This document discusses distributed teams and systems. It notes that Bridget Kromhout lives in Minneapolis but works for Pivotal in San Francisco. It provides tips for effective communication and coordination for distributed teams, including using tools like Slack, providing context, being available, and over-communicating to prevent misunderstandings. It emphasizes that people are more important than tools and choosing tools the whole team will use.

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distributed:
of systems and teams
Bridget Kromhout

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Bridget Kromhout
lives: Minneapolis
works: Pivotal
podcasts: Arrested DevOps
organizes: devopsdays
was: ops @ DramaFever, 8thBridge

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distributed systems free-association game
Images from Kyle Kingsbury’s Jepsen project

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CA
CP AP
AvailabilityConsistency
Partition Tolerance
“a partition is a
time bound
on communication.”
Eric Brewer

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tl;dr:
distributed systems
are complex
let’s talk
distributed teams

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I live nearly 2,000 miles from the Pivotal San Francisco office.
(It’s probably definitely fine.)

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…especially as the whole team is distributed.

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distributed != remote

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The network is
the computer.
the office.

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people > tools
choose:
tools people will use
xkcd.com/1254/

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synchronous

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asynchronous

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Group chat: we use Slack
But anything you like works
If you all use it.
a slack haiku

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Pairing: state persists in RAM… write it to disk!

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“Durable communication exhibits the
same characteristics as accidental,
convenient communication in a co-located
space. The powerful difference is how
inclusive, transparent, and reliable it is.”
Casey West

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Lower-bandwidth communication: more handshaking

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Provide context.

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Let the team know when you’ll be unavailable.

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Remote-friendly is good for work/life balance.

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Tell the team what you’re doing.
(Nobody can see you’re working on slides.)
(Again.)
(Still.)

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Misunderstandings happen.
Over-communicate.
It’s better than being hurt or angry for no reason.

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Be explicit
about
actions &
decisions.
Ask for help.

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Screencapping PDFs is the new emailing PDFs.

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Common Ground and Coordination in Joint Activity
Klein, Feltovich, Bradshaw, Woods (2004)

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non-violent communication & emotional literacy

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examine assumptions
be explicit about guarantees
architect for failure

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distribute decision-making
(over)-communicate
resolve conflicts as they arise

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“There is no
talent shortage.”
Andrew Clay Shafer

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what if distributed teams are a competitive advantage?
Images from Martin Fowler, “Remote versus Co-located Work”

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“Any organization that designs a system
(defined broadly) will produce a design
whose structure is a copy of the
organization's communication structure.”
Mel Conway

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References
1. Kyle Kingsbury, Jepsen project: aphyr.com/tags/Jepsen
2. Eric Brewer, “CAP Twelve Years Later: How the "Rules" Have Changed”: www.infoq.com/articles/cap-twelve-years-later-
how-the-rules-have-changed
3. Casey West, “Durable Communication”: caseywest.com/durable-communication/
4. John Allspaw, “Blameless Portmortems and a Just Culture”: codeascraft.com/2012/05/22/blameless-postmortems/
5. Klein, Feltovich, Bradshaw, Woods: “Common Ground and Coordination in Joint Activity”: jeffreymbradshaw.us/
publications/Common_Ground_Single.pdf
6. Marshall B. Rosenberg,”Nonviolent Communication: A Language of Life”: cnvc.org/nonviolent-communication-language-
life-3rd-edition
7. Andrew Clay Shafer, “There is no talent shortage”: youtube.com/watch?v=P_sWGl7MzhU
8. Martin Fowler, “Remote versus Co-located Work”: martinfowler.com/articles/remote-or-co-located.html
9. Mel Conway, “Conway’s Law”: melconway.com/Home/Conways_Law.html

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Thank you.
Slides at bridgetkromhout.com/speaking/2015/ricon/