A colleague attended one of the many “work remotely” sessions popping up everywhere. He heard

Timing rule of thumb shared in virtual how-to session today = expect that timeframes will grow by 25% during remote sessions. If your estimate is 60 minutes, expect it to actually take 75 minutes.

At *least* 25% more time is required to communicate via intermediated means, which even videoconferencing is. My experience suggests that time spent needs to *double* until and if fluency w/ new tools, techniques, relationships are ingrained. Even then bandwidth needs increase, and those are difficult to change rapidly and without incurring  considerably more monthly cost (I’m upgrading to business-class Internet service, which will more than double my charges, because I need it for my work and because I’m fortunate to be able).

Esther Derby posted a superb tweet thread that relates to this topic, and you really should take a look if you’re at all interested in the real-world situation of collaborating at distance:

  https://twitter.com/estherderby/status/1240022506112798720

In that thread, a poster replied that we need “much better performance levels” to survive the Current Crisis.

That’s not possible just because we want it or think we need it, . If we had all this “extra” ability to perform better in reserve, we would have already drawn on it or had it demanded of us. Instead, we all need to accept and embrace that a change is here.

Performance is a function of the person and the environment, Esther points out:

  P = f(p,e)

A sudden shift to a collaborator-at-distance paradigm hugely changes the environment and affects people’s abilities. Therefore, performance must drop. Embrace that, and let’s see where we go from there.