Jeremy Hutchings

Virtual Teams & Remote Working In 2020 I finished a MSc in Systems Thinking in Practice, the final step being a research project which focused on the aspects of virtual teams and remote working. It's how I've worked for the majority of my career and a topic I think about a lot. I finished the research while coronavirus was erupting, which was as timely as it was frustrating; as I couldn't share the research straight away (due to university rules on plagiarism and sharing before marking). Because of covid-19 I've seen many posts and articles for workers who are new to remote teams, or home working. Most of these are focused on the individual and their working day, ergonomics, routine, etc. Which is great, though, I think they're mostly subjective and a little prescriptive, opposed to informative. I believe it's best for each individual to use those kinds of posts as a starting point and explore what works for them and their team. There are many different ...

I’m happy to see lots of people supporting and stating the obvious about this topic. Though I thought I’d add my 2c to the demise of this all to common evil of open offices. They are typically favoured by individuals who like to interrupt others, and also by those who look to short term visible costs. Open offices are likely the single biggest cause in companies of: The lost of human happiness The lost of team/individual effectiveness The lack of success of companies and projects I rank them in that order for importance as well, as that’s the order I’ve typically experienced them being absent in successful projects. I believe the mental state of the members of the team, and the collective teams health is a core (if not the primary) factor in successful outcomes. It’s good to see the academic community supporting (with research) what many have felt and known to be true for so long [1] , I’ve spent many years in different office environments, when I haven’t...

A while ago I met with an ex Technical Director of a very large game company here in Vancouver. I was working for a local company myself, and we met about a possible project between the two companies. While going over the details we reviewed some legacy systems that they would be working with, the software quality was less than ideal. The statement he made quite a few times that got me thinking was - " all software is messy and usually bad, and that's just the way it is ". To which I instantly thought :   “The constant assertion of belief is an indication of fear” ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti I'm not sure if this was just his defeatist attitude, or one that had been fostered from coming from a corporate environment that was steeped in technical debt and that usually worked to the lowest common denominator. Though it did make me think - as I don't accept that, at all, so why do so many others? In my experience people who create technology typically a...