Remote First, Not Second Best.

Four short years ago, this organisation began a journey to develop Identity (access and authorisation) as an internally facing product. As a global organisation we needed to offer a global product, which was supported 24 hours a day and at least 5 days a week. As an organisation, we have always focussed on using Agile approaches to developing and delivering products and co-location was always considered important. But it was not going to work this time, Identity, and the services we offered were key, not only to every one of our colleagues, but also to the work of every internal team no matter where in the world they were, so we needed to think differently.

We set out to deliberately build a remote first, cross-functional product team, our mission was to be the team that facilitated joined up thinking across all our initiatives, but we were going to do this remotely. We also had a goal to be the most effective, closest and most cohesive team in the organisation, the team everyone wanted to join.

This presentation tells the story of our journey and shares the most important things we have learned and how we have grown into a high performing team, without ever sitting in a room together.

Including:

• How to find the right people in the right places.
• How to develop asynchronous ways of working together
• How to work with other teams (both remote first and colocated).
• How to free the team from distractions and focus on delivery