Category Archives for : Meeting & Visual Collaboration

Developing a comprehensive understanding of business systems is hard work. It usually involves high-level modeling or complex process mapping. This can be a highly technical and laborious process that involves a lot of trial and error. Creating BPMN diagrams or UML schematics can be very useful in understanding the broader functioning of a business, but they are fundamentally technical in nature and can exclude non-technical domain experts.

Domain-Driven Design 

Domain-Driven Design is a methodology that establishes a technology-independent language that allows for a detailed understanding of business needs and processes. This allows stakeholders to communicate their domain knowledge to the rest of the team in a language-agnostic manner to develop a shared understanding of systems.

What is Event Storming?

Event storming is a workshop-based approach to Domain Driven Design that brings technical and non-technical stakeholders together to explore complex business domains. It focuses on domain events that are generated in the context of a business process or business application. It usually involves product owners, domain experts and developers. 

The event storming method was introduced and publicized by Alberto Brandolini in Introducing EventStorming. It is used as a technique to rapidly capture a solution design and improve the team’s understanding of the design. 

Event storming is a form of group learning and is a fun way to integrate development and product teams to create alternative solutions together. Event storming may also be useful for teams with mature products to order the process and find out about bottlenecks and areas of conflict.

An event storming session is usually conducted to:

• Create a business model for the development of a project.
• Gain a “big picture” awareness of the product model in all its complexity, highlighting its goals and needs.
• Visualize the product model and brainstorm alternative solutions.
• Find bottlenecks and areas of conflict on mature products.

The Benefits of Event Storming

While building a product it is important for the development team to be well-versed in the business domain the product operates in. It allows for a clearer initial analysis and a more focused build. A workshop like an event storming session can boost the overall co-operation between business and product teams.

Quick: Most other business process modeling techniques are an in-depth deep dive into the operations of the business. They involve using complex data models and can take weeks to depict an accurate picture. Event storming is a rapid approach to modeling domain-driven design. An event storm is usually a single-day event where a complete business process can be mapped in a few hours. 

Shared Understanding Between Technical and Non-Technical Stakeholders: Unlike UML, an event storm creates a representation of a business process that can be easily understood without any prior technical knowledge. 

Collaborative: The core concept of an event storm is to encourage participation and interaction between domain experts. It creates an engaging environment to create business models and results in the discovery of more valuable insights. 

Effective: The greatest benefit of event storming is the conversations it starts. Teams can use the knowledge gained in the workshop to inform future modeling processes and build products, or can simply use event storming to better understand business processes and make better decisions going forward.

Conducting the Event Storm 

To conduct an event storm you need to gather various stakeholders with specific domain expertise together. This can be done in a physical location or virtually using a collaborative whiteboard tool like Creately. It allows you to conduct the entire session remotely on a single, infinite canvas and can be used as a shared space where stakeholders can exchange thoughts and ideas in real-time.

Step 1: Domain Events

The first step is to identify domain events. They are factual statements about the things that happened in a business system. Participants brainstorm and list down all the things that happened in a system that triggered important reactions. Then they list down these events as colour-coded notes on the virtual canvas. It is important to phrase these statements in the past tense so participants can frame this as a ‘what happened’ statement. As participants add events to the canvas, you can begin to organize them according to the time frame in which they occurred. 

Step 2- Commands

The next step is to identify why the event occurred. In this stage, the team analyzes what triggered the events. While events are factual statements about the past, commands express our intent for something to happen in the future. Commands are usually listed down on blue notes. While events are captured as past tense statements, commands are listed down as present tense intentions. Commands may be documented as both user and system actions. 

Step 3- Aggregates

These are the things that happen in a system that generally take place in a group of events. They are higher-order business entities that should be represented as nouns.

For example, ‘Order Process’. An aggregate usually consists of a collection of notes on the canvas. 

It is represented by a cluster of events with corresponding commands and the responsible actor. That aggregate can then be named and placed on a larger color-coordinated note on the canvas. 

Step 4 – Bounded Contexts

This is a high-level structure that consists of categorizations of functionality that group related entities together. The team begins to group together modules within an element called bounded contexts by drawing a box or circle around the related modules. You can then begin context mapping by illustrating how modules within a bounded context interact with other contexts. Simply put, all related events would fall into the same bounded context. For example, all events related to shopping carts would fall into the shopping cart bounded context.  

