{"id":9748,"date":"2019-10-03T15:39:31","date_gmt":"2019-10-03T15:39:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.uruit.com\/?p=9748"},"modified":"2023-05-31T10:07:01","modified_gmt":"2023-05-31T13:07:01","slug":"distributed-team-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/","title":{"rendered":"How We Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Team"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"ez-toc-container\" class=\"ez-toc-v2_0_17 counter-hierarchy counter-decimal ez-toc-grey\">\n<div class=\"ez-toc-title-container\">\n<p class=\"ez-toc-title\">Contents<\/p>\n<span class=\"ez-toc-title-toggle\"><a class=\"ez-toc-pull-right ez-toc-btn ez-toc-btn-xs ez-toc-btn-default ez-toc-toggle\" style=\"display: none;\"><i class=\"ez-toc-glyphicon ez-toc-icon-toggle\"><\/i><\/a><\/span><\/div>\n<nav><ul class=\"ez-toc-list ez-toc-list-level-1\"><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-1\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-1\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#Launched_a_New_Website_Working_as_a_Distributed_Team\" title=\"Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Team\">Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Team<\/a><ul class=\"ez-toc-list-level-3\"><li class=\"ez-toc-heading-level-3\"><ul class=\"ez-toc-list-level-3\"><li class=\"ez-toc-heading-level-3\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-2\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#uruitcom_a_new_approach_for_an_old_project\" title=\"uruit.com: a new approach for an old project\">uruit.com: a new approach for an old project<\/a><\/li><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-3\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#The_team\" title=\"The team\">The team<\/a><ul class=\"ez-toc-list-level-4\"><li class=\"ez-toc-heading-level-4\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-4\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#A_team_composition_in_flux\" title=\"A team composition in flux\">A team composition in flux<\/a><\/li><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-5\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#Different_work_styles\" title=\"Different work styles\">Different work styles<\/a><\/li><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-6\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#Transparency_issues\" title=\"Transparency issues\">Transparency issues<\/a><\/li><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-4\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-7\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#Last-minute_work\" title=\"Last-minute work\">Last-minute work<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><li class=\"ez-toc-page-1 ez-toc-heading-level-3\"><a class=\"ez-toc-link ez-toc-heading-8\" href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/distributed-team-experience\/#A_distributed_team_experience\" title=\"A distributed team experience\">A distributed team experience<\/a><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/li><\/ul><\/nav><\/div>\n<h1><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Launched_a_New_Website_Working_as_a_Distributed_Team\"><\/span><span data-sheets-value=\"{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:&quot;Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Team&quot;}\" data-sheets-userformat=\"{&quot;2&quot;:15165,&quot;3&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:0},&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0}},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;6&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0}},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;7&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0}},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;8&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:[{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;5&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0}},{&quot;1&quot;:0,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;3&quot;:3},{&quot;1&quot;:1,&quot;2&quot;:0,&quot;4&quot;:1}]},&quot;11&quot;:3,&quot;12&quot;:0,&quot;14&quot;:{&quot;1&quot;:2,&quot;2&quot;:0},&quot;15&quot;:&quot;Calibri&quot;,&quot;16&quot;:11}\">Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Team<\/span><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h1>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">At UruIT, we are all about distributed teams. Of course, as a nearshore development company, we have to stand for this form of work and create the best environment for boosting our remote teams\u2019 capabilities. Our main goal is to deliver high-quality software development services to our US clients. So, instead of being an obstacle, working remote is often an opportunity. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As we put our money where our mouth is, we also form distributed teams internally to tackle projects for our own needs in Uruguay, like for marketing, for example. Actually, since April, I\u2019ve been part of a distributed team experience for redesigning UruIT\u2019s website (<a href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/?utm_source=blog&amp;utm_medium=link&amp;utm_campaign=web%20blog%20post\">that you can see right now, we\u2019re live!<\/a>).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As the marketer responsible for this project, I spent the last few months working side by side with a Product Owner, developers, designers, and other types of roles for building our brand new website. Part of the team was based in our offices in Uruguay and part of it was remote. Some team members worked 100% remotely. At the same time, others would come to the office occasionally for meetings or work hours and some were here at all times. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><b>In this blog post, I\u2019d like to share more about this project. You will read about our challenges, and tips for finding success with a distributed team, based on our experience.<\/b><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9749\" src=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/blog-post-web.jpg\" alt=\"distributed team experience\" width=\"2953\" height=\"1815\" \/><\/p>\n<h3><\/h3>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"uruitcom_a_new_approach_for_an_old_project\"><\/span><strong>uruit.com: a new approach for an old project<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I joined UruIT at the beginning of 2017. Since then, the idea has been floated around to redesign our website. However, it wasn\u2019t until this year that we were able to set up a team to handle the project from start to finish. <strong>Historically, we managed the website with in-house talent, people interested in joining the team and\/or that was not assigned to a client project.