This document summarizes strategies used by Molly Struve to lead a globally distributed engineering team spanning 8 time zones. The key strategies included:
1. Using async standups like weekly blog posts for status updates and discussion to keep the team informed across time zones.
2. Implementing rotating meeting schedules including engineering roundtables and casual watercoolers to allow face time while accommodating different time zones.
3. Setting async work expectations such as 24 hour PR reviews and using Slack asynchronously to create an async-first culture and better work-life balance for all team members.
1. Molly Struve
September 14, 2021
EIGHTTIMEZONES,ONECOHESIVETEAM
1
Hi everyone, my name is Molly Struve. I have held numerous engineering leadership positions throughout my career but today what I want to focus on is my time leading a globally distributed team. Leading a
globally distributed engineering team that spans…
2. Molly Struve
September 14, 2021
EIGHTTIMEZONES,ONECOHESIVETEAM
2
multiple timezones is no walk in the park. It takes a lot of e
ff
ort and intention to make it all work. Today with more and more companies embracing a remote
fi
rst approach, widely distributed teams are
becoming more and…
3. Molly Struve
September 14, 2021
EIGHTTIMEZONES,ONECOHESIVETEAM
3
more common. With this talk I want to share some of the strategies I have used to help make a globally distributed team feel like one cohesive unit. As the title indicates, these strategies helped me lead a
department with folks residing…
4. Molly Struve
September 14, 2021
EIGHTTIMEZONES,ONECOHESIVETEAM
4
in 8 di
ff
erent timezones from Thailand all the way to Denver. While some companies with distributed departments like this will have people work together based on timezone, we did not. Folks in our
engineering department worked together based..
5. Molly Struve
September 14, 2021
EIGHTTIMEZONES,ONECOHESIVETEAM
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on area of expertise. Having folks work together closely that are in vastly di
ff
erent timezones forced us to evolve and
fi
gure out new ways to make it all work. So lets get right to it and talk about…
8. DISTRIBUTEDTEAMSTRATEGIES
-Async standups
-Rotating meeting schedules
8
How we complimented these asynchronous standups with rotating meeting schedules to ensure everyone on the team had a chance to get FaceTime with one and other. Finally, I will cover how to…
9. DISTRIBUTEDTEAMSTRATEGIES
-Async standups
-Rotating meeting schedules
-Setting async work expectations
9
Set the proper async work expectations that will allow your distributed team to
fl
ourish. So with that agenda laid out, lets get right to it and I will tell you about how we did…
10. ASYNCSTANDUPS
10
async standups. Many companies with a team localized to a speci
fi
c location or in an o
ffi
ce will do some sort of daily or weekly synchronous standups. These are often great ways for teams to share status
updates and get on the same page about the work…
11. ASYNCSTANDUPS
11
they are all doing. The need for this context sharing on a regular basis is just as valuable for a distributed team. However, with a widely distributed team, it’s often nearly impossible to
fi
nd a time when
everyone can meet face to face. Since synchronous…
12. ASYNCSTANDUPS
12
standups were not an option for us we decided to do them asynchronously. To accomplish this I would publish a weekly internal…
14. 14
example of what one of those posts looks like. One of the
fi
rst things I want to call out here…
15. 15
is the title. Given our distributed nature we had folks that were from all di
ff
erent countries. Many of those di
ff
erent countries format their dates di
ff
erently. For this reason, we used a date format that was clear
for everyone by using the name of the month instead…
16. 16
of the number. This ensured there was no confusion on which number was the month and which number was the day of the month. This may seem extremely minor, but it makes all the di
ff
erence in ensuring
that all team members feel included and prioritized. Next I want to…
17. 17
Focus on the body of the post. The
fi
rst item at the top of the post is a set of department updates. I used this section to update the team on anything new in the engineering department or about other things
happening across the company that may a
ff
ect them. Finally..
