The important aspects for working in a remote team like here at freistil IT are very well explained in Mark Campbell’s blog entry “How to work remotely as a software developer”:

• Workspace
• Routine
• Setting limits
• Time boxing
• Communication

I’ve found the communication aspect the most essential one, because a remote team needs to compensate for the distance between coworkers. In an office, there are countless opportunities to have short exchanges to bounce ideas off each other, discuss findings and talk about other things. So, to keep round-trip times short in a virtual office, it’s important to use fast communication channels like HipChat or Sqwiggle. (We’ll expand on how we actually use these tools in later posts.)

There’s another great insight in Mark’s post I can wholeheartedly agree to:

“Working from a coffee shop is great. People will ignore you, you get hopped up on caffeine, and there’s a constant noise level about you.”

Oh, and by the way, Mark’s points are fully valid also for system administrators.

(Picture credit: Tracy Ruggles)