Engineering Blog

Hi, I’m Tom; I’m an engineer at Rally.  In Raleigh.  (Say that out loud; you have no idea how much confusion it causes.)   Anyway, that makes me one of these exceptions.  As pointed out, our engineering process is optimized to take advantage of high-bandwidth communication.  This is implemented via a highly configurable shared physical space – which is great for a collocated team.  But, challenges arise when incorporating remote team members into this environment.

• Conversations take place away from technology: When a thought occurs, not many people want to hold their tongue until they are next to a computer, have set up a call, got a mic plugged in, etc., etc…
• Technology can be a pain in the rear: There’s not enough bandwidth.  The camera is crappy or isn’t configured correctly.   People aren’t logged in, or their contact info isn’t up to date.  Tech helps, but it’s annoying when it’s hard to use.
• Decisions are reached offline: People are passionate about their work, and they’ll talk about it.  Opinions are formed, decisions are reached, collaboration is…collaborized?   Coming in late and getting the Reader’s Digest version is not the same.
• Lower communication bandwidth: Not everyone can be on camera at the same time.   Remote attendees can miss things like body language, audience feedback, or obscene gestures.  Long pauses can mean you’ve somehow offended someone, or that the ice cream truck is outside and everyone took a break.
• Time zone differences: The start of my workday is 2 hours before Boulder’s.  That gives us about 5-6 hours of quality time a day.

So why do we bother?  What does Rally gain from distributing teams?

• Knowledge sharing: In my opinion, this is the big one.  Distributed teams help prevent knowledge silos.
• Larger talent pool: There are some talented engineers that won’t or can’t move to Boulder.
• Longer coverage window: The work hours for the engineers covers more of the day.
• Compartmentalization of facilities impact: If a site needs to renovate – or there is a fire alarm – or a network outage – then all of engineering is not blocked.
• Organizational maturity: Rally is growing fast.   We’re about to pass 300 employees – not yet a global empire, but we’re getting there.   We still hire in Boulder, but the competition for engineers is stepping up.  The office space on Walnut street is filling up.   Geographic scalability is not critical for us yet – but it will be.  We’re developing our capability to scale before we absolutely have to have it.

I agree with 99% of Ryan’s post regarding the shared engineering space.  For teams that have the luxury of collocation: get into the office!   It’s worth it.  The 1% I’d like to clarify may be academic: that the shared space is essential to the culture.   There is no disputing it requires more effort to participate through the thin pipe of a remote connection; but as the organization changes and it starts to make business sense to include remote members, the team has to either give up the culture (bad!) or find ways to make it work (good!).  I’ve been most pleased with Rally and its ability include me; it’s not without some rough edges (see the challenges above) but we’re committed to smoothing them out.

The important thing is that this is what we do.  We deliver enterprise Agile transformation, and we deliver it to organizations that are many times our size.  They have reached a size where geographic scalability is critical; they have to have distributed teams.  We strive to be the exemplar for our customers.   We demonstrate that Agile is effective for large organizations, and we practice what we preach.