Tips for Conducting Your Event Storming Session

• Participants: The key aspect of a successful event storm is organizing the right people. Participants should consist of key stakeholders with domain expertise across multiple domains. An effective event storm usually has a small group of stakeholders to ensure free-flowing conversation and a collaborative environment.
• Plan Sessions: Set goals and intentions for the session. This allows you to be more focused on what should be involved in the session and what aspects should be left out.
• Send Instructions Ahead of Time: Allow participants to understand what the point of the exercise is and what is expected of them. Send instructions of what the key is and what different colored notes represent, so participants have a clear understanding while conducting the session
• Have Discussions in Nontechnical Language: Ensure conversations are not bogged down by the specifics of implementation. These conversations should be more conceptual in nature so that everyone can participate, regardless of their technical background.
• Provide Examples: It is helpful to showcase a completed event storming canvas so participants know what they need to work up to.

Have Experience Conducting an Event Storming Session? Tell us About it.

Have you participated or conducted an event storming session before, we would love to hear about your experience and some of the learning you came away with. Let us know your thoughts in the comments section.

One of the most important frameworks for designing great user-centric products is design thinking. It is an iterative process that teams use to understand challenges, question assumptions, and create innovative solutions that can be prototyped and tested. 

A design sprint is a highly interactive, experimental, and user-focused process that implements the practices of design thinking in a time-bound manner to derive tangible benefits that can be executed immediately.

It consists of 5 phases that are usually spread across 5 days. It starts with design thinking and ends with a user-tested prototype.

The 5 Stages of a Design Sprint

Define – Where a team uncovers a design problem.

Ideate – Where teams create solutions around the target problem.

Decide – Teams lock-in on a solution and develop a prototype.

Prototype – Teams build a realistic prototype to test with users.

Test – Teams conduct studies to validate the solution. 

One of the most important aspects of running a successful design sprint is assembling a cross-functional team. This requires individuals with expertise across a diverse range of topics. A typical design sprint consists of:

• A customer service executive to provide user insight.
• Designers to provide expertise on system designs and user experience.
• Developers to understand and identify technical limitations.
• A marketer who can assess the market value of the idea.
• A decider who has the authority to make a final decision. 

The aim is to assemble the right mix of personalities, skills, and disciplines to ensure a productive, free-flowing environment for thoughts and ideas. In our experience, we’ve found that teams no larger than 7 work best.

How a Visual Workspace Helps:

Running a design sprint can enable teams to find solutions, innovate products and explore strategies, over the course of a few days. It allows for cross-company team building and demonstrates a rapid framework for innovation. But, one of the biggest hurdles to running effective and regular design sprints is the logistics involved. Co-ordinating schedules across various teams and getting them together in one location for an entire week, especially if the teams are distributed can prove to be near-impossible.  

Having a single, connected visual workspace where teams can work together in real-time and freely exchange ideas and opinions like they are in the same room is the perfect way to get the most out of a design sprint. Creately’s visual workspace allows teams to work on pre-made templates created for various design thinking frameworks and enables teams to run the entire design sprint on one canvas. 

Conducting the Sprint: 

Once the team has been identified they can access the same Creately canvas to begin the sprint. It helps to have a designated facilitator that will take the team through the various activities of the sprint. A facilitator will answer any questions about the methodology and make sure they stick to the schedule. Across the 5 day period, the sprint team will participate in various group and individual tasks, including:

Monday: Map

The first day of the sprint is where teams participate in structured discussions and charter a course for the rest of the week. It involves mapping out challenges, collecting data, and narrowing down on an ambitious but achievable challenge that can be solved within a week.

Many times it involves reverse-engineering the problem or destructing the problem to understand its root cause.

Customer Journey Maps

Creating user-centric products involves a deep dive into understanding user needs and how they will potentially interact with your product. The customer journey map tool is a valuable asset to use in the early stages of the design process. It helps teams empathize with users and identify opportunities to enhance the overall experience.

Empathy Maps

Empathy maps are another great tool that the team can incorporate into the design sprint. It serves as a collaborative visualization process that articulates what we know about a particular type of user to create a shared understanding and aid in decision-making.

“How Might We”

The next stage is to create ‘How Might We’ notes on the visual workspace. After identifying some obstacles or potential problems in the customer journey mapping process, the team lists down possible opportunities to improve the user experience, framed as ‘How might we’ questions, for example, ‘ How might we improve the onboarding experience?’ 

