Just like financial debt, you have to be wise about the technical debt you are building up over time. Unmanaged technical debt can slow productivity and hamper future projects.

就像金融债务一样，您必须对随着时间积累的技术债务保持明智。 无法控制的技术债务可能会降低生产率并阻碍未来的项目。

A Gardening Day is when teams band together to ‘weed our gardens’ — for example, to reduce our technical debt, improve documentation, find ways to save money on and above all share knowledge. One of our focuses for this day, for example, was to decommission unused resources that we didn’t need sitting in the Cloud (AWS) or within the data centres, as a result saving money and reducing risk.

园艺日是团队团结起来“除草我们的花园”的日子，例如，减少我们的技术债务，改善文件记录，寻找节省金钱的方法，尤其是分享知识。 例如，我们今天的重点之一是停用不需要使用的未使用资源，这些资源我们不需要坐在云(AWS)或数据中心内，从而节省了资金并降低了风险。

Last year we ran our Gardening Day in the FT office, and the outcomes and feedback were very positive. We were in the office last year, we had the teams self organise and got the competitive spirit going but we didn’t know how much of what worked depended on being together in the office. We didn’t want remote work during a pandemic to be a blocker in running one of these sessions again this year, but we knew we would have to tackle some things differently. Some things we realised up front — for example, the importance of slack and the need to organise the teams up front. Others we found out on the day.

去年，我们在英国《金融时报》办公室举办了“园艺日”活动，结果和反馈都非常积极。 去年我们在办公室里，我们有团队自我组织并保持了竞争精神，但我们不知道有多少工作取决于在办公室里在一起。 我们不希望大流行期间的远程工作成为今年再次举办其中一场会议的障碍，但是我们知道我们必须以不同的方式处理一些事情。 我们预先意识到了一些事情，例如，懈怠的重要性以及需要预先组织团队。 我们当天发现的其他人。

Our aims

我们的目标

Our aims for the day were much the same as for the previous year, but at the same time we also wanted people to have fun and enjoy the competitive spirit even though all the teams were completely remote. We also recognised that in the current climate of a global pandemic, that it may be hard for some individuals, so we were mindful of making sure we didn’t add any additional pressure.

我们今天的目标与上一年基本相同，但与此同时，我们希望人们能玩得开心，享受竞争精神，即使所有团队都完全遥不可及。 我们还认识到，在当前全球大流行的情况下，对于某些人来说可能很难，因此我们谨记确保不会增加任何其他压力。

Gardening Day with a remote twist

园艺日，遥不可及

We realised the day would not be the same as last year (less chocolate and pizza) but could be made excellent in its own way.

我们意识到这一天与去年不一样(少了巧克力和比萨饼)，但可以按照自己的方式做得更好。

Due to the pandemic, the whole company is now working remotely. To this date, we have all been working from home for a total of 4 months. But we were still confident that we would be able to run a successful gardening day.

由于大流行，整个公司现在都在远程工作。 到目前为止，我们所有人在家里工作了总共4个月。 但是我们仍然相信我们将能够成功举办园艺日。

We had a small group of engineers working on preparing the day and given the event was going to be fully remote, we were aware that we had to prepare more than we did last year. For instance we asked people to vote on themes and ideas they would like to work on, we pre created teams before the day and gave the teams enough time before the day to discuss and plan.

我们只有一小群工程师在准备当天的比赛，并且鉴于活动将完全进行，我们意识到与去年相比，我们需要做更多的准备。 例如，我们要求人们对他们想要处理的主题和想法进行投票，我们在一天之前预先创建了团队，并在一天之前给了团队足够的时间来讨论和计划。

Starting off the day with an Icebreaker

从破冰船开始新的一天

Since the objectives for the day were to collaborate on improving our services and have fun we needed an Ice Breaker to kick things off.The organising working group invented a game of Social Distancing Bingo with people getting points for each lockdown activity they were willing to admit to.

由于当天的目标是合作以改善我们的服务并获得乐趣，因此我们需要一个破冰船来开始。组织工作组发明了社交距离宾果游戏，人们愿意为每次锁定活动获得积分至。

Examples of lockdown behaviours included;

包括锁定行为的示例；

• attending work meetings in pyjamas穿着睡衣参加工作会议
• stockpiling loo roll储存厕所卷
• running 20k (I definitely didn’t do this one)运行20k(我绝对没有这样做)
• Eating over 300 gm of chocolate in one day (that’s more like it)一天吃超过300克的巧克力(更像是这样)
• Injuring yourself whilst doing DIYDIY时受伤

The working group had also decided that the Bingo Master (Mister Bisque) had to be dressed up to set the tone for the day….

工作组还决定必须打扮宾果大师(Bisgo先生)来设定当天的气氛……。

The icebreaker proved to be a lot of fun. Everyone then split into their individual teams and started rooting up the tech weeds!

破冰船被证明很有趣。 然后，每个人都分成各自的团队，并开始扎根技术杂草！

The teams

球队

In total, 48 people mostly from two groups in FT Product and Technology participated. The Manila office also joined us this year and it was fab to have them working alongside us. We had carefully split them into 10 teams, so each team had equal opportunities to learn and win.

总共有48人参加，其中大多数来自FT产品和技术领域的两个小组。 马尼拉办事处今年也加入了我们的行列，让他们与我们一起工作是工厂。 我们将他们仔细地分成了10个团队，所以每个团队都有平等的学习和获胜的机会。

So how was it different remotely?

那么远程有何不同？

At the beginning of the day we all jumped onto a Google Hangout to gather together, everyone then split off into their separate team Google Hangout to band together and dig out the weeds. This was very much different from last year where we were all in the office and self organised.

