Remote Tools and Techniques

The pandemic has forced organizations to rethink the way they work, and remote work has become the new normal for many. While this transition may be challenging, it's important to recognize that working remotely can be just as productive as working in person, especially when you have access to the right tools and techniques. 

As an Agile tooling organization that has been working remotely for years, we understand the importance of having the right remote tools and techniques to enable collaboration, provide team feedback, manage tasks, and ensure effective communication. Our experience has taught us that with the right tools and techniques, remote teams can not only survive but thrive. Therefore, we've put together a shortlist of tools and techniques that we use, and we hope that these can help other teams working remotely achieve their goals and deliver value to their clients.

Assessments:

• Lean Agile Intelligence:  Well of course☺! You can still assess your agile process even when working remotely. Our assessment platform also allows you to take the assessment together at the same time with your team even if you are not sitting next to each other in the office. You can try it out today by taking our free assessment for Team Agility to discover your team's current process status and use the result to make data-inform decisions as well as drive outcomes. Note, the category just happened to be the first alphabetically so this shameless plug is not by design! 
  
  

Collaboration:

• Tools:

  • Google Jamboard: A super simple tool that makes shared virtual whiteboarding sessions collaborative and easy. You do need a Google account for this!

  • Icebreaker: Get people engaged from the beginning by using the easy app that asks participants a few simple questions before getting started.  

  • Miro.com: Collaborative tool formerly called “Real Time Board.” It’s a virtual whiteboard but much more than that. You can customize your own templates or use their own including PI Planning, Story mapping, mind mapping, and more. They even have templates for Kanban. Free with upgrade options.

  • Mural:  Digital workspaces for visual collaboration, inspiration, and innovation anytime, anywhere, on any device. It contains plenty of the common templates used by agile practitioners. Free with upgrade options.

  • Stormboard: Same as the two above.  Using these three you will be able to find the template of your choice.

  • Slack: A communication platform allowing the team to easily message each other privately or in a group.

  • Mindiply: Quick polling of the team for decision-making. Dot Voting included! 

  • Wheel Decide: Something Fun for making random decisions!

  • Ultratimer: Chrome extension used for time boxing meetings and other things!

  • Screencastify: Screen Recorder for Chrome
    
    
• Training
  
  • Kahoot.com - Online tool that’s great for creating remote training materials. Create tests, quizzes, and more
    
    
• Techniques:

  • Liberating Structures: A powerful set of techniques that foster group participation, coordination, and trust which can be applied remotely. 

Retrospectives:

• GoRetro: An online retro tool that give you access to different strategies to drive a product retrospective
  
  
• Scatterspoke.com: One of the best online retro tools that have a paid enterprise version that handles scaling extremely well. Also can be used for things like Lean Coffees, and brainstorming sessions.
  
  
• Retrium: Remote toolbox of retrospective exercises with an intuitive interface and quick setup
  
  
• Spring Boards: An online retrospective sprint board that allows your team to collaborate easily
  
  

Task Management: 

• Trello: Yep, we still use it! It still does the trick!
  
  
• Monday.com: This platform allows you to plan, manage, and track your team's tasks. Another great tool for task management while tracking metrics.
  
  
• Jira: A great task management tool that allows the whole team to collaborate and break down big ideas
  
  
• Clockify: If you are interested in tracking the time it takes to complete tasks.  And it’s free!
  
  

Team Member Appreciation and Feedback:       

• Kudobox.co: The easiest way on the web to give a team member props!
  
  
• Group Greeting: Easy way to send the cards (thank you, Birthday, Congrats)  you typically pass around in the office 
  
  
• Gifted: Same thing as above, but free!
  
  
• Officevibe: A personal favorite that enables managers to driven employee engagement, gain the pulse of the team,  and simply earn trust.
  
  

Video Conferencing & Virtual Offices:

• Zoom: One of the most used video conferencing platforms, and for good reasons. It has a bunch of features, and one of the best is the ability to transcribe the meeting!
  
  
• Sococo: Taking virtual work to the next level.  Creating a remote network in that all agile organizations thrive. Paid service, but well worth it.
  
  
• Remo: Another experiential virtual event platform that allows you to meet with your team and conduct several small meetings at different tables at the same time!
  
  
• gather.town: Think pixel adventure game but it is now your virtual office space!
  
  

In Conclusion:

In today's ever-changing work environment, it is important for agile teams to have access to the right tools and techniques that can help them stay productive and collaborative while working remotely. The list of remote tools and techniques provided in this post can be a great starting point for agile teams looking to improve their productivity and collaboration while working remotely. From collaboration tools like Google Jamboard, Miro.com, and Slack, to task management tools like Trello and Jira, to video conferencing platforms like Zoom, the list offers a range of options that can be customized to fit the specific needs of your team. By implementing these tools and techniques, agile teams can stay on top of their projects and continue to deliver value to their clients. Remember to take advantage of our free assessment for Team Agility to discover your team's current process status in order to select the right strategies to drive outcomes.