My year working remotely at Xero
Tips to help your team stay productive (no matter where you are)
At a time when people around the world are working from home to slow the spread of COVID-19, there’s a lot of conversations happening around how to stay effective when you can’t just swivel your chair to chat with your team, or catch up on the gossip over a coffee in the kitchen.
Well, I’ve been working remotely for over a year now in one of the first fully remote teams at Xero, the Wilderxeros. It’s been an interesting learning experience and one I thought I’d share. If you’re new to remote working, facing some challenges or just interested in my experience — read on!
Work-life balance
One of the best things about working remotely is that it tips the work-life balance scales back in your favour. There’s no commute, which automatically gives you more time to spend doing other things. I’ve also found it to be a cost saving — being able to cook lunches at home and not having to put gas in the car adds up pretty quick!
For long-term remote working, I definitely recommend setting up a work space at home. This can help maintain the boundaries between home and work life, giving you a place to go when you start work. Most importantly, it means you can get up and leave when you’re done for the day, which helps you switch off.
But the biggest benefit for me is being able to spend more time with my two kids. Whether it’s building something with Duplo or reading Hairy Maclary (again) it’s pretty awesome to be able to stay in the loop and be involved with what they’re doing day to day. Having kids running around in the next room also keeps the house feeling a bit lively too!
Mental well being
Like anything in life, there are some drawbacks. There is definitely an increased feeling of isolation and being disconnected. There’s no office vibe — it’s just you. It can be quiet. It can be lonely. It’s easy to lose track of your social and community connections. The isolation also has a funny impact on your schedule.
It may sound strange, but without others around you have to consciously remember to do little things like have lunch or stretch your legs. On more than one occasion, I’ve realised I haven’t actually left the house in a few days. Of course that might be ok now that we’re all practising social distancing, but it can play on your mind, especially in winter when the weather is gloomy.
I think it’s important to be conscious of how working from home affects you and try to keep a regular routine. Things like doing exercise, eating healthily and maintaining social connections — even if it’s a phone or video call — can make a difference. I’ve actually found working remotely has given me a reason to connect with people I wasn’t staying in touch with as much previously.
Team dynamics
The team uses Slack to stay connected and for the most part this works really well, but building quality relationships with your peers is much harder when you’re working remotely. There’s less organic chit-chat and you don’t bump into people in the kitchen or out at lunch. At home, you’ll typically only call someone when it’s work related, and any scheduled catch-ups risk becoming a formality.
Thankfully, our pod seems to be pretty good at winding into meetings. An Agile coach would probably cringe at our 30-minute video standups, but the time spent chatting in the mornings is really beneficial. It also gives us an opportunity to see if anyone is feeling a bit down or not themselves, so we can check in and ask how they’re doing.
I think we’ve built a good rapport with one another, which goes a long way towards trusting that everyone knows what they’re doing and will get things done.
It’s hard to prescribe any advice here, as it largely comes down to the dynamics of the people in the team. But switching your camera on during video calls (which are much better than phone calls) and embracing some off-topic chat is a good start. We still have virtual social catch-ups on Fridays too, so we can have a drink and talk about life outside work. It caps off the week nicely.
Staying connected
Our team is in a bit of a unique position in that we’re entirely remote, while most other teams are based together in an office. There is still a need for us to stay closely connected to what is going on in the office but we’re sometimes easy to overlook.
Xero has come a long way in the last year and is constantly improving by experimenting with how information is delivered, through coffee corners and AMA-style sessions, as well as wheeling us into meetings on Gollum (a mobile monitor and conference kit). I also have a regular one-on-one catch-up with my people lead who’s based in the office and he can often help me find the information or person I’m looking for.
But I still sometimes feel like I miss things — not so much at the strategic level, but how it’s being actioned day to day and how I can contribute to it. You’ve certainly got to be more proactive with asking questions and reaching out to those in the know to find out what you might be missing.
I think it’s tricky whenever you’ve got a group of co-located people, as it can lead to a nucleus where communication becomes easier within the group and can make those on the outside feel even more isolated and detached. Interestingly, now with almost everyone working from home this communication gap may actually improve!
Getting work done
I don’t think it’s any harder to get work done while being remote, but there is a greater reliance on using tools to stay in sync. This is what works for our team so your mileage may vary here. As a team, you’ll need to decide how you want to work. Pick the tools you’ll use, what they’ll be used for, and how you want to use them (and don’t be afraid to experiment a little).
Then write it down. I’m a big fan of writing things down. It has obvious benefits, like onboarding for new team members, but the biggest plus is that it helps create a shared understanding and expectation that can be referenced. If everyone knows how to use the tools and knows where to go for information, they can be more confident in everything they do without having to ask.
This is hugely important if your remote team spans time zones where everyone might not be available at the same time.
Of course, you do need to remember to keep this updated. Otherwise it just becomes another legacy artefact that may confuse things. But I think taking the time to clarify how your team works and what tools you use helps smooth out and streamline the whole development flow. Other teams can also see how you work and incorporate it if it resonates with them as well.
Tooling
So what tools do we use?
Miro is one of our standouts — it’s our virtual whiteboard and collaboration space. Good for pretty much anything — brainstorming, retros, architecture diagrams, you name it. I actually prefer it to a real whiteboard since you never run out of space, it’s immediately digitised and can be shared. There’s also a huge amount of features like timers, voting and real-time cursors that make collaboration really easy.
For planning and tracking work we’d be lost without Jira and Confluence. Confluence is our primary documentation store and includes team processes as well as product documentation, research and planning. We find it much easier to firm up epics in Confluence before placing the relevant stories in Jira. It allows us to keep the big picture in mind, without filling up the backlog too much.
Our goal with Jira is to have a task for everything we’re working on, if it’s mentioned in standup and there’s no task, we pop something in to track it. This gives the team visibility of what everyone else is doing and allows anyone to raise comments or questions early on if needed. It also means we can more accurately see how we’re tracking and what other tasks are taking up our time.
Slack is our default communication channel and what we use for all our calls. The ability to draw on screen when presenting is really helpful, as it allows us to non-verbally acknowledge what’s being discussed. It’s also pretty good for peer programming, as you can easily point things out as if you were sitting beside someone.
Transparency
One of the biggest challenges we’ve faced as a remote team is how to stay transparent and keep our stakeholders up to date effectively. The fact that everything is digital is a big plus, but we’re still looking at different ways to get specific information out to the right people in the right way, such as blogs or demos and videos to our internal and external audiences.
Overall though, I’ve found it awesome working in a remote team and I definitely don’t feel any less productive than previous roles. We faced some challenges figuring out how we fit in with the office as a whole, but I think we’ve really come together to prove you can be a high-performing team while working remotely at Xero.
It’s also worth acknowledging that it’s not for everyone. I’m lucky in that a development role is fairly well suited to remote work and I don’t mind the quiet, but others roles or individual personalities may not find it as easy. So if you’re finding it hard, the best thing to do is reach out and talk about it with your team.
I know in the current climate, many people have made the switch to remote working or are thinking about it and are looking for some advice, so I hope this has been useful. I think it really boils down to communication and making sure everyone feels confident they know what’s happening.
If the last year has taught me anything, it’s that working remote doesn’t mean you’re working on your own.
You may be in separate rooms but you’re still in a team and can do great work. If your team has been doing this for a while, I’d love to hear how your experiences compare to mine. How do you stay connected and check in with each other? What tools do you find useful?
