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Osmotic communication–Why I don’t like to work remotely

Image you are sitting in a room together with your team mates. You are reviewing a pull request why in the background you hear your team discussing on how to implement a specific feature. While you are focussing on your own work you are passively picking up some information from the team chatter in the background.

This can be distracting but also highly valuable, as you learn what is going on in your team and always can start to participate if you want to.  This is what is called ‘osmotic communication’ and it is a technique I like to apply. (People who have worked with me before will certainly recognize this…)

(You should remember the term ‘osmosis’ from your biology or chemistry lessons)

Some think that ‘osmotic communication’ is an anti-pattern, but in my job as an architect, it not only helps me understand how the team is tackling a specific problem but also where I didn’t do a good job explaining the overall architecture. It gives me the opportunity to provide some clarification, help the team without much effort and provide some on the job training and coaching.

Unfortunately this is quite hard to do in a remote context. I do follow the slack channels or team chats of the teams but that certainly doesn’t bring the same level of insights.

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