Run remote product teams on five meetings

Cartoon by Will McPhail for The New Yorker

A few months ago, I quit my full time job to go nomad. It felt a bit daunting. In my years at my previous employer, I had moved away from fixed scopes and mockup deliverables and into unknown-unknowns, collaborative problem solving and consulting.

I felt that my skills wouldn’t apply to remote working anymore. I was warned many times — “Only [x software role] can be nomads, they don’t have to be in meetings”; “What will you do if you can’t jump on a whiteboard?”

I strongly suspect it’s the company culture that makes remote working as a designer impossible, not the designer her/himself. Claire Lew, CEO of Know Your Company, made a great point:

You can’t half-ass running a remote company.

Having worked at an early stage remote product team at Bra Theory for a few months, I’ve realized that commitment, trust and a few simple processes can make remote working a breeze. When I joined Bra Theory, I established five monthly meetings that have kept our team on the same page and dedicated to making our product and team dynamic better.

Many people will be very familiar with them, but I’m sharing the agendas here verbatim in hopes that the details will matter.

Sprint Planning

Timing: ~1 hour
Cadence: Every other Monday (Beginning of a sprint)
Objective: Align over the goals of the sprint and identify tasks the team will do to accomplish the goals.

Agenda:

1. [10m] Check-in Round: Team members will take turns saying what’s on their mind, un-worked-related, about their day, weekend, what have you. I like to allocate more time for this than the norm. The more opportunities for casual socializing, the better
2. [2m] Review Agenda: Because team members have other work and their lives to live, people don’t always remember meeting procedures. It’s helpful to review it briefly every time.
3. [10m] Goal presentation: The product owner will have created goals for this sprint. This is the time to present them and field discussion. Each goal should have an objective, as well as measurable success criteria.
4. [30–60m] Task Generation: Once bought off on the goals, team members will generate tasks they believe they must do to accomplish the goals. The fidelity and format is up to the team. It’s helpful to think of tasks that anticipate upcoming collaboration.
5. Discuss individual tasks and decide if the task should be brought into the scope of the sprint. This part is tricky. Time and effective retrospectives will enable the team to better estimate what they can get done. It’s sometimes helpful to compare tasks side by side: Is x more important to get done this sprint than y?

After Sprint Planning and midway through the week, our Trello board looks like this:

We like to color code our goals. Tasks we generate should correspond to each goal.

Sprint Review

Timing: ~1 hour
Cadence: Every other Friday (End of a sprint)
Objective: Celebrate the work the team has done and evaluate whether our goals have been accomplished.

Agenda:

1. [10m] Check-in Round
2. [3m] Recap the goals for the sprint
3. [20m] Each team member briefly presents the work that they accomplished
4. [7m] Review whether the goals were accomplished. This can be hard without psychological safety. Use this as an opportunity to be honest about what the team can get done in two weeks. And readjust for next sprint.
5. [10m] Touch on goals next sprint. Each team member takes turns stating their ideas for next sprint’s goals. The product owner will take the suggestions into account.

Retro

Timing: ~1 hour 20 minutes
Cadence: Last Friday of every month
Objective: Reflect on the previous two weeks with a deeper focus on process feelings about the work over the work itself. Identify how we might improve our processes and teamwork for the future.

Agenda:

1. [5m] Check in Round
2. [2m] Objectives
3. [6m] What went well: We like to use Dotvoter to surface and vote on ideas.
4. Ideate: [Dotvoter link here]
5. Announce: Whoever wrote the idea should announce the idea and may choose to elaborate if they wish.
6. [15m] What didn’t go so well
7. Ideate: [Dotvoter link here]
8. Facilitator will announce each idea. Participants may ask clarifying questions, but no discussions.
9. Vote on top 3 ideas to discuss.
10. Discuss the top 3 ideas.
11. [10m] Question processes
12. Facilitator will populate a Dotvoter board on suggested improvements from last retro. Team members will vote on improvements that were questionable or ineffective. Discuss on the voted-on improvements.
13. [15m] How we might improve
14. Ideate: [Dotvoter link here]
15. Facilitator will announce each idea. Participants may ask clarifying questions and briefly discuss each.
16. [5m] Vote on top 3 suggested improvements to try
17. Discuss the top 3 ideas.
18. Facilitator will save the suggested ideas and encourage the group to follow through on the ideas.
19. The suggested ideas will evaluated of their effectiveness for the next retro.

Our latest retro ideas on Dotvoter