How Remote Teams Ensure Successful Collaboration
Insights from individuals and distributed teams on how to make remote collaboration work for everyone
More and more teams & individuals are opting to work remotely. This has been a growing trend. But one that still comes with a unique set of challenges — whether that’s within a team or while working with external customers and clients.
One of the main challenges of working remotely is that company culture can be difficult to foster. Working across different cities, time zones, and in some cases even continents, makes remote collaboration seem daunting. However, there are teams that do so successfully without sacrificing the quality of work, and without sharing the same office space.
We inquired about these with some of the shining examples of distributed teams like Basecamp, Zapier, Doist, and Fire Engine RED, who have been involved in collaborating with geographically dispersed teams and clients. We also spoke to Jane Portman (author and creator of popular design podcast UI Breakfast), who is a successful independent consultant working remotely with a number of her clients. They had a wealth of data to share on how they overcome these challenges and ensure smooth collaboration that works for everyone.
How do remote teams foster company culture and values?
Basecamp
When you’re hiring, seek out people who are managers of one.
“What’s that mean? A manager of one is someone who comes up with their own goals and executes them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do — set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc. — but they do it by themselves and for themselves.
These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of handholding or supervision.”
Zapier
Doers will get stuff done even if they are in Timbuktu. You don’t have to give doers tasks to know that something will get done.
“Remote work stops working when you can’t trust the person on the other end of the line. Trust is key.
The flip side of this is you also need to exhibit trust with the people you hire. In a remote situation, everything is shared via written communication. Therefore, good writers are valuable.”
Doist
We expect people to work 40 hours per week, but when they work is entirely up to them. We don’t require them to work at certain times a day to ensure time overlaps. A Doister is a manager of her own time.
“We have explored systems such as OKR and Spotify’s Squads but eventually ended up designing a system for ourselves which we allude to as the DO system (Doist Objectives).”
Fire Engine RED
Our company values include simplicity, good design, client service, innovation, and most importantly, teamwork. These kinds of values typically don’t thrive in a culture that’s only focused on the bottom line.
“ People who fit into our model tend to be highly entrepreneurial — at Fire Engine RED, a big part of our culture is thinking like owners, not like employees.
Fire Engine RED has been a 100% virtual/distributed company since we were founded in 2001. Everyone on our team works remotely; we have no central office. Our team members work from 75+ separate locations in five countries.”
Key Takeaways
People are what drive culture. Fostering a healthy company culture starts with hiring the right people. Self-motivated, driven co-workers are good fits for remote teams. What matters then is that they trust you, and you trust them. If work is measured by output and not input, then teams can function without rigid structures and still produce quality work.
How do these remote teams collaborate internally with various team members?
Basecamp
“We work in six week cycles. Roughly every six weeks we start a new cycle of product work. Once a six week cycle is over, we take one or two weeks off of scheduled projects so everyone can roam independently, fix stuff up, pick up some pet projects we’ve wanted to do, and generally wind down prior to starting the next six week cycle. Ample time for context switching.
Teams are assembled ad-hoc. A team is two or three people, depending on the type of work. Either one programmer and one designer, or two programmers and one designer. That’s it. No teams of four, five, six. Everything we take on has to be done by a team of three, max. We think three is the ideal size for most things — complexity begins to increase exponentially beyond that.”
Zapier
“Every Thursday morning at 9am PDT we get together for lightning talks, demos and/or interviews. These hangouts are a chance to say “hi!” to folks you may not normally see. These hangouts are also a good chance to learn something new. Each week someone inside the team does a lightning talk or demo on something interesting or if someone is in the running to join the team, we have them present a lightning talk.
As we’ve grown, it can be harder to know all your teammates. One easy way to mitigate that is to have folks on the team get paired up with one other teammate at random each week for a short 10–15 minute pair call. We use this to chat about life, work or whatever random thing seems interesting.
