Some cool tools and tips for remote teams.

1. Guidefor
projectsand
teamsinremote
environment.
Mattia Compagnucci
Digital Experience Design, Crew 17
Hyper Island 05.05.17

2. Introduction
Hello, remote
worker.
A remote team is a:
“groups of geographically,
organizationally and/or
time dispersed knowledge
workers who coordinate their
work predominantly with
electronic information and
communication technologies in
order to accomplish one or more
organization tasks”
(Ale Ebrahim, Ahmed, and Taha, 2009)
A survey of 379 human resources professional
found that 46% of organisations use virtual
teams for communication (Wheelan, 2016).
46% use
virtual
teams

3. Tools
Set the right
(virtual)
environment.
Open communication is funda-
mental in an effective team; it is
important to have a solid organisa-
tion that includes all the members
in the discussion (Wheelan, 2016).
From personal experience these
are the best tools that help remote
team work together in harmony.
Trello
Trello is the preferred
tool for project and task
management and product
feature prioritization.
www.trello.com
Slack
Slack help the entire team
to chat and stay in contact.
It is a perfect alternative
to emails and connect to
the other services on this
section.
www.slack.com
Google Hangout
Google Hangout is a perfect
tool for video meetings.
It can be connected with
different apps and works
with your gmail account.
www.hangouts.google.com
Dropbox
Dropbox is a cloud based
file sharing and storage
solution.
The best way to share your
files with the other members.
www.dropbox.com
Mural
Mural is a virtual space that
help you and your team to
think and communicate like
you are all together in front
of a white board.
www.mural.ly

4. We are all
human.
Team dynamics
A virtual team allows people to
work at distance. We are aware that
this is different than have a coffee
on your favourite bar with your col-
league for discuss and review a new
idea. On the other hand this makes
the team particularly vulnerable to
communication problems that can
lead to mistrust, conflicts and role
misunderstanding (Ale Ebrahim,
Ahmed and Taha, 2009).
Is important to remember that we
are all human; this section analy-
ses some tools and techniques for
build trust and collaboration in re-
mote team.

5. Team dynamics
Team is a safe zone,
speak more than write.
Team for work well together when
the members trust each other.
In remote environment, visual isola-
tion and the lack of personal contact
trust development.
Face-to-face interactions help to bet-
ter understand members’ intentions
and behaviour and in remote teams
this contact is less prevalent (Ger-
main, 2011).
This is the reason why priority on
communications must be given to
face to face video call or voice call
over chat messages.
(Germain, 2011)
Use
> >

6. Team dynamics
Don’t worry, everybody
is going through the
same stages.
The journey to be an effective team is
like your life, divided in different stag-
es with its own challenges. Being
aware of what each stage could re-
serveforyoucanhelpyoutobeabet-
ter team member or leader (Wheelan,
2016).
Stage 1
Dependency and inclusion.
Members are concerned
with safety and acceptance
from the group. Leadership is
directive and gives structure
to the team.
1
2
3
4
Stage 2
Counterdependency and fight.
Members fight about group
goals, values and procedures,
generating conflicts. Lead-
ership is open and able to
communicate with the other
members.
Stage 4
Work and productivity.
High performance team.
Members are clear about
their roles and goals.Lead-
ership delegates task and
consults in case of need.
Stage 3
Trust and structure.
Members trust and commit
to the group, increasing the
cooperation and the team per-
formance. Leadership is more
consultative than directive.
(Wheelan, 2016)

7. Team dynamics
Feedback
To _____________.
What I appreciate
most about you is
__________________;
What I would like to
see more from you is
______________;
Signed , ______..
(HI Toolbox, 2017a; HI Toolbox, 2017b; The Logbook by Hanno, 2017)
Use
In effective teams, members give
each other constructive feedback
with the aim to encourage improve-
ment and individual development: at
thesametimethishelpstobuildtrust
and openness between the members
(Wheelan, 2016).
First, start a video call with all the
members and start discussing the
meaning of feedback. A feedback
shouldnotbejudgemental,itshould
be focused on behaviours and per-
formances and not on the person.
Write your feedback on a private doc-
ument following the structure.
Once everybody are done, start to
share it: put yourself face to face with
the person you are giving feedback,
read it and after write it on a virtual
post-itusingMURAL.Ifyouarereceiv-
ing feedback just say “Thank you!”.

8. Let’s work.
Team dynamics
Members of high performance
team are clear about their roles and
the team’s goals. They spend time
planning, discussing problems
and use effective decision-making
strategies in order to keep the pro-
ductivity high (Wheelan, 2016).
This section explores tools for pro-
ject management in remote team.

9. Project management
Team canvas
People and
roles
Common goals
Personal
goals
Strengths and assets Weaknesses and risks
Values
Needs and
expetations
Rules and
activities
Purpose
(Team Canvas, 2017)
Use
The team canvas is the best way to
keep the team aligned.
This canvas will help to have a
broad overview of each member’s
needs, goals, strength and weak-
ness.Furthermore,willdefineroles,
common goals and the basic rules
of the team bringing members on
the same page and increasing trust
and efficiency.
Organise a meeting and stimulate
each member to actively partici-
pate to the discussion and use MU-
RAL for keeping all the elements
organized and facilitate the co-cre-
ation of the canvas.