<\/strong> Since our #1 priority as a company is to make sure our clients are well attended, our designers and developers never quite had the full availability to work on our website. If you are a marketer in a similar company, I bet you know the drill \ud83d\ude00\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>But in 2019, we decided to assemble a dedicated team for our own website.<\/strong> This team would be composed of our \u201con the bench\u201d talent and temporary consultants in order to accelerate time to market and meet deadlines. Our main requirement was that team members should be available for communication during office hours. Although the team configuration changed over time, this was the most stable team we\u2019d built for this project in what seemed like ages:<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"The_team\"><\/span>The team<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>On our side:<\/em> myself, the marketing team representative, the Product Owner, and technical leaders from development and design who validated the consultants\u2019 work and guided them on how to follow our branding and coding practices.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><em>On the remote side:<\/em> a consulting designer and developer(s) from companies that we knew and trusted.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To organize ourselves, <a href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/shaping-agile-mindset\/\">we decided to follow the Agile practices that are a part of UruIT\u2019s culture<\/a>. We started the project with a story mapping activity for identifying a common goal and our vision for the website. Later on, we prioritized and defined what functionalities to tackle on the first release and which ones we would work on in the future. Afterwards, we used a Trello board for keeping up with the project\u2019s roadmap and the backlog of functionalities to develop each sprint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><strong>Then, Scrum was our main choice for moving the process forward.<\/strong> We had weekly planning and review meetings, daily checkpoints, and occasionally, refinement instances and retrospective meetings. Those last two were particularly useful for dealing with some of the issues I\u2019ll explain shortly, such as the team configuration changing over time. For making sure the whole team was connected, <strong>we relied on tools such as Slack for day-to-day communication and Zoom for video conferencing.\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Fortunately, the team atmosphere was very positive. In our final Retro, everyone said they enjoyed and felt comfortable working with each other. I particularly felt like it was a pleasant environment. Over these months, I was able to learn more than ever!<\/span><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9750\" src=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/blog-post-web2.jpg\" alt=\"distributed team experience\" width=\"3508\" height=\"2480\" \/><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Nevertheless, some challenges came up, and this is how we faced them:<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_team_composition_in_flux\"><\/span><strong>A team composition in flux<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Historically, <strong>the internal team in the past that was dedicated to our site changed often.<\/strong> People got more or less busy, priorities shifted, new projects appeared, etc. In order to foster stability for this re-design project, we decided that two UruITers would dedicate a specific chunk of their time to this project exclusively. That meant the Product Owner and me! As the two UruITers with the greatest bandwidth to lead this project, we aimed at maintaining our internal knowledge and supporting new team members better.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">However, other members joined and left the project during its execution, at different times, especially designers and developers. This imbalance sometimes made processes slow. <strong>When someone left the team, we experienced a delay as we had to find and onboard a replacement.<\/strong> As a result, the project\u2019s different areas weren\u2019t moving forward at the same pace. Sometimes there were many new designs and not enough developers to act on them or vice versa.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">To manage this constantly changing environment, first of all, we hired consultants that committed themselves to be available during office hours. That way, the whole team could be in touch throughout most of the day. The Scrum ceremonies were ideal moments for integrating team members, clearing up any doubts, and setting the project\u2019s tone.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In addition, when design got behind, the development team used its spare time to improve the code, work on the infrastructure, test, fix bugs, and more. When the situation changed and we had several interfaces to implement and little development capacity, the team got together to plan how we could incorporate more developers on demand. During the whole process, we also evolved our focus on the priorities. We put a lot of effort on refinement, making stories smaller, more specific, and easier to tackle.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Different_work_styles\"><\/span><strong>Different work styles<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although we had ceremonies, <strong>not everyone that was part of this distributed team experience had incorporated Agile practices<\/strong> such as prioritizing the most important things and focusing on generating valuable and working software from day one. For us at UruIT, this work methodology is present all the time. When we start a project, we prefer to create a small functionality that fulfills its purpose and <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">then<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> evolve from there. However, as the web project had such a diverse team, with professionals that were not used to our own work culture, we had trouble sticking to it. For instance, sometimes we spent more time and resources than we should have on aspects of the website that weren\u2019t as important.