We created this yesterday to try and make this situation as good as possible, I thought some of you might like to read it to, manifesto start here:
First of all, this is not a normal remote situation! But to try and make this as best as possible, we drafted this manifesto to try to follow to make our working and social relationships as best as possible.
Overcommunication is key – What do we mean? In the office we saw when people went out for a smoke or coffee break, when we are remote-working people don’t see it, so we need to start getting into the habit of letting our peers know when we leave for a break – it’s not a tracking tool, but rather setting expectations, when we stand up and go to grab a smoke or coffee in the office – it’s a form of visual communication that we lack now 🙂 we now just need to do the same either written or status change on Slack.
New joiners Addition – This btw will normalize this for everyone, once everyone will be able to see people take breaks during work hours remote, our new joiners will feel more comfortable doing so as well
Our faces are important – By default let’s have cameras on, we know most of us hate seeing ourselves in the video, but we like seeing each other, and it helps, we are used to a visual communication style, we see expressions and we understand the tone… unless there’s a specific reason, let’s start our calls with video on.
We Socialize – We continue to have lunches and coffee breaks together. We have this slack channel – #log-remote-coffee-break and Lunch Hangout Open for all on the Logistics calendar (12:30 – 13:30) – Hangout Room – Let’s invite peers for coffee or lunch, have conversations and be welcoming, we also keep in mind that people moved to Berlin recently, so this situation is extra difficult on them.
We 🍐 – Pair! Pair! Pair! Pairing is key to onboard, is key to understand the scope and to share knowledge, working remotely could lead to silos, silos kill teams! A great way to share knowledge in an organic way is to pair, pair program, pair on discovery and pair with our PMs when we try to find a solution
We avoid long slack messages that lead to no result – If we find ourselves in the rabbit hole of never-ending messages that leads to nothing, call! Quick video chat could solve hours of chatting, same as chatting to peer in the office would save that.
We provide Context – Now more than ever, let’s make sure we have Agenda set for each meeting and summary of what was decided, let’s share – let’s call this Context sharing and Async info providing (to those that weren’t there).
Top comments (1)
As someone who has worked on a remote team for the last 3 years, I can say your ‘manifesto’ is spot on! Emphasis on providing context.