High productivity. Low turnover. Satisfied workers. Less stress. A larger talent pool. Fewer office expenses. ADA compliance. And better work-life balance. When you list the benefits of remote work, there’s a lot to love – for both businesses and the people they employ – which is a huge reason why more and more companies are starting to embrace a remote workforce.

Think of communication as the oxygen of a remote team. Like a good relationship, it takes work to communicate well, and there are ups and downs. As Carol Dweck from Stanford University, shares in her book Mindset: "It takes work to communicate accurately. It takes work to expose and resolve conflicting hopes and beliefs. It doesn't mean there is no 'they live happily ever after' but it's more like 'they worked happily ever after.'"

Back in the mid-90s, just as Netscape Navigator was giving us our first look at what the visual internet could be, web design came in two flavors. There was the ultra basic stuff. Text on a page, maybe a masthead graphic of some sort. Nothing sophisticated. It often looked like traditional letterhead, or a printed newsletter, but now on the screen. Interactions were few, if any, but perhaps a couple links tied a nascent site together. And there was the other extreme.

As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dreamwork. Building an effective and successful team takes time, and it’s even harder in the case of distributed, remote teams. How can you run effectively a team of persons without, well, meeting in person? With the rise of remote work worldwide, many teams have found themselves juggling projects, deadlines, and goals while spread all over the country, or even all over the world. When the team works like a well-oiled clock, they can achieve big things.

When the entire company is working from home, pair programming is not only possible but even more valuable. If you were practicing it face to face, why not continue remote? If you weren’t, why not try? My team did a series of remote pair programming sessions in during the last month or so, and I want to share a few tips from that experience. If you’ve never tried pair programming before, here’s a good primer.