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Book excerpt from the newly published “Remote Teamwork Tools” a collection of tools and practices to help distributed teams of remote workers communicate, collaborate, and execute effectively. By Clinton Keith and Grant Shonkwiler.
We as an industry have been thrust into an unprecedented time, one where all of our teams have moved to remote work. Having worked with teams remotely for the last three years I know that there are a host of challenges that can appear nearly impossible at first, but I promise you they aren't. In our book Remote Teamwork Tools we outline over 100 practices that can be used with remote teams to improve their work. Below I've included a few of those practices that I think will be most helpful to new teams as they navigate this new challenge.
The book is available now.
The top things you need to know when moving to remote work as an individual.
After you get your routine working, you might start to run into some problems with focus; this practice will provide you with information to keep focused and working. Note: Thank you to Jessica Damerst for contributing her expertise.
Allow yourself to work in bursts; it's easy to get distracted at first. Try 45min of work and 15 min of break.
Move around once an hour
Keep any regular meetings you might have had before
Get some face to face time daily with your team.
Enjoy the silent uninterrupted times.
Depression & Anxiety make remote work much tougher. So be mindful of that
Block out work times in your calendar and keep track of the hours you plan to work
Never chastise yourself for getting distracted. Put a time limit on the distraction (10 more min) then jump back in.
Get in the zone and make sure the whole family knows you are not available.
Build an environment you want to work in. If you can have an office with a door that closes, this is best.
Prioritize sunshine and, if possible, fitness. Get moving for at least 30 min in a day or 5 min each hour.
You have to over-communicate compared to when you are in an office together.
When you first transition to remote work it’s important to have a routine.
The first challenge everyone faces when beginning to work remotely is that of putting on pants in the morning. Seriously it can be hard at first to learn how to set up a routine and schedule for yourself. When I first started working remotely, I spent more time playing Skyrim than working. Remember, you are still getting ready to go to work.
Set up a daily routine that gets you ready to work.
Wakeup
Workout
Shower
Get ready
Quiet time/meditate
Breakfast
Work time
Lunch
Work time
Wrap up work
Free time
When your team moves to remote you as a leader/manager will also have to adjust.
One of the biggest challenges teams face when transitioning to remote work is people leadership/management. These practices/tips will help you begin to navigate this difficult topic.
Keep your regular meetings, and replace them with digital meetings
Replicate any physical boards with digital boards
Have channels for each strike/scrum team to communicate
Have channels for each discipline to communicate
Utilize any tools you can to streamline reviews (code, art, product)
Encourage lots of screen sharing
Give people large chunks of time to work uninterrupted, use No Meetings Day and Silent Hour
Make sure that your workers who haven’t worked remotely before understand how best to do it and are supported.
First Time Remote Working Tips
Do a daily check-in with each person; it can be as simple as a good morning message
Make sure you get some face to face time with each person during the week.
Make sure everyone on the team has at least one hour of overlapping time.
Over Communicate everything, and make sure it was heard.
No Meetings Day
Silent Hour
First Time Remote Working Tips
Make sure your company culture survives the shift to remote
It takes a lot of work to set up a solid company culture, but it's even more work to maintain the transition to remote. When building a new remote team from scratch, you can use a lot of the practices in this book to start to build a solid culture. This practice will cover maintaining your existing culture in the transition to remote working.
Gather your leadership team together
Write down the core tenets of your culture
Under each tenet, write down how it is manifested in the daily work of your team, this will be multiple points
Once you have all of those put them into groups of what they are (communication, socializing, work, etc.)
Go through each group point by point and discuss how you will migrate each to a digital/remote tool
Compile your findings into a founding document and send it out to the team.
Meet with the team to discuss
Make sure to ask members of the team how they think each tenet is manifested
Migrate any teams or social groups to a digital version
Set aside social hours every month, people can play games or enjoy a happy hour on a video call together
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