Creately for Remote Work
What's the hardest part of working remotely? Having a shared understanding of whatever you are working on.
At times like these, using visuals and diagrams to communicate your plans will save you hours of back and forth on calls and documents.
Below are some more ideas on how you can up your remote-work game,
Creately is offering 50% off on all team plans, to help teams working remotely during the Corona Pandemic.
WFH-TEAMSto redeem when you checkout a team plan.
1. Use a Limited Set of Good, Integrated Tools
Use a limited set of tools to work and collaborate with. It’s better if everything is integrated.
Creately’s choice stack is ‘Creately’, ‘Slack’ and ‘Google Drive’. Creately’s integrations with each of these tools mean everything is in sync, all the time.
2. Visuals Speed Up Collaboration
If you are trying to explain something, using a visual will help immensely. People understand and process information differently. You should explain in text as well as provide any visual aids and sketches to get the message across.
Some common and popular diagram types include mindmaps, flowcharts, org charts, concept maps, software design diagrams, etc.
3. Use Video as Much as You Can
When you can, always do meetings on Video calls. Higher bandwidth communication is all what it’s about. Video chat is the closest we have to in-person communication and especially when you are working remotely, it helps keep the human connection alive.
Put extra effort into communicating and keeping track of the progress of tasks. No matter how you manage team tasks and projects, have everyone let the rest of the team know their progress at least once a day.
We have a daily scrum on a Slack thread for each team.
4. Establish Agreed Norms in Your Team
As a team, establish clear guidelines and best practices when working remotely. Here’s our list.
- Be available on your chat platform when you are working.
- If you are stepping away from your computer, please mark as ‘away’ on the chat status.
- If you need to take part in a meeting, it’s generally better to join with the video switched on.
- When starting your day, share on the relevant channel what you are working on
- When you move onto something else during the day, post that as well on the relevant team channel
- If you need to have a discussion with 2+ people, send an invite at least an hour before or agree on a time a little earlier.
- A call/video call is a higher bandwidth way to discuss things. If the person is available on chat, ask if ok to call, and give a call.
5. Use Pre-Defined Places to Store Content and Assets
Put documents and files in a common place in a good organizational structure. We use Google Drive and a well-defined folder structure so that it’s easy to find and locate docs and assets