Tips on improving communication with your remote team
blog.clubhouse.io
blog.clubhouse.io
- If anyone is remote for scrum, everyone is remote. Having one group of people in a room together with a few people video conferencing in is terrible for the remote folks. Instead, have everyone call in from their computers. It helps keep people from excluding those who are behind the screen.
- Get an occasional virtual coffee/tea with your workmates. Getting to know each other as people makes small conflicts and friction far less likely to turn into grudges.
- Pay attention to timezones. Even if the main office has more people, share the pain of bad timing across the team. Don't make the same person stay up late or get up early every scrum.
- The little things really matter during video calls. Don't eat near the microphone, circle back around to people who may have been interrupted, make sure everyone can hear clearly.
- Make an extra effort to get feedback and input from people. Especially for less outgoing or assertive folks, it's harder to break in to conversation on Slack or calls than in face to face interactions. Asking "[name], what are your thoughts?" a few times a call goes a long way.
We have someone working in Australia, so it mentions how we were able to make that work, and how we had to start being mindful of timezones.
It discusses some of the challenges that we used to face and how we overcame it — including audio/video difficulties (which we still haven't fully perfected) We're also going to be writing something about working remotely next week.
I do like the virtual coffee/tea idea, I'll probably pitch it to the squad and see what they think.
Do you mind sharing a little bit about your experience with Donut? I'm sure they have paid attention to these things if it's the focus of the whole company. I'm on board with the concept, I'm looking for specific feedback on I guess Donut's implementation before I try introducing this or something like it at my org.
I guess "Haven't noticed any issues" would be fine too. It seems like a pretty simple idea and hard to do wrong, but sometimes when you try things you find out...
I don't know what's going on in general communication, and if it isn't on slack of email, it doesn't exist to me.
-- Doesn't make sense for everyone else to be remote, considering they are all in an office. I am the only one far away. It does make things more challenging for me not being in the room, but it's hard to mitigate that.
-- I am very high on the virtual coffee/tea, but my colleagues seems significantly less so. I think in part that is because they are German, although I do not make broad generalizations lightly. Americans, and British are far easier to have a casual chat with.
-- It's a nightmare trying to make 5am and 6am meetings all the time. I just can't do it, and it's becoming an issue. If I wake up just before the meeting, I'm an idiot, and look terribly. If I wake up an hour beforehand to become awake enough to talk, I upset my family. If I miss it, they get very concerned about what I'm doing with my time.
Tonight I am staying up and working from midnight to 2-3 am just so that they feel my presence.
-- We don't do video calls, but same is true for normal calls.
-- It's not really difficult to talk on slack, but they aren't around when I am, so there's nothing to say.
I love my colleagues, love my work, and really enjoy what we're doing, but certainly there are issues from a large timezone difference that are very difficult to overcome.
When in doubt, ask a million questions!
Sometimes the back and forward comms in Slack or any other project management tool (I use Clubhouse) can be a bit slow, so it's best to just get the person(s) and ask.
OT: Holy heck, did every other sentence need some kind of emphasis? Block quote, bold text, related image, tall header spacing - is this disruption in reading, because it certainly felt like it.