![]() These two tools work together to allow for casual, asynchronous, communication in Slack, and full-on personal conversations through Zoom. We use two tools for our core communication: Slack for instant messaging, and Zoom for face-to-face conversation. The key is making it easy to talk to each other about your weekend, about your upcoming holiday, or about the way your dog escaped in a Benny Hill-style scenario the night before. It doesn’t have to be this way though – with the right tools you can get these passive communications going and start gradually building up these relationships with your co-workers. These interactions and conversations help to build relationships, and make your team more comfortable together. The “Hey, how’s it going?” conversation doesn’t come so naturally when you have to write it in an email instead of just on your way to get your morning coffee. Part of working remotely means your team dynamic doesn’t evolve passively through constant small interactions. They put together like-minded people and combine them with interesting content and alcohol – the perfect recipe for conversation. Meet ups are also fantastic, especially if you’re new to an area or don’t know many people. ![]() Make plans to meet someone for lunch, or after work. It helps me to make active efforts to leave the house. After a while that can start to make you go stir-crazy. You can spend all day in your own personal palace without seeing a soul, with only the occasional ping of a Slack message to remind you that you’re not alone in the universe. If you’re anything like me you’ll go crazy if you don’t talk to anyone for a few days, which is a very real possibility when working from home. It also helps build relationships with team members who I otherwise would not see or talk to very often. This helps with reaching more targets and completing tasks faster and more efficiently. If I’m still working on the same issue after 15 minutes, I give myself the rest of an hour to solve it myself, or I start talking to my team mates to see if there’s something they know that I don’t. My method of avoiding this pitfall is to timebox any problem I’m stuck on. These problems often stretch on as I feel I am making progress even though the problem would be solved faster by a phone call. I am often guilty of spending hours working on a solution to issues that could easily be solved were I to ask for help. I cannot recommend using an organizational tool strongly enough. Both of these help keep everyone on the same page and give each person a better view of what’s in progress and what’s coming up next on the roadmap. Here at Cronofy we’ve made use of multiple team organizational tools, such as Trello and Basecamp. It can prevent wasted time and avoid needless frequent, flow-breaking, catch up sessions. You’re all working together for the same goal, so keeping them in the know on what you’re working on, how it’s going, and any issues you’re facing is vital. Your team is important to the work you do. Following these tips hopefully you can minimize these negatives and purely benefit from the positives. ![]() You could find it hard to focus, struggle with team communications, and generally just miss day-to-day passive human company. It’s not without its difficulties, though. The hours saved each week from skipping a regular commute can add up to giving you days’ worth of extra time. You no longer have to book more expensive weekend deliveries for furniture, or find a way to get to the office when the weather turns the roads to ice. ![]() Working as a developer in a distributed team allows for a lot of flexibility. ![]()
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