5 Reasons to Meet your Development Team in Real Life

Remote cooperation with a geographically distributed software development team is trending in the IT industry!

It is beneficial in many ways but may occasionally cause some nuisance – and it is good to be aware of what may come your way.

Common experiences

Except from daily and demo meetings you don’t have many common experiences with the rest of the team. Naturally, in some projects, you facilitate teamwork also by having an all-day-open hangout call – and it feels like you conquer project requirements almost in the same way as you feel during the battle in World of Tanks. 

But let’s be honest: would you say that you have a real bond with your WoT team players?

Synergy

Working remotely often means dealing with all the issues alone. If you’re lucky, your colleagues are keen enough to communicate actively on Slack, sharing savvy tech tidbits or their own discoveries and inspiring each other. But most of the time – each one of you is focused on getting your job done. Alone. 

Of course, there are code reviews, and teamwork enhancing tools that you may use to share and challenge ideas. But this communication is usually asynchronous, so it is less probable that every member of development team will focus on the same issue and contribute to the solution in the same time. 

Steam 

I’m 99% sure that in your team you’ve met, at least a few, really cool people. But life is life, and sometimes even the nicest person gets stressed (yes, it applies also to you). Sometimes it is a deadline, sometimes it is this unreplicable bug that puts the relationship with a client on fire. Sometimes it is this external third party that should provide something and didn’t. 

The atmosphere becomes tense and may result in having a heated discussion between team-members. And it is the moment when emotions may take the best of you, leading you away from the constructive problem-solving approach. In the worst scenario, even if you solve the technical problem, attitudes towards each other stay. 

Meeting the person in real life gives you a better opportunity to work it through –while being 100% remote makes it easier to stay in the minimum required touch. And imagine what happens, and how “nice” the workday is, when this story repeats. 

The development team is more than a group

Believe it or not, but in your project team, there are not just some random guys or gals who happened to be available at the right time and in the right budget. 

Hiring managers, who got to know you at first, for some reason, decided that you will all click as a team. And, most probably, you wonder what that reason was. Discover it! Talk about your interests, your approaches towards life, universe and all the rest, figure out what jokes are getting the most props from the whole team. 

Obviously, it may be done remotely, but it is so much easier to arrange the coffee talk near the actual coffee machine. Than build the relation on Slack or Instagram only.

Let’s develop some fun!

On a daily basis, we are a development team so we are here for work, that’s obvious and fine. But being together at the same time and space allows you to see real people, instead of nicknames merging code to master branch.

And it’s great! 

Did you imagine, that this serious guy, who gave you all those comments about what you should change to make your code rock SOLID, plays beer-pong with a teen-like passion?
Or, did you know that this blonde, who is mostly quiet on daily meetings, can juggle with 5 balls (or lemons) simultaneously? And have you ever imagined your boss having so much fun playing “vegetables without teeth”*? 

Meeting together, from time to time, creates great memories, which put daily cooperation of development team in an absolutely different context. 

Development team that is remote friendly

At Idego we benefit from being 100% remote-friendly as well as creating ultra-comfortable office space. Most of the teams are distributed and handle projects with great maturity and skill, but there are two things, two rules that are saint. First of all: everyone is welcomed in our HQ, anytime he or she wants to visit.  You may always expect a warm welcome, ergonomic workstation, and super accommodation nearby. Second rule: twice a year we all meet in one place, on Friday, to meet each other, experience a bit of adventures together, and to have a lot of fun.

Next Idego Summit, as we call it will be held on 25th October. We simply cannot wait!

• ”Vegetables without teeth” is a not-only-party game. You sit in a circle and each person, speaks the name of the chosen vegetable, without showing his/her teeth. The winner is the one who is able to mention the largest number of vegetables this way without bursting into laughter.
• Try to do it with a high tempo. And definitely – do it also at home 🙂