One of the interesting things about my job is that I get to work with a lot of developers. I recently spent a week in Riverdale, MD with a group of developers that we usually only work with remotely – via phone or e-mail, or when we enter a trouble ticket against a system issue or software bug. Working with this team face-to-face was a really rewarding experience.

One of the things that I have learned is that it’s very easy for our team to reach out to developers when something isn’t working. From a professional standpoint, we have all the things necessary to kick up a conversation – something in common (the software), a catalyst (the bug), and a goal (making it work again). With our local development team, that we get to see every day, it’s easy to say, “hey – everything is working swell again, thanks.” With our remote developers, this is a lot harder; it doesn’t really make sense to call them up and say, “Hey – I just wanted to call and say everything is a-ok!” – there is no catalyst. Continue reading Interfacing with Remote Developers →