What is it about?

This paper identifies best practices that can help fully remote software teams run more effective meetings. We performed a literature review to identify 30 papers related to meetings in fully remote software teams. By synthesizing this literature, we have been able to identify the benefits of remote meetings, the challenges that occur, and a set of best practices that can help overcome the challenges. Surprisingly little research has examined meetings in the context of fully remote software teams, so a set of future research directions is also detailed.

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Why is it important?

Many software teams are structured so that all team members are based in different locations. Yet working in such a structure brings challenges caused by distances (geographical, timezone, cultural), especially when it comes to effective communication and collaboration. Synchronous meetings are a necessary mechanism to help team members stay connected, align on goals, and coordinate the work. This paper outlines best practices derived from existing research that can help teams run effective meetings and overcome some of the challenges that exist when meeting remotely.

Perspectives

Despite the widespread view that all meetings are bad, meetings are essential for many reasons, such as aligning goals, addressing issues, planning work, and staying connected. Given the ubiquity of meetings and the large number of remote software teams, I was surprised that we discovered so few papers related to meetings involving fully remote teams. I feel there is much research to be done that can identify additional insights, especially in meetings unique to software development, develop bespoke tools to facilitate more effective meetings and make meetings more inclusive and accessible to all.

Victoria Jackson
University of Southampton

Read the Original

This page is a summary of: On meetings involving remote software teams: A systematic literature review, Information and Software Technology, November 2024, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.infsof.2024.107541.
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