Running a Remote Work Stand-up — Rule #5: Prepare a Cheat Sheet

Whew! You made it to my final rule for running an effective remote team stand-up. If you’re managing a remote team today, or if you’re thinking about taking your existing in-office team remote I hope this series has been helpful. It’s time to unlock your team’s true potential by thinking outside the 4 walls.

If you’ve missed rules 1–4, check em out before reading on:

1. Now It’s Personal
2. Forget “Yesterday, Today, Blockers” and embrace “Decisions, Choices, Impediments”
3. Call Multiple Plays
4. Wrap-it-up like a pro
5. Prepare a Cheat Sheet

Today’s post is about Rule #5: Prepare a Cheat Sheet.

This 15-minute ritual helps me effectively prepare for, take notes during, and effectively recap at the end of each stand-up.

Before The Meeting: Prepare For Each Call

Here’s a peek at my cheat sheet before a stand-up begins:

Each cheat sheet includes today’s date as well as the name of the project. Right under that, I write down my DCI (Decisions, Choices, Impediments) update which I’ll share with the team. Seems a bit goofy writing this down, but with all the chaos of getting the call started, it’s crazy how often you can forget a piece of your own update.

After my own DCI, I’ve listed out my teammates and any notes I have on what I expect to hear from them. This helps me listen critically for the information I hear, and allows me to prompt them if they don’t mention an item on their own. You can see in my picture above that I’m expecting an update from Engineering on the status of the API they are designing. If it’s not mentioned in their update I’ll be sure to ask.

Finally, I’ll use the bottom third of the page to plan for any extra credit activities I was hoping on finding time for. In this case, there are three tickets in our backlog that I’d like my team to discuss quickly as a team.

During The Meeting: Take Notes In-Line

Once the meeting has started, I’ll take notes in the white space and margins I’ve left on the page as I prepared the sheet. This is part of why I use a whole 8.5 x 11 page for my cheat sheet as opposed to using something smaller.

Using white space and margins for notes keeps my pre-meeting notes closely linked to my during-meeting notes and hopefully brings clarity after the call when I’m transferring my notes from analog to digital.

You’ll see here that I try to use a star to indicate a note of interest, or potentially an action item, and I’ll cross-out or maybe draw a little arrow to items that we don’t get to on the call. In this case, we didn’t get to review the 3rd ticket in my extra credit section “XX 476.”

After The Meeting: Digitize & Destroy

Once the meeting’s over there’s a bit of housekeeping that should be handled ASAP. I tend to do this right away, as short-term memory is finicky and the longer you wait the more context you lose around your scribbles, I mean notes. This is part of why back-to-back meetings are so dangerous and should be avoided if possible.

First, I’ll digitize my notes in two different ways. I’ll review the notes and catch any action items for myself and add them to my daily to-do list, which I happen to keep on Asana. As I mentioned previously I typically won’t send out any written action items to peers as I’ve recapped them verbally and I’m trusting each team members to track their own responsibilities. Occasionally a rushed meeting or a bit of ambiguity suggests I should Slack someone a task to ensure they’ve captured it.

Secondly, I’ll snap a picture of my note-sheet with my phone, and save it in Evernote. This simple step automatically allows me to search against any of the content in my notes as Evernote does it’s best to do character recognition against my chicken scratch and make it searchable.

Finally, I’ll throw out my handwritten sheet. It seems crazy to spend this much energy-producing something just to be thrown away, but I can’t find any way to keep notes digitally that matches the efficiency I’ve found with this strategy. Tossing the sheets as soon as possible helps keep me focused on a single prioritized task list instead of flipping through handwritten sheets all day.

In summary, I prepare and take notes on a handwritten sheet that I prepare for each daily stand-up I run. After the call, I digitize my notes by taking a picture and transferring action items to my to-do list. I hope you’ve learned something by digging into my practice for before, during, and after each call.

Thanks for reading this series!

Thanks again for checking out my series “Running a Remote Work Stand-Up.” If you’ve read all five posts, I hope they’ve helped change the way you think about running stand-ups for your remote team, and that you’ve found a tidbit or two that you can put into practice. If you haven’t read from the beginning check out the 1st post here.

If you’ve found something particularly helpful OR have your own tips you’d like to share I’d love to hear them in the comments below! I’ll be sure to read and respond to each.

If you enjoyed this read, and you’re looking for more insights into how to set-up and run highly-effective remote teams then visit WeAreScatterbrain.com.

About Scatterbrain: Scatterbrain is a boutique consultancy helping managers unlock the full potential of remote teams. We’re rethinking how remote teams operate to maximize employee happiness, team effectiveness, and business impact.

Originally published at https://wearescatterbrain.com on August 9, 2019.