18. 18
I asked the team to drop their own updates in the comments. These updates would include what they accomplished the previous week as well as what they planned on working on the next week. In these
comments team members could @-mention each other if…
19. 19
there were things they needed to call out or wanted to make sure someone else saw. Everyone also had the ability to respond directly to individual comments which allowed for async discussion around any
update if needed. The software…
20. HTTPS://GITHUB.COM/FOREM/FOREM
20
used for these standup blog posts was the company’s open source Forem software which anyone can
fi
nd on Github and use themselves if they so choose. The advantage of a blog post is that it allows you
to share department…
22. SLACKBOTS
22
Slackbots. These are a little less robust than a blog post but they are an easy way to do quick async checkins with your team. I actually made use of these for smaller teams within our department. So to
recap…
25. ROTATINGMEETINGSCHEDULES
25
a couple of rotating meetings that the team could participate in to get that much needed face time. The
fi
rst of those meetings was an…
27. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
27
on a 4 week rotating schedule to accommodate all of the di
ff
erent timezones. The di
ff
ering times ensured that everyone could at least attend 1 of the roundtables and most folks could attend 2 to 3 of them. I
will concede…
28. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
28
that even with the varying times, these were still skewed towards being more convenient for folks closer to US timezones. One of the reasons for this was because I was…
29. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
29
the one leading the meetings. One way to improve this schedule and add more timezone friendly options would be to have other team members lead some of the meetings. These roundtables are…
30. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
30
Open ended discussions. They are meant to give folks time and space to chat about anything that is on their minds. However, to make them more inclusive and account for nuerodiversity, I would post a list of
prompts and questions…
31. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
31
prior to the meeting in Slack. This allowed folks who might have a hard time thinking on the spot in a meeting to prepare and think about possible topics ahead of time. These prompts…
33. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
33
the icebreaker bullet point at the top. Every roundtable starts with some sort of icebreaker that everyone answers. The purpose of this is to get people engaged right from the beginning bc studies have shown
that folks are more likely to be engaged in a meeting if you can get them participating right from the start. You can…
34. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
34
See from the questions that they are pretty open ended. Some might be speci
fi
c to things going on at the time like the Q3 objective question or they may be more general like the “What could we do 10%
better as a team?”question. Whether…
35. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
35
we talked about these questions or not didn’t matter. Their only purpose was to get folks thinking. Another crucial aspect of these Engineering roundtables is that…
36. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
-Recorded
36
They are recorded. This is important because then you can share the recordings with the entire team and those who could not attend have an opportunity to catch up on everything that was discussed. In
addition to recording the roundtables I also…
37. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
-Recorded
-Take and publish notes
37
would take and publish notes for each of them. Once again, this is another easy way to make it accessible for those who might not have enough time to watch the full hour long recording. They can quickly
skim the…
38. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
-Recorded
-Take and publish notes
38
notes if they choose to see what was discussed. The notes and the recording all were documented in our internal docs. Anyone at anytime could go back and look at those notes or watch any of the previous
roundtable…
39. ENGINEERINGROUNDTABLE
-Open ended discussion
-Recorded
-Take and publish notes
39
discussions. In addition to these more formal and structured roundtables we also wanted to give folks time for more casual conversation. To address this need we employed what we called …
40. WATERCOOLERS
40
Watercoolers. Watercoolers are 15 minute scheduled zoom calls that are meant to mimic those casual conversations that would happen naturally if everyone was in an o
ffi
ce setting together. Like the
Engineering roundtables, watercoolers are placed…
41. WATERCOOLERS
41
at all di
ff
erent times throughout the week to accommodate all di
ff
erent timezones. In addition to scheduling time for these types of interactions we also added…
45. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
45
A memorable production outage story. These questions and/or topics are totally optional but are there to help spur some discussion if needed. While alone these watercoolers can work, there are a couple of
things we found improve their chances for success. One of those items….
46. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
-Have an advocate
46
Is having someone advocate for the watercooler. We found that if one person mentions in Slack that they are going to attend a watercooler then it is more likely others will join bc folks know they won’t be
sitting alone awkwardly…
47. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
-Have an advocate
47
in a zoom room. I have found that merely encouraging folks to advocate for watercoolers that are convenient for them goes a long way. Another great way to encourage watercooler participation and make
people feel more comfortable is by…
48. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
-Have an advocate
-Attendance visibility
48
Having attendance visibility. This is something that we never found the time to implement but was asked for many times by the team. There are ways to programmatically do this and developer Dan Ott…
49. WATERCOOLERS
49
O
ff
ers an example of this in his dev.to blog post “How the Virtual Co
ff
ee Coworking Room Works”. In the post Dan outlines how they use a combination of software to accomplish this. Using the tools
mentioned, when a Zoom meeting starts it is posted in Slack. Then…
50. WATERCOOLERS
50
each time someone joins the Zoom call, a new message alerts the same channel of which person joined. This allows folks to see exactly who is in the room at any given time. One
fi
nal…
51. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
-Have an advocate
-Attendance visibility
51
Aspect that each watercooler has is that they are all…
52. WATERCOOLERS
-Fun questions/topics
- Android or Apple?
