Team offsite

Last week, we spent a few days in the rolling green hills of Berry, NSW for a team offsite. The days were spent doing brown bags, retrospectives and planning. The nights involved eating too much and relaxing together.

We, like many software teams, are split over 2 locations and sometimes work remotely. We rely on Slack, email, phone and video chat to stay in touch. We’re far stronger for being spread out, but face to face interaction is paramount for improving communication and collaboration.

We strongly encourage a healthy work life balance. Taking time away from our families for 2 nights was a big ask but we feel it was productive. Working together offsite will hopefully help us work more efficiently in the future, so we can continue to regularly get home on time.

With a team of just 8 people, finding a place where we can all stay a night or 2 was achievable. Bigger teams may struggle to find one house to sleep everyone, but if RailsCamp can sleep 120 developers over a weekend, larger companies have options too.

Taking time out from the everyday work can seem distracting, but it’s worth it. The value is already evident in how we’re working together, and I believe an offsite will benefit your team as well.