Tuesday: Sketch

By Tuesday, your sprint team should fully understand the problem and should decide on what aspect they will be focusing on for the rest of the sprint. The day is dedicated to looking for possible solutions and involves remixing old ideas that already exist and looking for ways to improve on them. Each team member ideates separately and creates a basic prototype. This can be through illustrative storyboards or by creating low-fidelity wireframes just to indicate what the product will look like.

Wednesday: Decide

By the 3rd day of the sprint, your team should have created a list of potential solutions for the problem. Wednesday is all about selecting the best solution and creating a final storyboard. It involves discussions and voting on which idea will be storyboarded and prototyped for user testing.

There are many techniques that can be used to arrive at the best solution. One such method is to use the thinking hats framework that assigns a new point of view to each team member. This technique helps groups think more effectively and organizes the thinking processes in a detailed and cohesive manner.

Thursday: Prototype

The 4th stage of the design sprint is to actually build the product or a version that can be tested by users to gain feedback. This can be done through mockups, sketch designs, videos, or online demonstrations. Creating a prototype is an experiment in order to test out a hypothesis. This means you have to think critically about what you will build in order to get the feedback you need to validate or invalidate your hypothesis.

Friday: Test

The last day of the sprint involves testing the prototype on customers. The aim is to gain feedback and incorporate changes back into the design. This can be done through usability testing where potential users actually interact with the prototype and share their thoughts and opinions. Testing can also be done through surveys or by showing users mockups that are close to a finished product.

Concluding the Sprint:

The design sprint doesn’t result in a finished product, but it does help to validate ideas quickly and affordably.  At the end of the sprint, you can expect one of the three outcomes.

A successful failure: Even if the sprint doesn’t end with a validated product, you learn valuable information from your prototype and avoid spending huge amounts of time and effort creating the wrong product. 

A flawed win: Here you have clearly identified what works and what doesn’t and can now fine-tune adjustments so you can test it again.

A complete win: This is when your prototype solved users’ problems or even exceeded their expectations. You now have a clear direction to work towards when developing your final product. 

This structured and condensed form of innovation is a great way to uncover great ideas and continually improve your product offerings. The learnings gained from this 5-day process can provide a wealth of insight and can have an organizational-wide impact. Do you have any valuable learning from conducting design sprints? We’d love to hear from you in the comments.  

Keeping your audience’s attention over a long period of time is undoubtedly one of the most challenging aspects of an online presentation. Not only does the audience have a shorter attention span but since they are participating online from the comfort of their own home, they are often subjected to additional distractions.   

What does it take to give a remarkable online presentation? In this post, we will discuss tools and tips you can rely on to engage and retain your audience’s attention and give you some useful templates to start creating an effective online presentation right away. 

Online Presentation Tips 

These tips are to help you ensure that your audience stays engaged till the end of your online presentation. 

Select the right tool

With the rise of collaborative software over the last decade, the choice of tools you have for creating and delivering an online presentation are many. You can switch between them or use a combination of them based on the purpose of your presentation. 

Here are a few options you can explore;

• MS PowerPoint: the go-to presentation software for any professional is PowerPoint. Everyone’s familiar with it, you can use pre-made templates if you are in a hurry, and all you have to do is share your screen with the rest of the participants. However in terms of interactivity, it has limitations, plus you have to rely on a third-party video conferencing app like Zoom, MS Teams, Google Meet, or Slack to see your audience while presenting. 
• Prezi: This tool gives you the option to create moving and zooming presentations where you can also appear alongside your content on the screen. Instead of separate slides, Prezi lets you use one large canvas that allows you to pan and zoom to different parts of the presentation, which makes it more engaging to the viewers.  
• Creately: This is an online canvas with in-app video conferencing and real-time collaboration, meaning all participants have access to the document containing the presentation. While you can pan and zoom to different slides or sections of your presentation on the canvas, you can also get the participants to join in adding comments, answers, or collaborate with you, etc. in real-time.

Simplify your presentation slides 

Placing too much information on a single slide can overwhelm and confuse your audience. Instead you need to make sure that your content is well-structured, minimalistic, and compelling at the same time. 

The easiest way to avoid complicating things is to stick to a single point or topic throughout the entire presentation, and making sure that the rest of the arguments, questions, metaphors, facts, and stats you will present will reinforce that point. 

