Tips for Uniting Multi-Site Teams
How our team stays connected from 1,584 miles away
"I think that organizations that are able to make remote working patterns effective will have a significant and growing competitive advantage."
Cuttlesoft is a multi-site team. That means we currently have two locations: one in Tallahassee, FL, and one in Denver, CO. While there are two offices, we still see Cuttlesoft as one team. Many projects that originate in Tallahassee are developed partially in Denver, and vice versa. Since many of our clients aren't in Tallahassee or Denver, location isn't all that important.
What is important is making sure that we operate as a unit and that each team member feels connected and engaged. Over the past year, we've developed a few strategies to help.
Communication is Everything
When you're not in the same room, or even the same time zone, as another member of your team, it's important to make sure that everyone stays up to date on what's happening. It's almost like having family in another part of the country - it's easy to get caught up in your work and forget to keep in touch, just like it's easy to forget about your cousins in the Midwest. It takes effort to stay engaged.
Like many teams, we use Slack for our day-to-day communications. It allows us to collaborate on projects and keep the team informed, and it lets us instantly share gifs from Giphy (important). We use the built-in voice and video calls to talk about project-specific details, and the screen sharing tool makes cross-country code collaboration convenient. Keeping location-specific chatter in channels helps cut down on notifications, too.
In the end, the tools don't matter as much as the effort that you put in. By communicating consistently, we make it easier for everyone on our team to stay engaged and feel like they're a part of the team.
Daily Standups
The way that we achieve "face-to-face" interaction on a daily basis is through daily Scrum standups that occur every morning. These are generally short, all-hands-on-deck conference calls. In them, each team member briefly describes what they did the previous day, and what they plan to work on during the current day. This helps everyone get on the same page about what needs doing and what's happening with the company.
Team members can also indicate whether they are stuck or "blocked" on a particular project, and whether other team members can help them become unstuck. That way, problems can only persist for so long before the team finds a solution.
These daily standups are a place where we can make announcements and brag about things we're proud of, too. We recently started ending every standup session with a motivational quote selected by a teammate. As this tradition has evolved, we've shared lots of laughs over some of the sillier quotes that surfaced.
"Though his mind is not for rent
Don't put him down as arrogant
He reserves the quiet defense
Riding out the day's events
The river"
- From "Tom Sawyer," Lyrics by Alex Lifeson, Geddy Lee Weinrib, Neil Peart, Paul Philip Woods
Project Pipeline Board
One big challenge in having two remote offices is making sure that everyone knows what's going on with our projects and clients. As an IT agency, we're constantly juggling multiple projects and customers. To make sure that everyone knows about new projects and new developments on existing projects, we use a "project pipeline" tracker.
It's a simple Asana board that shows all of our current projects and where they exist along the sales and development pipeline. At a glance, the team can see what projects are currently unfolding and what's coming down the pipe soon. This type of transparency helps keep our team engaged and tuned in.
…
These are just a few techniques that have helped our remote offices feel more in-sync. As I mentioned, the specifics don't matter as much as making sure that your team is engaging in healthy communication. So whether your team is local, remote, or fully distributed, try out these techniques to help bring everyone together.
Have you tried similar techniques? How does your team stay in touch? Let us know by tweeting at us @Cuttlesoft.