I setup a recurring monthly event with each team member where we both jump on Skype or Google Hangout to chat about four things: what’s one thing you’re excited about, what’s one thing you’re worried about, what’s one thing I can do better to help him with your job, and what’s one thing you can do better to improve at your job.
In the past I did one-on-ones with everyone. However around 15 people this got to be too hard to keep up with everyone on a meaningful level. Now I focus on the support and marketing team while Bryan and Mike (my co-founders) focus on the engineering and product teams respectively.”
Doist
“The system consists of some objectives (DO: doist objectives) selected for each cycle. A cycle runs for six weeks with a two-week break in between to polish things and recharge. Each DO has its own squad consisting of a Squad Leader who is accountable for the completion of the DO and then squad members to help the Squad Leader realize the project by completing all the many tasks a DO consist of.
Each team has a head. Heads have a mandatory monthly one-on-one with their team members. These usually take place using Skype, Zoom or Hangouts. Aside from that, we try to keep meetings to an absolute minimum. We use Todoist for meeting agendas which allows every participant to go into the shared project and add items to be agenda before the meetings. Some teams have weekly or bi-monthly calls, but decision-making always takes place on Twist to ensure full transparency around the decisions made.”
Fire Engine RED
“Trillian, our instant messaging tool, lets us communicate quickly with teammates, and indicate our work statuses, such as “available,” “in a meeting,” “at lunch,” and so forth. We use Skype — audio only — for our one-on-one and small group chats. Plus, Skype also lets us share our screens and collaborate on documents with just a click.
For years, we used the free editions of Google Calendar and Google Drive. As our team grew, we wanted more security and control, so we upgraded to Google Business. Basecamp is one of several tools we use for project management; it helps our writers/designers keep track of all the versions of their creative work. And our internal social network, Yammer, lets our team members share company and personal information — everything from industry news to pictures of our kids and pets.”
Key Takeaways
Breaking down larger issues in smaller projects helps track them better. A periodic meeting helps remote teams stay on the same page. These discussions are best kept to the point and concise. As team members start increasing, pairing people or having separate stand ups for different groups helps manage and collaborate better. This way, smaller teams and clearly defined and scoped projects help keep things in perspective.
What is your approach to communicate effectively with clients/customers?
Basecamp
“Before we 37signals was a software company, it was a website design and consulting company. Companies would hire us to redesign their existing sites, or, occasionally, build them an entirely new website from scratch. Out of the dozens and dozens of clients we had, we only met a small handful in person. We worked remotely.
First, when pitching businesses, let the prospective client know up front that you don’t live where they live. Second, provide references before the client even asks. Show right up front that you have nothing to hide. Third, show them work often. Show them what they’re paying for. When they see the results of your efforts, they’ll feel a lot better about the relationship. Fourth, be very available. Since you can’t meet face- to-face, you better return phone calls, emails, instant messages, etc. This is basic business stuff, but it’s tenfold more important when you’re working remotely. Lastly, get the client involved and let them follow along. Make sure they feel that this is their project too.”
Zapier
“The customer is our lifeblood. We strive everyday to solve our customers’ problems and help make their job just a little bit easier. When everyone on the team does support, everyone gets to hear the voice of the customer.
Also, the people who build the product also end up supporting the product. If a customer is angry about a bug, then the person who introduced said bug is going to hear about it and fix it right away.”
Jane Portman (Independent consultant)
“My primary channel of communication is email, where I write up super-detailed comments about my work. Explaining your decisions is so key in the design process! I share the layouts for each round in Dropbox (they have a new built-in commenting system which works for contextual feedback). I’ve been also using InVision for the same purpose.
I try to make deadlines flexible, because we live in a real world and nobody likes the stress of “ship this tonight or die” (especially if you have a family and two kids, like I do). So it’s a very laid-back process. However, I’m very generous with deliverables and scope: my motto is “charge super-high rates and exceed the expectations.”
