Working in a team comes with many challenges. When done well the productivity and efficiency will also improve. The first and most important factor is communication. As we know COVID-19 has forced us in a position where we have to work remotely. This affects the communication as it can no longer be performed in a remote environment.
It is important to look into alternative tools that allow the communication between team members over a long distance. Is this possible? If so, what tools are generally needed to cover all the communication in a remote setup? In this blog post these questions will be answered.
Types of tools
In general there are many tools that are used to improve the communication. As most teams will not be working all day long in the same room, several of these tools are also used for co-located projects. We will divide these tools in three categories that will cover most of the communication needed in a project. These three categories look into tools for group discussions, tools for regular meetings and tools for collaborative work. For every category we will give a number of examples. From this analysis we will derive a solution for our problem. 1
Tools for group discussions
Here we will look into tools that do not require much interaction between the team members, but are always available and primarily used for asking question and general discussions. Several tools that focus on group discussions are Slack, Whatsapp, Trello, ChannelME, Flowdock, ProofHub, Twist, ChatWork and many more. These tools are used in almost every single project as they are often cheap and make sure that the teams remain connected.2
Tools for meetings
It is important to have an update about the weekly development and create a plan of approach in order to accomplish these goals. Also to make sure that the team members interact and see each others face. Meetings are the solution for these requirements. The best option in a remote setup is by meeting through video/audio calls. Some tools that are capable of accomplishing this are Microsoft Teams, HipChat, Zoom, Skype, G Suite, Office 365 etc. Using video-calls are the closest thing next to co-located working. Most of these tools also have a screen sharing option allowing for collaborative work as well.3
Tools for collaborative work
To make sure that the communication in the team works effectively there should also be tools that promote collaborative work in a remote setup. These tools will improve collaborative working such as pair programming, organizational processes. Some tools that accomplish this are Git, Github, OneDrive, Google Drive, Trello, MediaFire, Atom, Visual Studio etc. These tools will improve the productivity even when there is no remote setup.4
Conclusion
As can be seen in previous section, one tool is not sufficient to cover all the communication in a team. As every team has different requirements so will the performance of the tools be affected. What should be taken in account is that these three categories cover most of the communication needed in a team. So having tools that cover all these three categories will make sure that the communication in the team is effective.
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Remote versus Co-located Work. https://martinfowler.com/articles/remote-or-co-located.html ↩
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List Of The 10 Of The Best Scrum Tools To Increase Your Team’s Productivity. https://thedigitalprojectmanager.com/best-scrum-tools/ ↩
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13 Amazing Team Communication Tools For Businesses In 2020. https://www.proofhub.com/articles/team-communication-tools ↩
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The Top 27 Free tools. https://www.educatorstechnology.com/2012/08/the-top-27-free-tools-to-collaborate.html ↩