Working remotely for the first time? Keep calm and read this.
I’ve been working remotely for the past six years with a variety of teams across multiple timezones. It can be daunting at first, but once you get the hang of it, you can actually be more productive than if you stayed at the office.
The number one challenge when going remote for the first time is collaborating with other people.
When you’re remote, you can’t just walk over to your colleague’s desk, nor tap them in the shoulder not even bump into them at the coffee machine. Believe it or not, these informal conversations do contribute to the team’s communication.
Here’s a list of time-tested apps and services my team at WANDR, and I use daily to design digital products across four continents and eight timezones.
1. Team communications
The number one app for team communications is Slack. Referred to as the ‘virtual office’ Slack once broke the record for being the fastest-growing enterprise product in history.
Why is it so popular? Slack mimicks chat applications in many ways, which feel natural to most people. It also allows you to create channels –think Whatsapp groups– by topics or projects.
Slack channels help people keep their conversations around specific projects organized.
Slack also allows you to do video calls, upload files, create documents, import email and, as if that wasn’t enough, it boasts a ridiculous number of integrations even they make fun of:
Alternative to Slack
Google Hangouts: It’s free, and chances are you already have it since it comes integrated into Gmail, which most companies already use. However, it doesn’t have as many features as Slack, and its user experience isn’t all that great.
My recommendation: Slack
2. Virtual meetings
Here the undisputed champ is Zoom. It’s the best videoconferencing tool we’ve tried. And boy, we’ve tried many.
You might be thinking, why would I need another app for video calls if I already have Slack? — well, Slack’s video calls can be slow and buggy, and they usually run into issues when used with Bluetooth headphones.
We tried Slack calls, Hangouts, Uberconference, Skype, heck we even tried Facetime! Yet we keep coming back to Zoom. For a team that relies heavily on virtual meetings, Zoom is the best (for now).
3. Brainstorming and whiteboards
In this category, there are two great ones: Miro (previously known as Realtime Boards) and Mural.
I’ve met the team of Mural in person, and it’s a great tool. However, for remote brainstorming with our clients, we always used Miro. It’s just what we’re used to and super fast to set up.
Miro mimics a whiteboard on which you can paste post-its, draw, drop images, and even files. It’s drag and drop interface makes it very intuitive and has a shallow learning curve.
4. Project Management
This one is pretty controversial. There are dozens of tools for project management out there.
At WANDR, we’ve tried Jira, Asana, Trello, Flow, Airtable, Todoist, and even a dedicated Slack channel called #1Task.
If you’re new to working remotely, I’d strongly recommend you keep it simple.
The most important thing about project management is visibility into what your team is doing.
I would suggest you start with Trello.
Trello is super simple to use. It features a Kanban-style board with draggable cards that you can place under different columns. Each card represents a task to do. Each column represents a status, e.g., pending, in-progress, done.
You can customize your columns any way you want.
Trello allows everyone to have a bird-eye view on what the others are working on without having to interrupt people with check-in messages.
Wrapping up
There are plenty of options in this day and age when it comes to working remotely. Ideally, you and your team should try out different tools depending on what you need to accomplish on each of the categories I’ve outlined in this post.
If you’re feeling overwhelmed, try keeping it simple and use what feels natural. You got this 💪