一天开始时，我们所有人都跳到了一个Google Hangouts上聚会，然后每个人都分成了自己的小组Google Hangouts进行聚会并挖出杂草。 这与去年我们都在办公室而且自组织的情况有很大不同。

Mister Bisque and I then jumped into each team hangout throughout the day, to see how the teams were getting along and to offer any assistance they needed. We had a lot of engagement from this and it was good fun to look at all the teams’ different tactics. This was an effective alternative to last year where we walked around the office for a check in. Reflecting back on the day, team hangouts worked really well as a replacement to this!

然后，我和Bisque先生一整天都参加了每个团队的聚会，以了解团队的相处方式并提供所需的任何帮助。 我们从中得到了很多参与，并且很高兴地看到所有团队的不同策略。 这是去年有效的替代方法，去年我们在办公室走来走去办理了入住手续。回想起那天，团队视频群聊确实很好地替代了这个！

Results

结果

In total we managed to clear up a lot of “weeds!”. Some of these weeds include…

总体而言，我们设法清除了许多“杂草！”。 其中一些杂草包括……

• 669 technical issues raised and 446 technical issues resolved.提出了669个技术问题，解决了446个技术问题。
• $3600 saved and more yet to come节省了$ 3600，而且还有更多货
• 300GB of NAS (file servers within our data centres) shares cleared up清除了300GB的NAS(我们数据中心内的文件服务器)共享
• 1471 Citrix Profiles removed, over 2.1 million files cleared from the NAS shares.删除了1471个Citrix Profiles，从NAS共享中清除了210万个文件。
• 50 unused AD accounts deleted.删除50个未使用的AD帐户。

We had a few prizes for the teams that improved the most, saved us the most, etc. But this time we had one special one for the people who made remote gardening day fun for everyone. These prizes automatically brought out competitiveness across all teams.

我们为进步最大，为我们节省最多的团队赢得了一些奖项。但是这次，我们为那些使所有人都能享受远程园艺活动的人们提供了一个特别的奖项。 这些奖项自动带动了所有团队的竞争力。

So what did we learn from a remote working gardening day?

那么，从一个偏远的园艺工作日我们学到了什么？

We learnt that despite being a fully remote department, being in different time zones and not having an onsite presence, we could still run an effective cleanup day and ensure great results.

我们了解到，尽管是一个完全远程的部门，处于不同的时区并且没有现场服务，我们仍然可以进行有效的清理，并确保取得良好的结果。

We logged double the issues that we did last year (despite some teams trying to hack the scoring systems :P) and saved almost the same amount of costs, with more savings still to come from some of the issues that were flagged.

我们记录了去年完成的问题的两倍(尽管有些团队试图破解评分系统：P)，并节省了几乎相同的成本，但仍有更多节省来自所标记的一些问题。

The feedback

意见回馈

The feedback we received on how the day was run and organised was pretty great!

我们收到的关于当天运行和组织方式的反馈非常棒！

• 96.7% of participants worked with someone they don’t often work with.96.7％的参与者与不常与之共事的人一起工作。
• 93.8% of participants learned something new.93.8％的参与者学到了一些新东西。
• 100% of the participants agreed that we should do this again next year.100％的参与者同意我们明年再做一次。

Remote working and its effectiveness

远程工作及其有效性

Remote working has definitely been a change up to working in the office, but we feel that the remote working didn’t just make the day more successful, it also ensured better results. There was less pressure, everyone was working in an environment in which they felt comfortable in and we knew if there were any issues that cropped up we could all jump into a video call and help each other out.

远程工作无疑是对办公室工作的一种改变，但是我们认为远程工作不仅使一天变得更加成功，而且还确保了更好的结果。 压力减小了，每个人都在一个令他们感到舒适的环境中工作，我们知道是否有任何问题突然出现，我们都可以加入视频通话并互相帮助。

Post gardening day the organising committee had a discussion surrounding whether to make this a remote or an on site event next year. We all decided due to the success of this year we were going to push for the remote event — which shows in itself how effective remote working can be.

园艺后的一天，组委会围绕明年是否将其变为远程或现场活动进行了讨论。 由于今年的成功，我们都决定要推动远程活动-它本身显示了远程工作的有效性。

Final Note

最后说明

With a bit of planning, it is possible to run group wide events successfully. Some feedback we received from our teams also alluded that the day was a very good morale booster and an excellent tool to get everyone to work towards a common objective. Days like this are valuable. And although the reduction of technical debt and cost savings are important the most valuable outcomes are the collaboration and the improvement of team spirit and morale.

通过一些计划，可以成功地运行组范围的事件。 我们从团队收到的一些反馈也暗示，这一天是一个非常良好的士气推动者，也是使每个人朝着一个共同目标努力的绝佳工具。 这样的日子很宝贵。 尽管减少技术债务和节省成本很重要，但最有价值的结果是协作以及团队精神和士气的提高。

Thanks to Lisa Fiander, Chris Hayes, Mark Barnes, Rhys Evans, Sarah Wells and Nayana Shetty for their help with this post.

感谢Lisa Fiander，Chris Hayes，Mark Ba​​rnes，Rhys Evans，Sarah Wells和Nayana Shetty对本文的帮助。

And thanks to Chris Hayes, David Moor, Mark Barnes, Nayana Shetty alongside me for organising the event and helping make it a memorable day for all.

感谢克里斯·海斯(Chris Hayes)，大卫·摩尔(David Moor)，马克·巴恩斯(Mark Ba​​rnes)，娜亚娜·谢蒂(Nayana Shetty)与我一起组织的活动，并使其成为所有人难忘的一天。