How we’re using working from home as an opportunity to collaborate
by Divya Rana
In these difficult and unprecedented times, many teams have rightly been given the ability to work from home. As data scientists, the cliché is often that we tend not to enjoy social contact to begin with and so may not miss this within our teams! However, in reality, communicating data science concepts and code clearly within a team, and with key stakeholders and clients of the business, is essential to the work we do. Collaboration is such a key ingredient in assuring the work we do is focussed on providing business value.
At Digitas UK, our data science team has managed to turn having to work remotely into an opportunity to further improve our team communication and collaboration, through tuning up our use of collaboration tools such as GitHub, increasing the regularity of our team catch ups and shared projects within the Google Cloud Platform.
A bit of background on the team: we are as of yet a small (but mighty!) team of 5 who form the extended Data Science Team for Digitas UK, part of the wider Digitas UK Data and Analytics team. We have Rupert- our Data Science Partner and team leader, Param- the team’s Senior Data Scientist, Mikel- our apprentice, Stella who is a Lead Analyst with some excellent interchangeable skills and myself- a Data Scientist. Most of us have not been at Digitas long, and had not much more than 2 months working all together as a team pre-lockdown, and yet we have found that collaborating together on some key projects since working from home has brought us closer as a team. As Param put it, an essential reason we are able to work well together while apart is a result of
‘having a team that is actually willing to use these tools and put effort into working well remotely’
Of course, we must give props to GitHub, the gold standard code collaboration tool, useful in its sprint working functionalities such as branching and merging. Even when not working on the same project, uploading code to GitHub allows other team members to be aware of what we’ve done and be able to make use of this code in the future. We have also been able to make use of the full Google Cloud Platform: starting with project creation, Google Cloud Storage, and shared use of Virtual Machines in AI Hub within each project. The excellent structure of projects within Google Cloud Platform allows for a central location where we can share data as well as train models, run these and automate scripts.
Vis-à-vis, or voice to voice for the camera shy of us, communication is another essential part of project work. We have found teams most useful for this, and its screen sharing ability allows excellent way of sharing work we’ve done with the team in regular project catch-ups. This also allows for enhanced knowledge share, and in project learning, particularly allowing a chance to pick up things from the highly skilled and experienced senior members of the team. Mind-mapping over screen share, together with Trello, have allowed us to plan and adapt our plans in our project work, essential as Data Science projects are so iterative by nature.
Let us also not forget the essential importance of social catch-ups, for boosting team morale and making us feel united virtually, while not together physically. Our data science partner Rupert, has been great at organising weekly coffee sessions, where we catch up to not talk shop for a while and see how everyone is getting on, as well as virtual Thursday drinks and quizzes run by brilliant members of the wider analytics team. We also still have company-wide lunch and learns running virtually, along with virtual language learning, yoga and other holistic wellbeing sessions available to all employees. Doing their best to make the transition to working from home more comfortable, the company have also provided the opportunity to expense things like extra screens, and ergonomic desk chairs, bringing more office comfort to the home.
Finally, work life balance is understandably more difficult when your home becomes your place of work, and we all have our own hardships with continuing on during a global pandemic. An added challenge for many parents and carers is being able to plan work around their care responsibilities. Yes catching up with your team is important, but It’s okay to decline non-essential meetings, or tell your team you just need a bit of meeting-free down time to get some uninterrupted work done. This is also why now more than before, Digitas UK’s flexible working hours has become essential for its employees, and team members must remember to be mindful of the extra difficulties we are all facing, whilst enjoying the cuteness of small and adorable additions to team meetings from time to time!
