By Deena-Lee Boothe

COVID-19 changed everything...everywhere

At the start of this year, I am sure not many of us imagined that a global pandemic would have taken over as it has. Millions are infected - lives and livelihood; and for almost three months, it seemed the whole world stood still; limited movement outside of prescribed stay-at-home curfew hours; social gatherings were restricted to groups of ten (10); airports and hotels and most non-essential businesses were forced to closed (and some who were not able to transition their business, many have gone out of business).

The global economy has suffered and is struggling to recover. Sounds like something out of a futuristic movie? Welcome to the present-day…this is our new normal and you will be learning an important life lesson about agility and adapting to change.

Change is the only constant in life. One’s ability to adapt to those changes will determine your success in life. ~Benjamin Franklin

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash

Working from home was unfamiliar territory for most of us, and for the first couple of weeks I found myself struggling to acclimate to managing my team: from the surge in online meetings that consumed my days; finding effective ways to communicate remotely; keeping my team engaged, all while maintaining my new reality and sustaining a work-life balance was a big adjustment at first.

Success today requires the agility and drive to constantly rethink, reinvigorate, react and reinvent. ~Bill Gates

After trial and error, here are a few tips that I have learnt along the way, which I hope will be helpful to you and your team.

Find tools that make remote collaboration easy and seamless

In the early stages, we dabbled with a few messaging applications such as Slack and WhatsApp Group but eventually settled on Cisco Webex Teams based on the additional functionalities it provided (and it was free!). The Cisco Webex Teams platform allowed me to create different conversation spaces/chat rooms (similar to Slack) in order to have more focused conversations and prevented important issues from being lost or overlooked in the general chat.

Photo by Volodymyr Hryshchenko on Unsplash

For example, we have space for bug issues for our development or UAT space and another for production issues, so the team can be quickly alerted to issues. Additionally, this allows the team to make phone/video calls to each other, share their screens, send files securely, and conference up to three (3) persons at a time with the free version. This saved me from having to schedule meetings if my team members needed to collaborate and allowed the flexibility of being able to call/message my team members privately if needed. Another great feature is that notifications and alerts are sent when a call or message comes in and there is both a desktop client and mobile version available.

Consider having an “open floor” meeting

Using a Cisco Webex Account I created a recurring meeting invite that runs for the duration of the day which I coined our “open floor”. This was an idea shared by another Scrum Master that has been very helpful. The ‘open floor’ space for our Scrum ceremonies allows the team to join one meeting without having to navigate through several meeting invites for the day, which also eliminates the creation of multiple meeting invites to facilitate team group discussions. If I have to attend another meeting, I can leave the room and rejoin afterwards, as the room will remain available for the team to collaborate without my intervention.

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Have regular checkpoints

This helps the team to feel engaged during the day as if they are “virtually” co-located in the same physical space.

Morning – starting the day connecting with each other is critical when your team is working remotely. My team starts each day with a quick 15-20 minutes meeting to talk through what work they completed yesterday, what they will be working on today and highlight whether there are any impediments that need to be addressed. This gives the entire team a sense of where we are and what we have to accomplish for the day.
Lunch – create transparency across the team. Have your team inform each other when they are stepping away for lunch or have returned from lunch in your main communication channel. This allows the team to be aware when someone is away from their desk allowing them to have an uninterrupted lunch break.
Afternoon/End of Day – working remotely can easily result in working in silos. Check in with your team after lunch or near the end of day to find out how they are progressing and if they are having any additional challenges that you can assist with. Also, notify each other when you are leaving work for the day.
End of Week Checkpoint - get your team together at the end of each week. I ask the team to gather for an informal recap to commend them on achievements during the week, to do a team building activity or simply to wish them a good weekend. This is a great way to maintain camaraderie amongst the team.

Photo by Marija Zaric on Unsplash

Start your meeting a few minutes earlier

Start your video conferencing calls /meeting call a few minutes earlier than they are scheduled to begin so that there is an opportunity to join prior to the start of the meeting or exactly on time. This will result in your meetings being timelier and eliminates phone calls and messages from participants enquiring as to whether the meeting is still taking place or saying they are unable to join because the meeting has not started.

Check in with your team members individually

It is harder to read the room when you are working remotely. In person, you can usually pick-up on the body language or mood of your team members. Check in with your team members one-on-one by sending them a quick message or via a quick phone call to find how they are doing or if they are having any challenges.