In addition, you can also consider taking the following steps,

• Got too much important information to share? If the information you have is essential but too long, you can consider delivering them during separate sessions. Keeping your online presentation time short will help retain the attention of your audience.
• Minimize the content on a slide by keeping only 1-3 ideas, facts, or statistics on them. This will help the audience to comprehend your point easily. Also having new slides appearing frequently can keep the minds of your audience from wandering off. 

Or you can…

Use visuals to simplify the facts

Not only can people process visuals faster, but visuals are also very effective in helping them remember things better. You can portray a group of statistics with a histogram or a pie chart, or explain a process with a flowchart more easily than you can do with words. 

When using visuals in your online presentation,

• Use them here and there throughout the presentation to keep your audience engaged 
• Keep your illustrations and visuals simple and clean so it’s clear even when viewed on a smaller screen
• Incorporate videos to reinforce your argument. Videos are also a great way to start up a discussion and stimulate the interest of your audience

Interact with the audience  

Actively engaging with the audience is the easiest way to make sure that their attention doesn’t waver. 

You can do this effectively by, 

• Use the first few minutes of your presentation to build rapport. A great way to do this is by asking some ice breaker questions or engaging in casual talk with the audience before the presentation starts.
• Start your presentation with a strong hook, which can be an intriguing question, a bold statement, a shocking statistic, or even a story. 
• Regularly ask questions (at least every 10 minutes) from the audience or encourage them to pose their own.  
• Ask questions through live polls which allow you to get their instant feedback.  
• Incorporate an online whiteboard to explain your idea or concept by sketching or diagramming them out. The benefit of using an online whiteboard here is that you can also invite the participants to collaborate with you on the canvas in real-time.

Clarify the ground rules 

How everyone conducts themselves during the length of a presentation has a significant impact on its effectiveness, especially when it is done online. In order to make sure that the participants know what to expect and how to interact and conduct themselves, set clear ground rules at the very beginning.

• Keep everyone, except for the one who is presenting, muted to tune out all the distracting noises that otherwise would make it difficult to carry out the presentation. 
• If anyone has a question or wants to share an opinion, encourage that person to make a hand gesture before they unmute their mic and make a comment.   
• Encourage everyone to have their cameras turned on. This is important for making a connection with the audience, picking up on visual cues, and avoiding missing out on what someone is trying to say during the presentation, especially since everyone is joining remotely. 

Be prepared 

Fumbling around with your tech or slides at the start or during the presentation is simply unacceptable and unprofessional. A few things you need to check on are;

• Double-check your equipment – microphone, web camera, internet, tools, and software prior to the presentation and ensure they are working fine. 
• If you are using any tool or software during the presentation, have them opened and logged into before the presentation starts. 
• Make sure you are set up in a distraction-free area of your home. In addition, turn off or silence your phone and desktop notifications. 
• Get rid of anything in the background that might be a distraction to your audience. Many video conferencing software allows you to add a virtual background, so you can try that option as well. 
• Many online presenters often neglect what they wear, but what you are wearing itself can be a cause for distraction to your audience. Avoid this by dressing appropriately, and professionally. 

Nail the ending of your presentation

The ending can help you boost the impact that your virtual presentation has on your audience, intrigue them to take action, and/or inspire and motivate them. To make the most out of the presentation ending, 

• Have a concluding slide, summing up the key points and takeaways of the presentation. 
• Or you can add a call to action or provide actionable steps to encourage the audience to take action on what you have presented   
• Provide resources – PDF files, websites, books, and videos – the audience can refer to later

Got More Online Presentation Tips? 

We hope that these tips will help you do your online presentation more confidently. Ensure that your audience doesn’t doze off during your online presentation by not only following the steps above but also incorporating the right tools that can help you make an impact. 

See how Creately can help you make your virtual presentation even more interactive and engaging with its shareable infinite canvas and real-time collaboration capabilities including in-app video conferencing, real-time mouse tracking and change previews, and synchronous editing. 

One thing all high-performing teams have in common is effective communication. 

Effective team communication is key to staying productive, avoiding conflicts, building trust, and ultimately attaining organizational goals in a timely manner.

A team that doesn’t communicate effectively with one another sets the stage for chaos, stress, delays, and unwelcomed conflicts.   

Which brings us to the next question. How to improve team communication? Team communication strategies are many, but we are not going to focus on any of them today. Instead, we’ll talk about visual collaboration and how it can help you communicate better with your team, whether they are onsite, remote, or a mix of the two.  