- Whats your favorite coding language and why?
- Share a memorable production outage story.
-Have an advocate
-Attendance visibility
-15 minutes
52
15 minutes long. In our experience these calls would often go a bit longer, but having it only be 15 minutes on the schedule gives people that excuse to hop o
ff
if they want without feeling obligated to stay.
Having…
53. DISTRIBUTEDTEAMSTRATEGIES
-Async standups
-Rotating meeting schedules
53
Di
ff
erent types of meetings such as structured roundtables or casual watercoolers on rotating schedules is an ideal way to allow your distributed team to get that much needed FaceTime with each other.
Finally, the last strategy that can help your distributed team feel like one cohesive unit is…
54. DISTRIBUTEDTEAMSTRATEGIES
-Async standups
-Rotating meeting schedules
-Setting async work expectations
54
Setting async work expectations. I saved this point for last because I think it is the most crucial for the success of a distributed team. To make a distributed team work well your work culture has
56. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
56
PRs should be open for at least 24 hrs for review. Unless there is an urgent bug
fi
x that needs to be shipped, encourage your team to keep PRs open for at least 24 hrs to allow all team members a chance to
weigh in. This ensures that no matter what timezone…
57. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
57
folks are in, they will have a chance to review and look at the majority of the code that is written and shipped. Finally, the real game changer to creating an async
fi
rst work culture is….
58. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
58
Embracing Slack as a async tool. This means that there is absolutely no expectation to respond to Slack messages immediately. This is the hardest change to make if your team is used to using Slack
synchronously, but it by far…
59. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
59
is the most impactful if you can follow through on it. If you can embrace Slack as an async form of communication you will see some massive wins in terms of work/life balance. Namely, you eliminate …
60. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
60
that anxiety when folks in di
ff
erent timezones log on in their respective mornings to have to rush to answer all of their open slack noti
fi
cations. In addition to a better work/life balance for all team members, a
couple of other things happen. Folks…
61. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
61
become a lot more thoughtful in their written communication. People think and plan ahead better because they cannot rely on a quick back and forth conversation on Slack. Now don’t get me wrong, we still
had synchronous…
62. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
62
conversations in Slack but the expectation was that if it took you 24 hours to respond to a Slack message, that was OK. One more habit that is great to get into that will allow you and your team to embrace
an async culture is to….
63. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
63
Record all meetings. With a globally distributed team it is usually impossible to
fi
nd meeting times that will work for everyone. I mentioned earlier that our engineering roundtables were recorded. Those
weren’t the only meetings…
64. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
64
we recorded. Any meeting where someone thought others might appreciate the context was recorded. This not only allows folks in di
ff
erent timezones to catch up on topics or discussions they missed, but it
also adds a whole new dimension to your…
65. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
65
knowledge base! Anyone, such as new team members, can reference those recordings to see how a feature works or why a certain decision was made. Each of these…
66. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
66
small tweaks helped ensure that our team had the ability to get all of the context they needed to do their jobs e
ff
ectively whenever it was the most convenient for them. One thing I have learned is that…
67. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
67
creating an async culture and working environment takes a lot of intention and e
ff
ort because most of us are wired to work synchronously. Breaking those synchronous habits is not easy, so as you…
68. SETTINGASYNCWORKEXPECTATIONS
-24 hr PR reviews
-Embrace Slack as async
-Record all meetings
68
are trying to make this shift be patient and be supportive of each other. Be cognizant of those times when you might fall back into synchronous habits and look for ways to eliminate them. Managing a…
69. DISTRIBUTEDTEAMSTRATEGIES
-Async standups
-Rotating meeting schedules
-Setting async work expectations
69
Widely distributed team is no easy feat but hopefully with these strategies you can set your team up for success and ensure they feel like one cohesive unit despite the distance between them all. Thank you.