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"><a href=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/why-a-po-proxy-is-key-to-your-software-development-project-success\/\" class=\"broken_link\" rel=\"nofollow\">Our Product Owner was key in this process.<\/a> She helped us steer our efforts in the best direction for fulfilling the product\u2019s goals. The PO reminded us constantly of the importance of following the plan and focusing on the most important features. She was also the one who led the stories refinement, helping developers to better visualize the required tasks according to the project\u2019s priorities.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Transparency_issues\"><\/span><strong>Transparency issues<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Transparency is an important value inside an Agile environment and sometimes we were lacking in it. We had moments in which not everyone was sure of what the others were working on.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What helped us manage these situations was having open talks with the whole team to clarify concerns. <strong>By putting the problem on the table and inviting everyone to participate in the discussion, we owned the responsibility of finding solutions.<\/strong> When we all agreed on incorporating a rule or changing something, everyone was fully onboard to do their part and improve things.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As an example, sometimes we\u2019d end a sprint with a lot of stories to review. However, a story that\u2019s <\/span><i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">almost<\/span><\/i><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\"> finished is not a completed one. In order to expand on this and make the team aware of the importance of closing the planned stories for each sprint, we had meetings for evaluating things. <\/span><\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">What is a reasonable story that anyone could start and finish within our 1-week sprint? Do we need to split this story that\u2019s in progress into two so we can release a more valuable part? <\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">By having these discussions, we gained visibility into the real progress. Therefore, we could accelerate our work, generating features of value and improving our control over the roadmap.<\/span><\/p>\n<h4><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"Last-minute_work\"><\/span><strong>Last-minute work<\/strong><span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h4>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">We planned a lot, but, as they inevitably do, difficulties arose last minute. <strong>As you can imagine, after the previous redesign in 2015, the website had a lot of particularities that we didn\u2019t know from the beginning.<\/strong> Some examples are pages that weren\u2019t visible and an extensive redirect list to tackle. Also, we underestimated parts of the website\u2019s migration to a new hosting provider and how it affected related platforms, such as the company\u2019s blog. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">As a result, urgent tasks sometimes came up that made the team have to stop what they were doing in order to solve them. In these cases, we counted on the help of other consultants who had specific knowledge in subjects such as WordPress and SEO. Thinking back, it would have been better to include those guys from day one and plan things ahead of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">In other cases, <strong>the team adjusted the work and had enough flexibility for incorporating the most important tasks.<\/strong> To do so, we communicated the need as soon as possible and adapted our plans. Or, we\u2019d put our foot down and let go of things that showed up out of nowhere, in order to keep up with the plan. It wasn\u2019t always easy to make these decisions, but our main criteria was to maintain the hard release date. If the task meant we would have to delay the website\u2019s launch, we added it to our Backlog for re-prioritizing it in future releases.<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><span class=\"ez-toc-section\" id=\"A_distributed_team_experience\"><\/span>A distributed team experience<span class=\"ez-toc-section-end\"><\/span><\/h3>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-9755\" src=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"1320\" height=\"990\" srcset=\"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2.jpg 1320w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-300x225.jpg 300w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-1024x768.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-768x576.jpg 768w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-750x563.jpg 750w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-1140x855.jpg 1140w, https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/10\/Web2-20x15.jpg 20w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 1320px) 100vw, 1320px\" \/><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">These are some of our learning points and ideas for improving the management of a distributed team experience. Our website is a work in progress and we\u2019re just starting the next release. So, if you have any suggestions, let us know! Also, if you feel this post could be useful to other remote teams, do share! Hope we all can create a connected and efficient work environment &#8211; regardless of where we are!<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Contents Launched a New Website Working as a Distributed Teamuruit.com: a new approach for an old projectThe teamA team composition in fluxDifferent work stylesTransparency issuesLast-minute workA distributed team experience Launched&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":28,"featured_media":9751,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[288],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9748"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/28"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9748"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9748\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11285,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9748\/revisions\/11285"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9751"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9748"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9748"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/uruit.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9748"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}