10. Project management
Daily stand-up
Regular communication is the best
way of maintain trust and provide
information about your effort and
the status of your tasks.
Daily stand-up meetings are the best
way to keep you team updated and
focused on the tasks.
In a stand-up meeting every mem-
ber of the team share what he or
she was working on the day before,
what he or she will work before the
next stand-up and which problems
are blocking the accomplishment
of this task.
At this meeting should attend the
entire team and ideally should not
last more than 20 minutes.
What have
you done
since the last
stand-up?
What will you
do between
now and the
next stand-up?
What is
blocking me
on meeting the
goals?
Use
(Hasnain and Hall, 2009)

11. Project management
Kanban board
Kanban in Japanese means “visual
signal” or “card”.
This visual system helps to visual-
ise the workflow and the progress
of the project facilitating commu-
nication and collaboration among
the members.
Columns represent all the steps
required for implementing the pro-
ject while the single cards are used
to communicate high level task in-
formation.
When a task is completed, move it to
the next column.
Use
To do In progress Testing Done
(Leankit, n.d.; Lei et al., 2017)

12. Project management
How to make decisions?
Consensus and dotmocracy.
(HI Toolbox, 2017c; Wheelan, 2016)
Use
It’s important to plan together the
way of make decision.
If you have one single choice you
can use a modified version of con-
sensus where you can assume that
it exists if 70% to 80% of the mem-
ber agrees.
If you have to choose between mul-
tiple options. Place them on virtual
post-its on MURAL and let the mem-
bers vote which are the best options
for them using up to 5 dots depend-
ing on the number of options.
Once all the dots are placed, the
option with more dots win.

13. Use
Project management
Sprint retrospective
It is important to take time at the
end of a sprint for analise together
the just-concluded experience.
This will help to determine what
could be changed in order to make
the next sprint more effective.
The main question for start the dis-
cussion are: what went well during
the sprint? What went wrong? What
could be done better?
Answer to these questions will help
the team to continuously improve
learning from past experiences.
(Devendra, 2014)

14. Project management
Don’tforgettocelebrate
your achievements
Use
It is important to reward the team
and get face-to-face every now and
then. This build trust and motiva-
tion among the members and, at
the same time, helps to avoid dis-
engagement.
There is no better moment than the
achievementofagoalforbringingall
the people together and celebrate.
It will help everybody remember that
a team is made by real people and
not only pixel behind the screen.
(Ferrazzi, 2014)

15. Bibliography.
Ale Ebrahim, N.,Ahmed, S. andTaha, Z., 2009.Virtual teams:
A literature review.
Devendra, R. (2014). Key Elements of the Sprint Retro-
spective. [Blog] Scrum Alliance. Available at: https://www.
scrumalliance.org/community/articles/2014/april/key-ele-
ments-of-sprint-retrospective [Accessed 2 May 2017].
Ferrazzi, K. (2014). Getting Virtual Teams Right. [Blog] Har-
vardBusinessReview.Availableat:https://hbr.org/2014/12/
getting-virtual-teams-right [Accessed 2 May 2017].
Germain, M.L., 2011. Developing trust in virtual teams. Per-
formance Improvement Quarterly, 24(3), pp.29-54.
Hasnain, E. and Hall, T., 2009, May. Introduction to Stand‐
up Meetings in Agile Methods. In S.I. Ao ed.,, AIP Confer-
ence Proceedings (Vol. 1127, No. 1, pp. 110-120). AIP.
HI Toolbox. (2017a). Feedback: I appreciate.... [online] Avail-
able at: http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/feedback-i-appreci-
ate [Accessed 28 Apr. 2017].
HI Toolbox. (2017b). Principles of Effective Feedback. [on-
line] Available at: http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/princi-
ples-of-effective-feedback [Accessed 2 May 2017].
HI Toolbox. (2017c). Dotmocracy. [online] Available at:
http://toolbox.hyperisland.com/dotmocracy [Accessed 2
May 2017].
Leankit (n.d.). KANBAN ROADMAP- HOWTO GETSTART-
ED IN 5 EASY STEPS. 1st ed.
Lei, H., Ganjeizadeh, F., Jayachandran, P. and Ozcan, P.
(2017). A statistical analysis of the effects of Scrum and
Kanban on software development projects. Robotics and
Computer-Integrated Manufacturing, 43, pp.59-67.
Platt, L. (1999). Virtual teaming: Where is everyone? The
Journal for Quality and Participation, 22(5), 41–43.
Team Canvas. (2017). Team Canvas - Bring Your Team
on the Same Page. [online] Available at: http://www.the-
teamcanvas.com/ [Accessed 2 May 2017].
The Logbook by Hanno. (2017). Feedback in remote
teams: The gift that keeps on giving - The Logbook by
Hanno. [online] Available at: https://logbook.hanno.co/
remote-team-feedback/ [Accessed 28 Apr. 2017].
Wheelan, S. (2016). Creating effective teams. 5th ed.
Sage Publications, Inc.