You may scratch your head at first but bear with us. By the end of this blog post, you will nod in agreement. 

Let’s dig in.

What is Visual Collaboration 

Visual collaboration entails working together using visual means such as a canvas or Online whiteboard tool, video conferencing, diagramming, symbols, pictures, sketching, etc. 

It’s leveraged by both co-located and remote teams for various purposes including meeting management, project planning, prototyping, brainstorming, design thinking, and sprint planning. 

Why visual collaboration

Talking to each other sure seems easy enough, yet, projects fail, mistakes happen, and people lag behind and often get confused- all because of ineffective communication. 

With many teams having shifted to working remotely, where teams mainly write to communicate than speak, communication challenges have multiplied. 

An effective solution for overcoming these common challenges is the use of visuals, in your communication material, and during collaboration. Rather than simply communicating with each other using words (in spoken or written format), attach visuals to elaborate it more. 

Using visuals have been proven to improve comprehension and help process information better and faster. Research shows that humans can process visuals 60,000 times faster than text and that they tend to remember 80% of what they see, whereas only 20% of what they read and 10% of what they hear.  This is why accompanying your message with a visual will leave less space for confusion and drive the message home faster. 

For example, if you want to explain how a process works, use a flowchart to make it easier for the recipient to understand.

Example of visual collaboration

Let’s try to understand how visual collaboration tools can help improve communication with an example. 

Group brainstorming. This creative technique is great for gathering solutions for a problem or generating new, innovative ideas for projects, with your team. 

One of the barriers to an effective brainstorming session is keeping the momentum going and letting everyone contribute equally. Also, when many ideas are thrown out around the room at the same time, some may never make it to the final list.

Solution; brainstorm using a mind map, a visual tool for capturing ideas, and organizing them. If you use an online canvas that can give everyone (even those who are joining remotely) access to the same space to collaborate around the mind map, all individuals can equally contribute to building it up as they add their ideas. They can also use images or symbols instead of words. The best part is, no one necessarily has to speak; all ideas will be communicated and recorded nevertheless. 

The final mind map will clearly define all ideas and sub-ideas, how they are related to each other, and how they help solve the problem at hand. You can also share the canvas with your stakeholders when it’s time to get their input.

Online Visual Workspace

Most teams are working remotely these days, or at least have a few members who do so. To allow everyone to equally participate in collaborating and communicating ideas visually, you need an online workspace that supports synchronous editing, video-conferencing, commenting, real-time mouse tracking, and change previews. 

This is where a tool like Creately can help. It provides an infinite online canvas that teams can use to communicate and collaborate around their plans, projects, strategies, and ideas. It offers real-time collaboration capabilities that allow teams to work together as if they were in the same room. 

Visual Collaboration Methods for Effective Team Communication

Now that you are ready to think, work, and communicate visually, it’s time to consider where to start. With an infinite canvas, there are endless possibilities, also confusion as to where to begin. To help you narrow it down and generate the best outcomes, we have listed below a few methods along with templates. 

Strategic planning

Strategic planning requires you to assess where you are and where you want to be and establish the direction of your business accordingly. Undoubtedly, the process consists of a lot of back and forth communication between the team members and stakeholders. 

By bringing everything and everyone on to one canvas, you can avoid a lot of confusion that generally comes with non-visual communication and collaboration methods such as email threads, endless conference calls, chat threads, etc.

Customer journey mapping

Customer journey mapping involves outlining and analyzing your customer’s journey as they interact with your brand. It reveals customer actions, emotions, pain points, and expectations along their journey.  

You can effectively simplify communication around this process by visually collaborating on it with your team.

Running Meetings

Meetings involve a lot of discussions, and to make something productive out of all that is communicated, you need to properly organize and record the ideas shared, prioritize them, and create action plans. 

This canvas is created around basic components in a meeting such as brainstorming, idea prioritization, action planning, etc. Edit or add other elements to the canvas as necessary to run your meeting effectively.

Check out our guide to running effective meetings to learn more.

Sprint planning 

Sprint planning also involves a lot of discussions aimed at defining what can be done during the Sprint and how the chosen work will get done. By bringing together all these elements onto one canvas, you can look at them side by side and get a quick overview of everything.

Ready to Try Visual Collaboration for Effective Team Communication?  

