These are references that I found useful when thinking about working remotely.
References
- Jonathan Turner. 2021. One Year of Remote Mob Programming. Agile Alliance Experience Report.
- This short article explains how the author’s team handled some problems of mob programming remotely.
- He concludes, “Given the right tools and conditions, remote mob programming is as effective as in-person mob programming.”
- “Remote mob programming pairs well with technical and other practices, such as test driven development, continuous integration, push button deployments, limiting work in process, and eliminating waste.”
- Gleb Tsipursky. 2021-10-14. Remote Work Can Be Better for Innovation Than In-Person Meetings: Seven steps for more inclusive and productive virtual brainstorming. Scientific American.
- “asynchronous virtual brainstorming” overcomes problems from in-person brainstorming.
- Leaders should not fool themselves that using traditional in-person brainstorming will result in maximizing innovation.
- Tsipursky describes a 7-step process for asynchronous brainstorming that provides more and better ideas than traditional brainstorming, maximizing the number of novel ideas, and therefore gaining an innovation advantage.
- Adrian Furnham. 2003-01-06. The Brainstorming Myth. Business Strategy Review. Summarizes psychology studies of the effectiveness of traditional brainstorming. Tsipursky summarizes many of the issues identified in Furnham’s article.
- Jack Kelly. 2021-09-13. Why You Should Be Skeptical Of The Microsoft Study Saying Remote Work ‘Siloed’ Employees And Made The Company Less ‘Dynamic’. Forbes.
- Alberto S. Sliveira Jr. 2021-05. Building and managing high-performance distributed teams. Apress.
- James M. Citrin, Darleen DeRosa. 2021-05-21. Leading at a distance: Practical Lessons for Virtual Success.
- This book focuses on how leaders in large corporations should manage workers and company culture, given the increased number of remote workers.
- This book is a rewrite of: Richard Lepsinger, Darleen DeRosa. 2010. Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading From a Distance. Lepsinger and DeRosa (2010) is listed separately below.
- Ch 1. What we learned from the pandemic: Our research shows remote work is here to stay.
- Ch 2. No trust = No team: The formula for building cohesive relationships virtually.
- Ch 3. What does good look like? Profile of high-performing virtual teams.
- Ch 4. How to RAMP up your virtual team’s performance: A blueprint for success.
- Ch 5. Out of sight, not out of mind: How to inspire and motivate from afar.
- Ch 6. “You’re on mute”: The ultimate guide for hosting virtual meetings.
- Ch 7. Hiring without a handshake: Discovering successful virtual leaders.
- Ch 8. Surviving day one: A toolkit for remote onboarding.
- Ch 9. Continuous improvement: High-impact coaching and accountability at a distance.
- Ch 10. The culture conundrum: Building and sustaining culture virtually.
- Amanda Mull. 2020-10. Generation Work-From-Home May Never Recover: The social and economic costs borne by young people without offices.
- Kati Peditto: “There are tons of studies on the positive benefits of teleworking, but most of that research is interviews and surveys with people who have self-selected into remote work”.
- “people who have already built strong social and professional networks may not suffer much from the lack of face-to-face contact at the office, but for those still trying to make such ties, remote work can be alienating.”
- “with no place to go to but just as many professional obligations, people working from home might have the flexibility to do everything except make new friends.”
- “Even those who self-select into the work-from-home “lifestyle” report feeling distant from new professional opportunities, outside their companies as well as inside”
- “A dispersed workforce means that employees have to go out of their way to compare experiences with one another, and that those with relatively little power have a tougher time sensing who their allies might be.”
- Samantha Slade. 2018. Going horizontal: Creating a non-hierarchical organization one practice at a time.
- This is not specifically about remote work, but the concepts of organizational structure and the 7 practices are especially relevant to organizations that work remotely.
- Autonomy: Claim your personal leadership.
- Purpose: The invisible leader.
- Meetings: Sharing the responsibilities and accountability.
- Transparency: Open is effective and efficient.
- Decision making: Sharing the power.
- Learning and development: Self-directed and collectively held.
- Relationships and conflicts: Tending to them together.
- Jason Fried. 2013. Remote: Office not required.
- Johanna Rothman, Mark Kirby. 2019. From Chaos to Successful Distributed Agile Teams: Collaborate to Deliver.
- Shape My Work wiki about remote Agile.
- Enrico Moretti. 2012. The new geography of jobs.
- Economist examines how social and economic shifts are affecting communities.
- Today there are three Americas. At one extreme are the brain hubs, cities like San Francisco, Boston, Austin, and Durham, with a well-educated labor force and a strong innovation sector. Their workers are among the most productive, creative, and best paid on the planet. At the other extreme are cities once dominated by traditional manufacturing, which are declining rapidly, losing jobs and residents. In the middle are a number of cities that could go either way.
- Available at Multnomah County Libraries, Washington County Libraries, Clackamas County Libraries, and a few pages on Google Books Preview.
- Richard Lepsinger, Darleen DeRosa. 2010. Virtual Team Success: A Practical Guide for Working and Leading From a Distance.
- Ch 1. Why virtual teams fail.
- Ch 2. Profiles of virtual team success - What good looks like.
- Ch 3. Virtual team launch kit.
- Ch 4. What differentiates great virtual teams - How to RAMP up your team’s performance.
- Relationships
- Accountability
- Motivation
- Process and Purpose
- Ch 5. How to lead virtual teams - Tips, techniques, and best practices for high performance.
- Ch 6. What factors really accelerate virtual team performance - The four top performance boosters.
- Ch 7. How to facilitate high-impact virtual meetings - Techniques that really work.
- Appendix: OnPoint’s Global Virtual Team Study.
Business trends
Primary sources
Listed in reverse chronological order.
- Alexander W. Bartik, Zoe B. Cullen, Edward L. Glaeser, Michael Luca, Christopher T. Stanton. 2020-06. What Jobs are Being Done at Home During the Covid-19 Crisis? Evidence from Firm-Level Surveys. NBER Working Paper No. 27422. PDF.
- “more than one-third of firms that had employees switch to remote work believe that remote work will remain more common at their company even after the COVID-19 crisis ends.”
- The Dingel and Neiman (2020) measure of suitability for remote work does a remarkably good job of predicting the industry level patterns of remote work.
- Jonathan I. Dingel, Brent Neiman. 2020-06. How Many Jobs Can be Done at Home? NBER Working Paper No. 26948. PDF.
- Classifies occupations that cannot be performed at home, based on a list of criteria, e.g.
- Average respondent says they deal with violent people at least once a week
- Majority of respondents say they work outdoors every day
- “Our classification implies that 37 percent of US jobs can plausibly be performed at home.”
- Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. 2020-05-28. Firms Expect Working from Home to Triple.
- “According to the SBU results, the anticipated share of working days at home is set to triple after the pandemic ends—rising from 5.5 percent to 16.6 percent of all working days.”
- “Perhaps even more striking, firms anticipate that 10 percent of their full-time workforce will be working from home five days a week.”
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. 2019-09-24. Economic New Release. Table 3. Workers who worked at home and how often they worked exclusively at home by selected characteristics, averages for the period 2017-2018.
- Cali Ressler, Jody Thompson. 2008. Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It: No Schedules, No Meetings, No Joke - the Simple Change That Can Make Your Job Terrific.
Conferences
- Remote Forever Summit online conference. 18-23 Nov 2019. Free and Premium paid levels.
- Running Remote conference. World’s largest remote work conference: 20-21 April 2020, Austin, TX. “Build and scale your remote team”.
- Nomad City conference. 6-8 Nov 2020, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. “Join the future of location-flexible work.”
