Team Room

Here’s a really simple & informal way to help your remote team collaborate and stay connected throughout the day.

Overview

For remote teams who want a way to easily work together and hangout:

1. Bookmark the URL of a video call/meeting. This is your “team room”.
2. Invite folks join and leave the “room” throughout the day
3. Use chat/IM to invite folks to the room anytime
4. Also use it as a place to hangout, socialise, chat, just like a real office space

Why?

At the BBC, I introduced “mobbing” to my primary team. We called them “jam sessions” and they were great at keeping us connected, letting us collaborate, and allowing us to informally try things out and work better as a team.

We loved having a time & space where we could drop in and out of working sessions, teach & learn, collaborate momentarily or for hours at a time, give and receive quick updates, and simply hangout.

We got more done in less time and had more fun. Spending time together, made us closer and more effective as a team.

Doing this with a remote team is harder but here’s a simple technique we’ve been using at my large government client with good results. We call it the “team room” and here’s how to do it.

How?

We have a daily “stand-up” call to sync on the day’s work.

The URL for this call is the same every day so it’s easy to bookmark and find frequently throughout the day.

After going through our board, we pick one item – usually the one at the top of our “in progress” column. Anyone who wants to work on this item stays on the call and gets to work.

Other team members can drop in and out through out the day to collaborate on this item, ask questions, share updates, socialise a bit, etc.

If you’re the only person in the call, you might mute your mic or turn off your camera until you hear someone else join but staying in the call lets others know you’re there if they want to talk.

It’s a bit like a live Slack channel or a low-tech “huddle” but all you need is a way to host video calls at an unchanging URL.

It’s a very simple mechanism to provide teams with a virtual space where they can casually hangout, catch-up, and work together without being physically colocated.