Key Takeaways
Remote collaboration is all about communication, communication, communication. Whether working with team members or clients, clear and contextual communication helps to run things smoothly. Having developers do customer support gives them better context on issues and demonstrates the product’s need and value to the user. Similarly, clear and early feedback exchange with clients provides them with a definite idea of what to expect. They can provide input, if needed so that everyone is in sync throughout.
BTW, that is exactly what zipBoard does!
What tools do you use for remote collaboration with your team or clients?
Basecamp
“Our entire company runs on Basecamp 3 — we use Basecamp to build Basecamp. From company-wide communication, to product work, to social getting-to-know everyone, to keeping everyone in the loop about what’s happening across the company, everything’s always in one place: Basecamp.
Each Big Batch project gets its own Basecamp project. Here’s an example of the Templates project that was a Big Batch project. Note: Blackburn is the name of the cycle (we name the cycles after mountains)
And all the Small Batch projects for a cycle live in a single project. Here’s an example of the Small Batches from the Blackburn cycle:
Zapier
“Slack is our virtual office. If you’re in Slack then you’re at work. A group chat room like Slack is also great at creating camaraderie.
Async is an internal tool we built. It’s sort of like a blog meets reddit. Previously we used P2 theme from WordPress, but found ourselves wanting more.
Trello acts as our default roadmap. Anytime we have something we’d like to do, we add it to a to-do list in Trello. In most situations, you’ll find yourself creating way too many cards trying to do too many things. The trick we use to avoid getting card overload in Trello is that in order to create a card you also have to write a detailed description of what the feature is, why it’s important, and what the results of a successful implementation of this feature should look like.
Apart from these, there’s GitHub, LastPass Enterprise, GoToMeeting, HelloSign, Google Docs and Hackpad.”
Doist
“95% of our communication takes place in Twist. We rarely exchange any internal emails anymore. In Twist, we have channels set up for each team and set of objectives. This allows us to handle all long-term communication in one place with its threaded communication. If we need to ping someone on the team quickly, we use Twist’s chat function.
When we collaborate around content, we do it in Dropbox Paper or Google Docs. For team tasks management we naturally work collaboratively in shared Todoist projects. The Design Team use tools such as Sketch, Adobe Creative Suite, Dropbox, Marvel & Zeplin for collaborating on their work. The support team is made up of people from Canada, Jamaica, Poland, Japan, the Netherlands and the Philippines, and they use Zendesk to help our customers. Finally, our developers use Github.”
Fire Engine RED
“Dashlane (managing passwords), Trillian (instant messaging), Skype ( voice and video calls; screen sharing), Dropbox (secure file storage and sharing), Yammer (internal social network), uberConference (conference calls), activeCollab and Basecamp (project management), Google Docs, Join.me (screen sharing).”
Jane Portman
“My current toolbox includes Balsamiq, Sketch, InDesign (for fancy PDFs), Webflow (when I need HTML/CSS), Byword (for writing), Tiny Reminder (for collecting information from clients and podcast guests).”
Key Takeaways
Having the right tool that works for all stakeholders is important. Whether that’s a tool of your own making or a third party one. Every team has a different workflow, and different set of tools to go with it. What matters is that these tools make collaboration simpler rather than add overhead.
Final Thoughts
All these are strong examples that remote collaboration can indeed be fruitful, both for teams and individuals. While there are challenges to building and scaling a remote team, the right people, processes and tools can tackle these challenges.
zipBoard understands the challenges of remote collaboration and provides a solution to bring together all stakeholders in the design and development process — whether managers, developers, designers, clients or end users. zipBoard provides a virtual whiteboard for your entire team to stay in sync and collaborate better, faster.
- Quotes attributed to Basecamp come from Jason Fried, those attributed to Zapier from Wade Foster, those attributed to Doist come from Allan Christensen, and those of Fire Engine RED from Chuck Vadun. Thanks to James Glazebrook, Allan Christensen, Chuck Vadun, and Wade Foster for their input.