A picture is worth a thousand words. Instead of speaking a thousand words to explain unique ideas in your head, you can convert them into something visual and tangible with a simple diagram or sketch, to help others understand them better and faster.

You can simply achieve effective team communication by incorporating a canvas into your daily meetings,  where participants can share and build upon their ideas in a visual form (i.e. flowchart, mind map, infographic, etc.) to explain them better to others. 

Got any tips on improving team communication? Let us know in the comments section below.

Collaboration is a crucial element that drives workforce performance. 

It reinforces teamwork and encourages innovative thinking and equal contribution of team members in achieving objectives efficiently.

A Stanford study from a few years ago shows that even the mere perception of working together with a team increases the performance of an individual.

With COVID-19 having affected and changed the way businesses run globally, teamwork and collaboration have become even more important. 

And challenging to execute due to teams working from home. As a result, companies have increasingly come to depend on online remote collaboration tools to continue to drive innovation, increase employee productivity, and remain relevant.

Below we have listed 5 popular remote collaboration tools you can use to improve communication and teamwork between employees, especially between those who are currently working from home. 

Document & File Collaboration Tool – Google Docs/ Google Drive

Document and file sharing apps play a major role in a collaboration toolkit. They help teams easily share and collaborate on common documents online. 

Research shows that teams can create documents 33% faster with a document management tool that removes the need for attachments.

One major player in this category is Google Docs with which you can create documents, edit/ review them, and share them with others, from any device and from anywhere in the world.

You can also download documents in multiple file formats as needed. Integrated with Google Drive, it allows you to organize your documents neatly and manage permission to them across the organization. 

When to use: 

• During online meetings to take down notes
• To develop ideas collaboratively during an online brainstorming session 
• To collaborate in real-time on editing a document 
• Track progress of the document with version history
• To share important documents with team members, clients or stakeholders
• Provide instant feedback on documents or make suggestions for changes

Visual Workspace for Collaboration – Creately 

It is estimated that over 60% of Generation X and Millennials collaborate more through visual means.

Visuals help people communicate their ideas, processes, workflows, designs, etc. better. This is why most conference rooms have online whiteboards tools in them; to help add a visual aspect to what is discussed.

Visual collaboration platforms replace this traditional whiteboard with a cloud-based, infinite canvas where multiple people can work together on developing their ideas and designs using visual elements and diagrams. 

A giant in the industry is Creately. It offers a scalable, infinite online canvas with intuitive drawing features to help teams collaborate in real-time on visualizing concepts faster.

It also has 1000s of pre-made templates based on various scenarios for marketing, development, design, engineering, HR, project management, and agile teams. 

Its seamless integration with Google Drive, Confluence, and Slack further help strengthen collaboration across cross-functional teams.

When to use:   

• To brainstorm around ideas using by creating mind maps, idea boards, fishbone diagrams, etc. 
• To do online Sprint Planning with your Scrum team 
• To collaborate in real-time around developing ideas/ plans using visuals and diagrams, from anywhere 
• To plan around and review user flows, wireframes (Use online wireframe tool )and UI mockups
• To visualize statistics and information for reports, documents, presentations, etc. 
• To share and get feedback on documents from co-workers, stakeholders, and clients

Team Messaging App  – Slack 

Collaboration starts with proper communication between employees. 

And there are many purpose-built applications out there to facilitate communication between teams, whether they are working from the same location or remotely.

While Microsoft Teams is designed for larger enterprise companies, it is often regarded as difficult to set up as opposed to Slack, which is easier to set up and administrate.

So for this post, we decided to stick with Slack although Microsoft Teams has a larger user base, for the reasons that it’s easier to set up and use and is the apt choice for instant messaging for businesses. 

Slack is a great communications tool for teams of all sizes whether they are in-house or remote. It allows teams to connect with coworkers via instant messages, video calls, and even create separate non-work related channels to socialize.

When to use it; 

• It replaces emails, phone calls, and text messages when you want to communicate with your team 
• To keep important information, documents, links to resources, etc. saved in your chat history. You can quickly discover them with the search option 
• To set reminders for yourself and your team for important events (i.e. daily scrum) 
• To connect with your co-workers over audio or video call
• To create fun community spaces for your team to bond over non-work related things 
• To solve problems, notify other people, brainstorm around ideas and share task/ project updates
• To share your availability status during working hours

Online Meeting Tool – Zoom

When working remotely, meeting and working in person isn’t possible; but video conferencing enables ‘face-to-face’ conversations virtually.

