Over the last few years we’ve done a fair amount of work with remote development teams. One of our current clients is going through a company-wide transition from waterfall to agile, and they use remote contractors extensively. A primary goal of the transition is to make better use of the full talents of their engineering team, so good communication is essential.

When working with remote teams, it’s tempting to try to replicate the experience of an in-person meeting. Google Hangouts make the features of much more expensive teleconferencing products available to a wider audience, and increasingly we see companies set up their conference rooms with large monitors hooked up to a simple webcam to use Hangouts or Skype.

The aforementioned client uses Google Hangouts as a matter of course for all interaction with engineers, putting heavy emphasis on video conferencing in an attempt to make the remote developers feel more a part of what’s going on. In sharp contrast, a different client holds their morning stand-up meetings exclusively on IRC (even when they’re all in the same building) – old-school, text-only group chat.

Text works better in most cases.

The simple truth is this: giving a meeting your full attention is hard enough, but giving a meeting your full attention when you’re attending remotely is impossible. This is particularly true when you’re a remote software engineer and the topic is something other than the particular bit of code you’re working on. Remote developers are not going to give their full attention for the entire duration of a meeting. It’s not the way our brains work.

Three more concrete reasons we prefer text-based remote discussions:

1. A text-based conversation is much more forgiving of momentary distractions. If I zone out of the discussion for a minute while I answer an email I can quickly catch back up by reading the transcript.
2. A text-based conversation ensures everyone gets their ideas in. In a voice/video conference it can be difficult to know when there’s an appropriate pause in the conversation to interject. When an engineer in Bulgaria is trying to provide input to a conversation happening in a room in Mountain View, they need a way to interject without having to force their way in.
3. A text-based conversation can be reviewed later. If someone misses a meeting or arrives late, or if you need to refer back to the discussion after the fact, a text-based conversation is there waiting for you. This also frees everyone from needing to scribble notes furiously while the meeting is in progress

Video and voice have their place. One-on-one or small group chats can benefit from the immediacy of video. If the remote party is leading the conversation or presenting it can also be beneficial for everyone to see that person. If people are not expected to participate and just listen it can be nice to be able to hear and/or see the person presenting rather than needing to read. Text works well when a group of people all need to participate.

Google Hangouts can serve both purposes as it has text-based chat is built right in. IRC is the classic text-based chat, though modern products like Campfire, HipChat, and other online collaboration tools are more manageable if you don’t already have IRC set up (built in logging, image rendering, file uploads, etc. are some obvious features IRC doesn’t offer easily).