Remote working

n style=”font-weight:400;”>Given the extraordinary situation we have now in the world, more and more companies look into remote working. Now I’ve been part of a geographically distributed team for 1,5 years. In this blog post I share my experiences working in a remote team.

Remote Team Setup

We have one person working from home almost full time, only traveling to the office for important meetings (a few times a month). The rest of us works mostly from the office, while WFH (Working From Home) a few days a week.

Daily Standup

For the Daily Standup we use Slack. We have a private channel just for the team members. The call is made using voice (video doesn’t really add anything, since we all know each other so well in the team). The leader of the meeting (usually me) shares the screen and we look at the team Kanban board in Jira. Then we talk in the same turn every day, to avoid the little delays created by wondering “Who’s next?”. Sometimes a person wants to discuss/show something, and then that person shares their screen instead. 

Retrospectives

I’ve written about remote retrospectives earlier. Then we used a shared digital board in Favro to drive the meeting. Currently we use a shared Excel file to have a slimmed down version of “Democratic Retrospective”. Hopefully I will find time in the future, to blog about this in more detail!  

Internal Workshops

For workshops you really need to go the extra mile when performing them remotely. Ideally a workshop is a meeting room full of engaged people sharing thoughts on a whiteboard. To mimic that remotely, is to be fair, not easy. 

There are digital online whiteboards that you can use as a substitute. We have used webwhiteboard. Be prepared that participating in a remote workshop requires you to be fully focused, and to listen very carefully. More than if you are sitting in a meeting room. This to not lose out on any nuances. We use Slack and call in a separate team channel for internal workshops. 

Charge your batteries before entering a remote workshop, and also give yourself the time to rest a bit afterwards, since they have to be intense to be productive. 

Communication during the working day

During the working day most of the communication is happening by using text messages in Slack. Normally each initiative/project has its own separate channel. If needed, persons or groups call each other up to also talk about work, if that feels easier than writing. 

Partner/Customer Meetings

To have a meeting with a partner or a customer, meaning another company, you can’t decide tools to use just by yourself. You have to align, and that lowest common abbreviation seems to be Skype.

For this type of meeting I always prepare a Powerpoint presentation. First page is the agenda, and then one page per point in the agenda to drive the meeting. I share my screen to show this presentation for the other meeting participants. This presentation is important to “drive the meeting”, while I take meeting notes on paper, or on the laptop using a different screen (with dual monitors). 

All Hands

We have a monthly All Hands meeting where people from all offices (or home workers) call in. For this type of meeting we use Zoom.  

Discipline and routines

Here are some tips and tricks how you shall behave when working remotely: 

• Always be ready a few minutes before a remote meeting starts, so you can connect on time! At an office the meeting host can always “run around and grab people that are late for the meeting”, that option doesn’t exist when working remotely. 
• Do not call in to a remote meeting from your workplace, if you are sitting in an open landscape. The background noise the microphone picks up will negatively affect the meeting. If you have to, use a proper headset with microphone (not the built in microphone of the laptop).
• Clear communication is key! You have to put extra effort into explaining what you mean, since your whole body language is usually left out of the equation when working remotely. Sure you can use a video call, but then you usually look at a presentation on the screen, and the video of your face will be lost (or only seen in a tiny part of the screen). 
• All tools and resources you have access to from the office network have to be reachable from physically everywhere, either directly, or using VPN. 
• Have proper equipment, and know how to use it! Spending the beginning of EVERY remote meeting sorting out technical issues is not a good start. 
• Have routines, and stick by them. Set the alarm the same time every day. Eat lunch the same time every day, don’t do it in front of the computer just because you can. Go for a walk during lunchtime instead. Have food prepared so you don’t have to cook from scratch every lunch, or you love cooking and want to spend that extra effort, go ahead. Find the routines that work for you! 

Summary 

As you can see there are a lot of different tools involved when working remotely. Is this a good thing? Maybe not, to use one or a few tools is of course preferable, and maybe that is the case in larger corporations? The rest of us may just have to face the fact that we need a large number of tools installed on our computer to be able to work remotely!

All the best,
 Tomas from TheAgileist