And for a remote team, they are crucial to building trust and providing the visual cues necessary for effective communication.

There are many tools out there in the market. Bloomberg reports that the global video conferring market will expand at a compound annual growth rate of 9.2% until 2025, growing that market to a value of $6.7 billion. It also states that 51% of workers had taken video calls for work, from a home office while 33% had done so from a coworking facility. 

A popular tool used worldwide for video conferencing is Zoom. Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Zoom has increased its user base at a record high. It is estimated that the company has added 2.22 million monthly active users so far in 2020, while in 2019 it added 1.99 million. 

When to use it;

• For video conferencing and audio conferencing with co-workers
• For conducting remote meetings with team members, clients, stakeholders, etc. 
• For conducting remote interviews and conduct training sessions for new remote hires 
• To conduct webinars and other marketing events 
• To schedule and record meetings 
• For screen sharing

Project Management – Favro 

Over the past few years, / task/ project management software have become extremely popular, now even more so as most teams have members working remotely.

Whether you are looking to simply organize the project tasks or an enterprise-grade system to plan and monitor projects, there’s a solution for everyone.  

Favro offers a single space for distributed teams to collaborate on planning, organizing, and tracking the progress of the tasks/ projects they are working on. 

When to use it:

• To visualize work in progress using roadmaps, lists, and sheets, identify bottlenecks and stay synchronized as a team
• To create and collaborate on the content needed for projects within the app
• To plan projects and assign tasks and duties among team members
• To create backlogs of work to do in the future and collections (workspaces) for separate teams using product backlog template.
• To review and leave feedback on projects for peers  

What are Your Favorite Remote Collaboration Tools?

The key to seamless remote collaboration is using the right tool for the right purpose and using a limited set of tools to avoid creating confusion. To promote more efficient use of the tools, have clear guidelines for when and how to use them written down and shared with the team. 

We hope these 5 remote collaboration tools will help you get the job done efficiently. 

Let us know your feedback in the comments section below.

Team Creately has been working from home for nearly two months now, since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

How are things, you may wonder. 

By now everyone in the team has successfully grasped the technique of working from home while staying productive as ever. We’ve worked harder (mind you, without burning out and while maintaining a healthy work-life balance) than we’ve ever done before the whole lockdown situation fell upon us. 

And most importantly, we’ve been able to expand our team, and this is while everyone’s working from home. 

In this guide, we will shed light on the processes, best practices, and tools we’ve followed and used for successfully interviewing and hiring new employees, without even meeting them in person. Read on to find,

Remote Interview Best Practices

For us, the process for hiring a new team member remotely remains the same as it would in a general hiring process up to the point of shortlisting candidates. 

Our standard hiring process is discussed step-by-step in our post How to Increase Candidate Conversion Rate and Candidate Experience; in it you can learn how to, 

• Identify the hiring needs
• Prepare job descriptions
• Devise your recruitment strategy
• Screen and shortlist candidates

The following best practices will help you streamline the process of interviewing and hiring a candidate remotely. 

Conducting Interviews 

At Creately, we do three interview meetings with the candidate; HR screening, one-on-one discussion with the team manager, and one-on-one discussion with the CEO.

Below are some of the practices we follow to keep things effective during each of these meetings.  

Using the Right Tools to Conduct the Interview

When interviewing a candidate remotely, phone and video interviews are the primary channels available for communication. 

While you can rely on an audio call to conduct the preliminary interview, it’s crucial that you use video calls for later discussions.  

An interview done on-site gives you the opportunity to connect with your candidate easily as you can properly see and read their body language. During a remote interview, video can help you do this virtually. 

Preparing for the Interviews 

For an in-person interview, you’d get ready by reviewing the set of questions you’ll be presenting to your interviewee, by setting up the meeting room, perhaps even by checking with the candidate to make sure they are still attending. 

A remote interview requires preparation as well.  

• Set expectations beforehand. 

It’s important that you let the candidate know what you expect; this will include clarifying details such as the time the interview will take place, the communication as well as any other tool/s that will be used during the meeting, the names and designation of other people joining the call from your end, the meeting agenda, etc. These details can be listed in an introductory email that you can send in advance.  

• Make sure that your technology is in order.

Breaking off during the interview due to a faulty internet connection may not seem very professional. Make sure that you have properly installed or logged into the tools that you will be using, your devices are properly charged and most importantly that your internet connection is working properly, at least an hour before the interview. 

