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Many leaders want the worst of COVID-19 to be behind us, and leaders are currently considering reinstatement policies, flexible work practices, and continued adoption of collaboration technology. increase. Do leaders support hybrid work or do they require employees to return to the office full-time?

According to a recent survey 73% of employees want a hybrid work environment There is some flexibility in where and when to work.Another study suggests that 39% of employees consider leaving If the leader of the organization forces them back to the office full-time. In a recent internal investigation at Apple, 90% of respondents said they “strongly agree” with the statement that “location-flexible work options are a very important issue for me.”

[ Also on InfoWorld: 9 career pitfalls every software developer should avoid ]

I work with the executive team and work with many CIOs to make the transition to the hybrid model successful. “Hybrid organizations succeed or fail based on their ability to value all three categories: office, remote, and hybrid,” said Wayne Sadin, board and CIO advisor. “The key to hybrid work is finding a way to treat everyone equally,” said Martin Davis, CIO and Managing Partner of Dunelm Associates.

We also talked to Plutora’s Chief Marketing Officer Bob Davis about how technology and business leaders work with the hybrid work model. He states: “The ability to maintain high-quality, efficient software delivery that pleases customers and delivers value to their businesses may have experienced a surge in speed as companies transitioned to remote work styles. With complete visibility of portfolios and pipelines, smooth transfer between teams, governance and compliance, and systems that facilitate collaboration in a decentralized world, they could move forward. “

Success not only comes from top-down policies and practices, but leaders across the organization need to implement new ways to collaborate with their direct reports, interdisciplinary agile teams, and workflows between organizations.

These are some of my recommendations for hybrid work in technology organizations that focus on agile methods, DevOps practices, and site reliability engineering.

Treat hybrid work as a long-term transformation

I shared in April 2020 7 best practices for remote teams It remains relevant to hybrid work. I suggested that the team coordinate the agile ceremonies and improve collaboration by raising the level of documentation. For remote DevOps teamsWe recommend that you focus more on risk remediation with left-shift testing and security practices. For distributed software development teamsWe encourage you to create a roadmap and formalize your agile planning practices to meet your customers’ expectations.

While there are some things in common between hybrid work and remote work in distributed teams, there are also some major differences. For one thing, hybrid work advocates want a sustainable way to improve work-life balance, while remote work is a compulsory response to emergencies.

From that perspective, hybrid work should be seen as an evolving transformation process. Teams should regularly discuss areas of improvement and standardize their actions and practices.

Here are my recommendations for agile development teams and DevOps organizations that use the hybrid work model:

Standardize and evolve communication protocols

When considering how people collaborate in a meeting, start by considering the intersection of business goals, workspaces, technologies, and work policies. Aligning cultural norms and practices with hybrid work enables more productive collaboration between people within the company and in remote areas. Some communication protocols worth considering:

It provides guidelines for when meetings are needed and when other forms of asynchronous communication such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, and Atlassian Confluence are more appropriate.
If you need a meeting, schedule it for the time zone of all participants.
Establish an appropriate “no meeting” period so that developers, engineers, and other technicians can work productively and with less interruption.
When working remotely, turn on video whenever possible so that you can visually participate in the conversation.
When facilitating a meeting, start with the remote participant and call the participant by name. Don’t assume that people will speak for themselves. People are more likely to contribute if they know what is required.
Always end the meeting at least 5 minutes early so that people and events are on schedule.

Centralize artifacts and increase meeting productivity

When I talk to developers and engineers, one of their biggest concerns is the number of meetings they are required to attend. Just by joining the Scrum team, there may be at least three meetings and daily stand-ups per sprint, defining backlogs, brainstorming solutions, and other meetings planning releases. there is.

Before working on the number of meetings, consider some basic steps to make your meetings more productive. In hybrid work, it is even more important to develop meeting criteria, as less effective meetings can consume the energy of remote participants.

The three recommendations are:

Ask the meeting facilitator to create an agenda for almost every meeting. Meetings such as daily stand-ups, sprint reviews, and retrospectives have standard meeting plans, but those who schedule brainstorming, change management, and other planning meetings need to outline the agenda.
Record meetings and share them in an organized repository. In this way, people do not have to be invited to every meeting. Those who want to be informed can see the recording. In addition, you can watch your video more efficiently by skipping to relevant sections and speeding up video playback. Did you miss the meeting? No problem, I have a recording.
Document decisions and necessary follow-up to reduce repeated review of issues and inconclusive discussions.

Organizations that have introduced more meeting discipline may be more effective and have fewer meetings.

Boost site reliability engineering and test automation

Hybrid work is both an opportunity and a challenge when it comes to how people collaborate. By integrating tools, workflows, and responsibilities, agile product owners, Scrum masters, developers, testers, security specialists, site reliability engineers, and IT operators can be productive and efficient, both in the office and remotely. You will be able to work in a targeted manner.

We talked to Wayne Anderson, Chief Architect of Contemporary Work at the CTO Office of Microsoft Servi
ces, about how the hybrid work technology team can improve the release cycle. Focusing on the role of testing and site reliability engineers, Anderson said: “Application stability reflects how the team thinks, plans, and implements testing discipline and investment. As the organization moves to the concept of site reliability engineering, the biggest changes are: User acceptance testing is moving from quick checkmarks in production to a real-world location where you can see security, engineering fixes, measurements, and even performance. “

Testing practice lies between the innovation of the development team and the customer experience deployed in the production environment. SRE defends responsibility for reliable, high-performance, secure applications.. Both fields Test automation, AIops, When devops platform To reduce effort, increase productivity, gain insights, and prioritize work.

Workflow connectivity, responsibility naming, and enhanced automation are key to the success of fast-paced hybrid work teams. By assigning testing, security, reliability, and performance responsibilities and shifting implementations to the left, DevOps organizations can reduce critical incidents, bridge calls, and war rooms. These practices help teams achieve service-level goals and avoid stressful meetings that are difficult to hold when subject matter experts have flexible work areas and schedules.

Business leaders can support flexible work schedules, locations, and personal preferences as DevOps teams can increase productivity, increase reliability, reduce stress, and collaborate efficiently through hybrid work models. The sex will be higher. This is good news for engineers who see hybrid work as a step in improving work-life balance.