Earlier this year, I worked with an XP team where we had remote team members using a combination of Skype, webcams, and virtual desktop to give them a virtual presence in the team room. I was surprised how well it worked.
Sure, it was a little weird the first time I remote-paired and my pair did the driving: code appeared on the screen as if by magic. Fortunately, my pair was good at talking about his thought process, and his voice filled in the void left by the lack of visible physical cues like a hand hovering over a mouse or restless shifting in the chair.
Prior to that project, I thought it would be extremely difficult to integrate remote employees on an Agile team. But with an always-on Skype connection and a liberal scattering of speakers and microphones, the remote team members were truly present, albeit virtually. They were even there for the hallway chatter. You’d be chatting about something casually with another team member, like ways to structure validations in Ruby on Rails, and a disembodied voice would chime in – just like any other coworker who happened by and who had an opinion.
I began to think of our remote colleagues as coworkers with the curious disability of not having a corporeal body. Those of us in the team room had to make reasonable accommodations like ensuring we kept Skype running on certain boxes, and kept microphones and speakers plugged in. But the remote team members’ ability to contribute was not hampered by the lack of a body. They participated like anyone else.
That’s when I realized that the technology to support remote collaboration has become cheap enough, reliable enough, and ubiquitous enough that people in disparate locations actually can work together remotely as effectively as when they’re in the same room, at least under certain circumstances.
And that makes me wonder if the technology is now advanced enough to support a virtual version of the kind of training I like to do: experiential, interactive, hands-on training.
I should back up a step and explain that I’m not new to virtual training. I’ve been a webinar speaker. And I’ve been a participant in online classes. I know there are all kinds of solutions out there for presentation-based training. But most of the technologies I’ve seen assume there’s a slide deck. The tools do support interactivity, but mostly as Q&A instead of deeper interactive discussions or exercises.
I want something more. I want to be able to do simulations and experiential exercises and real debriefs in a virtual online classroom and have it feel as interactive and collaborative and spontaneous as in a conference room in real-space.
And I think, perhaps, the technology is getting to the point where we can.
Others think so too. James Bach has been experimenting with online virtual training. He recognized that the technology was ready before I did. And it’s going so well he’s planning to do more of it.
So…all this is a long lead in to say that I’ve started experimenting with online training. So far my experiments have been promising but limited. And I’m ready to do more.
If you’re interested in participating in any of my experiments, drop me an email or a note in the comments. I’m looking for volunteers who want to subject themselves to a small sampling of my training and exercises – free – in exchange for feedback. (You will need a broadband connection, webcam, microphone, speakers, and up-to-date browser. You may need a flexible schedule since I want to experiment with 4 – 6 participants, and finding a time that works for everyone can be a challenge. And you’ll need some patience. I’m still experimenting.)
Interested?
I’m interested, if the schedule is right.
I’ve been working for Socialtext since April, and we’re an agile shop where all of the dev/QA/support staff telecommute. irc and the wiki (Socialtext sells wikis) are the really critical tools for us. Skype not so much, although we have a VOIP system hosted on an asterisk box that we use for standups, company calls, and anywhere that irc is just not enough bandwidth.
I’d be after new ideas to use for remote collaboration at work, as well as testing information.
“I began to think of our remote colleagues as coworkers with the curious disability of not having a corporeal body.” What a great quote!
Wrt the training, I’m very curious to hear how it goes. I can imagine it would work ok with a longer duration — multi-session — class, but I’m skeptical it would work well in a single session. My intuition is that while you can eventually build trust with that disembodied voice that it would take longer than a day.
But the proof is in the experiment!
Hi Elisabeth!
I’m really keep on trying to find ways to shorten the usual gap with remote employees, ’cause that’s one of my headaches at the moment. I’m certainly interested if I can fit it into my schedule, and if Mitch lends me his laptop (he’s the one with the webcam). He’ll probably join in too!
See you at the SIGIST!
Cheers,
Marta
I may also be interested in being one of your “guinea pigs” if the timing and topic are suitable.
For the past year or so I’ve been learning to work remotely with my direct manager, who works at a TI site in Mexico, while I work at a TI site in Dallas. We use a “Lifesize” HD video conference system (http://www.lifesize.com/products/lifesize_video/) for most of our communications. Unlike your use of Skype in an agile team room, our video system is in a dedicated meeting room. So its more like I have to walk down the hall to my boss’ “office” in order to have a chat with him.
I’m also interested
Since James’ class is on break for the time being I am searching for another experience.
If you want to know, how much time lag/synchronization problems there can be when communicating from US to Germany (GMT+1), I am willing to tell you
about the flexible schedule:
well, since I am no freelancer and work during “normal” working times, let’s see, if there would be an intersection after or before work
I am Pradeep Soundararajan, the most successful self certified Guinea pig of James Bach’s online coaching
I’d be very interested learning from you and other volunteers. I live in India and follow Indian Standard Time = GMT + 5 30.
Hi there, I’d be interested. What kind of experience would you expect candidates to have?
We had a snow day last winter where our co-located team all worked from home with Skype. It was very similar to all being in the same space.
I had my first experience with Google Apps yesterday, working on a spreadsheet at the same time as another user. I don’t know if there is a Google application that would be a reasonable alternative to the deck-based interaction software or not.
I am interested in being involved with your training. I’m willing to shift my schedule as much as I can to find a time that works with others. I’m excited to see international interest.
Elizabeth, I’ve spent a few weeks pairing exclusively with remote members of our team. I too was surprised by how well it worked. The problems I had could have been purely to do with the headset and mic I was using. The first problem was that the mic would only capture what I was saying so if a conversation started on my side with other members of the team up my partner would get very confused. The other problem was that after a few hours the headset would become quite uncomfortable to wear and would start to make me irritable. I’d like to second what you said about the verbalising your thought process. This is essential for effective pairing in my opinion and it’s great that remote pairing forces you to get better at it.
Hi Elisabeth,
It is true that technology is bridging the gap very fast.. you can be at most of the places in virtual world, if you have proper bandwidth etc. I have been part of the teams where virtual team members are as normal as developers writing code. But I have never had experience of using always on skype or webcam..
we always had on demand availability.. like give us a shout (mail/message etc) and we will start meeting.. It worked for us. Well I am in for your experiments ( Based on schedule and availability )
Elisabeth,
I am interested in participating. I have been using screen sharing since 1987/PC Anywhere 1.0 Currently I am using http://gatherplace.net/gp/index.jsp because my client uses Linux exclusively.
Regards,
David
I’m interested! I work almost exclusively with off site teams, so I’m always interested in learning anything I can to improve cohesion. I work from home (mostly), I have a very flexible schedule, broad band, a web cam, and a microphone. I’m all set!
Hi, did you do this? Did it work?
We work in many locations so I would be very interested – at least in your results if this has already happened.
I live in Norway, so it may well be that my schedule isn’t going to be ideal given the time difference to the USA.
Cheers Sarah
Hello Sarah,
since so far no repsonse I will tell you from my view only:
was a nice experience. As you see, I am telling not too much about the topics itself of the course, just the atmosphere – make yourself also the experience
Hi Sarah,
I did one session as Erkan indicated (thanks Erkan!), then got distracted by pressing client commitments. I’m planning to do more tests, but have not yet scheduled them.
Overall, I’m very optimistic that I’ll be able to translate my style of interactive, experiential training to the web. I think the technology is good enough to support it. However it will take a lot of learning and testing on my part to make the experience smooth, as the folks who participated in that first test can tell you. We had some technical challenges with sound and video quality, as well as some facilitator fumbling with the unfamiliar controls.
More announcements here soon…probably in November when I come up for air again.