• Get rid of distractions.  

Make sure you are seated in a quiet place without any diversions (i.e. people walking around, a TV screen, messy bedroom, etc.) in the background. In addition, make sure to put your phone on silent and switch off any other alerts on your devices. And minimize your movements during the interview; if you are engaged in another task or walking around during the discussion, it’ll make it harder for the candidate to keep his/ her focus.

• Keep your interview questions ready. 

Having your questions prepared beforehand will help you have a meaningful conversation with the attendee. And it will also help you properly evaluate your candidate. This is especially important during a remote interview as you cannot prolong the meeting beyond the agenda trying to think of questions you should ask. 

• Dress the part. 

Although you may be working from home, you are still interviewing an outsider. So it’s important to look professional and give a good first impression. 

During the Interview

As opposed to an in-person interview, there are several things that you need to do and refrain from doing so during a remote interview. 

• Don’t make it too crowded.

For it will create unnecessary distractions such as uncoordinated questioning. Have only the necessary team members present, and unless they are speaking, they should keep their mic muted allowing the one questioning the candidate to do so without causing interruptions.

• Behave just as you would have in-person. 

Be mindful of your facial expressions, tone, and the way you conduct yourself during the interview. Smile and laugh as appropriate and help the candidate ease into the conversation. Wait a few seconds at the end of each sentence to make sure that you don’t talk over each other. And most importantly, keep your eyes on the camera or the screen, not at your own reflection. 

• Have a backup plan.

No matter how prepared you are, things may still go wrong (i.e. power failure). Should such a situation occur, you need to be prepared to handle it successfully. Have alternate contact details such as their phone number or email by your side. This way, you can opt for an audio conversation with the candidate over the phone. 

Evaluating the Candidate  

After the HR screening, and before the discussion with the team manager, the candidate will be evaluated with an aptitude test. Based on the test results, the candidate will then have an interview with the team lead. 

Here are some of the approaches that have worked for us when evaluating a candidate online.

• Use behavior and time tracking software to track the activity of the candidate while doing the test. Prior to the test, notify the candidate that their screen will be shared and therefore they need to remove any confidential information out of view. 

• Or use a screen sharing software to monitor their performance. During our peer coding session, the candidate is requested to share their screen, so the team lead can observe as they write code and evaluate their skills.  

• Prepare the candidate for the test by explaining to them what is expected. We send them an introductory email which gives them a link to book a convenient time slot for the test using an online appointment scheduling software. The email also notifies them of the tools they’ll need to use and explains the guidelines on how to proceed during the test. 

• Take a few minutes before the test to remind the candidate of the guidelines via video call. 

Hiring the Candidate

Over the last month, five new members have joined Creately while everyone was working from home, scattered across the country. What’s out of the ordinary about it is that their recruitment was done entirely online. Without a single in-person interview.  

How did we do it? 

• To do the background verifications, we usually rely on phone calls, just like we would with any other recruit. We also maintain a database with records of all the information we gather. 

• After the final interview with the CEO, we send the offer letter via an e-sign service. This will allow them to provide their signature to the agreements using a browser or mobile. 

Tools for Conducting a Remote Interview

Here are the tools that we use to streamline our recruitment process. 

Airtable – Airtable allows to store information in a spreadsheet, but in a more visually appealing way. We make use of this software to keep a record of candidate information as well as generate forms that we use to collect data (i.e. email address, telephone number, LinkedIn profile, etc.) from candidates. 

Calendly – Is perfect for online appointment scheduling. This helps us get the candidates to select a convenient time for them from the available time slots for interviews/ aptitude tests. 

Google Meet – We conduct our video calls via Google Meet, which also allows for screen sharing, which comes in handy during the aptitude tests. 

Google Forms – Our aptitude tests are created with Google forms. And it integrates with behavior and time tracking software like Timify which we use to monitor candidate activity during the tests. 

Adobe Sign – This is an encrypted e-signature software that allows you to send, sign, track, and manage signature processes using a browser or mobile device. We use it for getting signatures for agreements and contracts online. 

Got More Tips? 

Where technology has made it possible to work from the comfort of your own home, interviewing and hiring the perfect employee to your organization isn’t impossible. We hope this guide will help you out with the process.

Good luck with your remote interviews! 

Got anything to add? Share your opinion on the comments section below.