How many times have you sent an email that caused a stir in your distributed team? Maybe you used the wrong emoji, misspelled a word or didn’t articulate your thoughts correctly. 🤷🏻♂️ These minor hiccups are some of the reasons people misunderstand each other in written communication. Find your email particularly hilarious? Crafted a witty chat comeback? Think twice before hitting “send” because your co-workers may have a different idea…
When it comes to project management, there are two questions that continue to occupy the greatest PM minds around: “Is it possible to build a fully remote Scrum team?”, and if so “can it be as effective as its co-located counterparts?” In this article, we attempt to answer these questions and (*spoiler alert*) provide actionable tips that’ll help you and your team rock remote Scrum with class. 🕺 ☝️ A…
Workplace camaraderie among distributed teams… An urban legend? A mythical creature? Building a culture of companionship and solidarity is a dream come true for leaders in distributed organizations. In this article, we set out on a quest to answer these questions. You’ll learn how workplace camaraderie can make employees happier, more engaged and satisfied with their work. You’ll also see what happens when companionship wanes or, worse still, never develops. …
Being part of a distributed team is cool—you can work how you want, when you want and (almost) without distractions. But organizing work in a 100% remote setup can be tricky, especially when your team doesn’t share a minimalist to-do list that’d keep everybody on the same page. So, how do you make sure your to-do lists, Kanban boards or product pipelines don’t become convoluted over time? How do you…
The Connection Between Seemingly Unrelated Trends 📌 Remote work and climate change are staple topics for anyone paying attention to the news. Talking heads just love debating how the two are shaping our immediate and more distant future. But did you know that climate change and a preference for working remotely are not just running in parallel tracks? In fact, they can influence each other in a meaningful way. 💡…
Collaborative task management is powerful when you think about it like origami, with each task (fold) building on other to create a complete model. Work together remotely, in real-time, and effectively.
The game is on. Businesses around the world are joining the “remote culture” to embrace the benefits of distributed teams. According to estimates, as much as 50% of the global workforce may go fully remote by 2020. 🙊 Not so long ago, we published the article “Reverse-Engineering Productivity for Remote Teams. Do More With Less” that detailed how already established remote teams can overcome common productivity problems (be sure to…
Most productivity methodologies are built on more or less the same idea: Intentional processes help you accomplish your goals. And there’s no method that makes this clearer than David Allen’s Getting Things Done® (GTD®). It’s right there in the name—use this method, and you’ll be able to get things done. Building GTD workflows for yourself and your team helps bring order and clarity to these processes. Whether you’re working through…
What makes remote and distributed teams (mind the emphasis) genuinely productive? Is it the ability to churn out as much as possible in the shortest amount of time? Or is the long hours and all-nighters they put in to wrap projects before deadlines hit? Well, if those things stack up to anything, it’s a heck of a productivity slump. We get it. Time seems to run faster when we’re busy….
✍️ Journaling can increase your productivity and help you stay mindful of important, long-term goals. Whether you’re scoping out a new project, updating an existing feature, or smashing bugs in your current system, the act of writing down and evaluating tasks keeps your team organized. And using the digital bullet journal framework is one of the best ways to approach this practice. Building productive habits is also easier when everyone…
So what to do when your remote team struggles with getting things done? With the rise of remote companies and a distributed workforce, the way teams collaborate is changing. Visibility and accountability have become significantly more important, while seamless communication is harder to achieve. If you’re not careful about how your team collaborates, valuable information can easily be lost in an abyss of chat and email threads. As a result,…