Probably Random

Remote Working

May 6, 2008 11:40 am tonkas Development, Strategy

As I’ve said in previous posts we’ve been retooling so we can work remotely and more efficiently as a team.

So here’ a bit of feedback on how it’s all been going.
There have obviously been a few teething problems but in general its been great. We were lucky in that our team was all working centrally to start with so we have a good team bond and know each other well.

We’re using Google Apps for business and have transferred our e-mail over to them (after a bit of an MX record phaf) and now that is working nicely, once you get used to the way Google groups your e-mail (no problem to me as I’ve been on gmail for a while but some of the others did think they’d lost email). The Google Docs suite seems to be upgraded frequently and with Google Gears for offline sync is just totally awesome. We do still pull documents down and format them in Word to send out to clients but in Google apps we can all get stuck in and get the content right.

The problems we did have were that our source control was on a local server which we couldn’t make accessible to the whole world, and we didn’t realise that our RDP to our remote server and remote SQL access were locked to our old office IP address… good security not so good for remote working) all easily overcome though.

We’re using Clocking IT for time management and tracking projects which is also going really well, as long as everyone ensures the log their time and keeps their projects up to-date, and with a Google gadget in our Google Apps start page we can see what’s on at all times, great integration.

We have all now moved out of the office and productivity is still high, chat (with logging into gmail) is great just like in the office, but now I don’t have to commute!

What I do miss is the social side, whilst we do have offline chats, it’s not the same as going to make a brew and putting the world to rights, the range of music that people brought in to share (although I suppose we could still do that) and the people at our building who we didn’t actually work with… hmm yeah and sharing a building with a chiropractor was always handy!