On Sunday July 8th, Darren of Readify, and most importantly of Adelaide, closed the inaugural Code Camp SA with a quality presentation. After a couple of false starts it was eventually revealed that Darren would be discussing remote development.
Remote development doesn't necessarily mean sitting atop the Alps with a laptop and some pretty amazing Wi-Fi Internet. It can be a simple as working apart from your fellow development team members such that you can't simply step over to the neighbouring office and discuss your task face to face.
While I generally share an office with the other developers where I work, we do have two offices about thirty minutes apart and I have been working from home on an increasingly regular basis. With this trend likely to continue, the ability to effectively communicate with the team when separated is a growing concern.
In the office I can ask a coworker to look over my shoulder to give a second opinion on some code or we can step over to the whiteboard and represent the problem visually and discuss a solution. In my study at home I have email, I have instant messaging, and I have my mobile phone. These are all excellent systems for communicating verbally or textually but that's where it ends.
I've tried the whiteboard-style collaboration software but drawing class diagrams with a mouse or notebook touchpad just isn't helpful. The other benefit you lose on your own is other team members overhearing your coding pains and butting in with a solution that you probably would have struggled with for much longer before finally asking for help.
Darren demonstrated that having a Tablet PC (or a similar device) can be great for shared whiteboard sessions and new tools like SharedView can help with peer code review or even Pair Programming. I'm not sure what to do about "overhearing" your coworkers apart from a persistent VOIP conference call running in the background and that could be embarrassing when you forget it's on.
Overall, Darren's presentation gave me some good solutions for working remotely and gave me some other ideas to ponder on. And, Darren, if you are reading this, do you have any recommendations for coffee shops with good affordable Wi-Fi Internet in Adelaide?