessio Bragadini
agile42 International
@abragad

2. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Who I am, my team
• Web (backend) developer and assorted crafts
• Working for agile42, an Agile training and coaching
company: Europe, North America, South Africa
• Web/IT team working in Berlin and distributed
• We use Python and Django, and Agile methodologies
• I work remotely from Milan, for this job and previous
ones
• How do I preserve my sanity?

3. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
The dream…

4. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
…the reality

5. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Remote working is not easy…

6. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
“I think there’s a split between being remote-
friendly — hiring some workers in a different
city — and remote-first, meaning you build
your development team around a workflow
that embraces the concepts of remote work,
whether or not your employees are remote.”
– Zach @Holman / http://bit.ly/2nTomQb
Remote-Friendly vs Remote-First

7. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Can Agile help?
•TDD (Test-Driven Development)
•no code ownership
•shared “visual backlog”
(boards etc.)

8. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
“The most efficient and effective method
of conveying information to and within a
development team is face-to-face
conversation.”
Principles behind the Agile Manifesto

9. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
What is face-to-face?
•Face-to-face means proximity but also
truthfulness
•We are now used to constant chat and
group chats
•We have Skype, WhatsApp, Hangout, Slack
•This is 99% of face-to-face (body language
still counts)

10. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
What is Information?
•Discussion about the project
•Discussion about code or design
•What moves forward: commits, tasks
•What moves backwards: bugs, regressions
•Links, ideas, jokes, etc.

11. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
“By forcing yourself to use chat instead of
meetings, by forcing yourself to use chatops
to mercilessly automate every single manual
action, you end up creating things faster, with
more built-in context, and greater ability to
share your knowledge across the
organization.”
– Zach @Holman / http://bit.ly/2nTomQb
Remote-Friendly vs Remote-First

12. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
How you do it, technically
• Shared code repository, possibly reachable from every
location (GitHub, Bitbucket, but security is a factor)
• Automated unit testing and integration testing
• Continuous Integration
• Continuous Deployment on a test server
• Shared tool for task planning and big picture (epics,
sprints, milestones, etc.)
• All available online from any location
• All feeding a communication channel

13. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
How you do it, personally
• Agile ceremonies: daily standup, sprint planning, sprint
review, retrospectives
• Explain what you’re going to do, what you’ve done, offer
advice
• Establish “work hours” even if you are not in a proper
office
• Keep chat channel open during work hours
• Meet face-to-time from time to time
• Learn from companies that “do it”:
e.g. Automattic, Balsamiq

14. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017

15. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Our team setup: Python and Django
• Test-Driven Development (unittest, Selenium, visual tests)
• Infrastructure as code
• Jenkins for CI
• GitHub/Bitbucket for shared git repositories
• Slack channel with integrations with Jenkins, git
• Agilo for Scrum(*) or Trello
• Skype for Agile ceremonies including daily standup
• Google docs etc.

16. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Thank you!
Contact us at
www.agile42.com / @agile42 / @abragad
Always looking for talents

17. agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2007 - 2015agile42 | The Agile Coaching Company www.agile42.com | All rights reserved. Copyright © 2017
Extra links
Read:
https://zachholman.com/posts/remote-first/
https://www.helpscout.net/blog/agile-remote-teams/
http://www.agile42.com/en/blog/2014/08/28/agile-team-co-location-remote/
https://whenihavetime.com/2014/07/08/10-lessons-from-4-years-working-remotely/
https://blog.balsamiq.com/remote-work/
Watch:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thAvcDrf870 (Francesco Fullone, Italian)
Follow:
http://www.agile42.com/blog/
https://twitter.com/agile42
https://www.facebook.com/groups/lavoratori.in.remote/