Under Siege

Facebook
Twitter
LinkedIn
Pinterest
WhatsApp

Working from Home in Coronavirus Days

The coronavirus has sent many people that on regular days are working from the office to work from home. This is a big change for many teams that need to establish new ways of working.

Here are some tips for managers that are relevant for these days (which are relevant for regular times as well):

Video calls are highly recommended: they keep people engaged and focused on the meeting, reducing multi-tasking and keeping meetings short and fluent. There should be a very good reason not to have a video call.

* If there are expected network issues, management needs to provide direction and solutions. Don’t have meetings longer than 1 hour without a break. recommended 10 mins break every 1 hour.

managers should pay extra attention to keeping team spirit and togetherness feeling.

* Decide with the team on an agreed hour when the day starts (9:30? or 10:00?). By this time people are expected to “come to the office” (= connect).
* Open Teams/Zoom/any other tool you use/ meetings all day, recommended with video, to let people connect and stay connected just as they would have come to the office. After good morning greetings, some small talk, etc. the team can mute themselves until they need someone, but this platform will
allow them to see and communicate faster and more intuitively than only chat/emails.
* Have virtual coffee breaks with the team – every 1/1.5 hours. Suggest that everyone will go grab a drink and/or snack and join back together for a video chat just like you were in the office kitchenette.
* Towards the end of a day (let’s say 15:30/16:00), have a daily recap and closure meeting. See if there are special needs or any changes towards tomorrow, and check how is the team’s spirit. Treat it like saying goodbye at the end of the day with a dash of retrospective.

How to conduct remote meetings.

* Meeting organizer to join the meeting 2 mins before the meeting starts in order to make sure start on time.
* When the meeting starts, everyone goes on Mute (reduces background noise that prevents people from following the meeting).
* No more than 1 person speaking at a given time.
* Meeting organizer should make sure all participants are engaged and involved in the meeting: actively ask less vocal people questions, and make sure
no one takes over the talk.
* Ask people that are distracted/need to leave for a few mins to inform them before leaving so that people will not talk to or wait for them.

Daily meetings

* Review team progress by using the team’s Virtual Board (Jira/Rally/Azure/VersionOne/etc) and burndown chart, to keep everyone aligned on the progress.
* Make sure people understand the importance of keeping the board updated.
* Keep the meeting as focused and as short as possible.

Adjust the capacity of your sprint

* Take into consideration the impact of working from home on capacity: people WFH with family around them (and maybe other distractions) are working with lower capacity than usual.
* Discuss this at the beginning of sprint planning and identify who has full capacity and whose capacity is impacted due to WFH.

No need to wait for the end of the sprint in order to change something in the way the team works. Have non-official retrospective(s) during the sprint and
agree on adjustments as needed.

Respect lunchtime – don’t set meetings between 12-13 (unless agreed otherwise in advance!).

And last but not least: you are the leaders of your groups. people look up to you. Keep setting a positive example, be flexible, and remember to be empathic
and supportive of others.

And who knows, these challenging days may turn out to be empowering days that will grow your teams and bring them to new heights…

Categories:

Tags:

ART Success
Certification
Limiting Work in Progress
Nexus vs SAFe
Webinar
EOS®
DevOps
Agile Program
Planning
Agile Games
Agile Testing Practices
Nexus and Kanban
Software Development Estimation
Implementation of Lean and Agile
SAFe DevOps
Change Management
SAFe
Lean Agile Leadership
Agile Assembly Architecture
speed @ scale
Jira Cloud
Lean Software Development
Product Management
Frameworks
Agile Release Planning
Release Train Engineer
Daily Scrum
Applying Agile Methodology
Lean Agile Basics
ScrumMaster Tales
Pomodoro Technique
Software Development
Scaled Agile Framework
Agile Exercises
Managing Risk on Agile Projects
Agile Product Ownership
Agile in the Enterprise
Lean Agile
Scrum
Managing Projects
Risk-aware Product Development
Program Increment
Agile Project
Agile Delivery
Sprint Retrospectives
Covid19
Enterprise DevOps
Lean Agile Management
Games and Exercises
Legacy Enterprise
Continuous Deployment
Professional Scrum with Kanban
IT Operations
lean agile change management
WIP
Jira
Agile Product Development
Lean Risk Management
AgileSparks
ATDD vs. BDD
SA
RTE Role
Sprint Iteration
Scrum.org
SPC
Continuous Improvement
Engineering Practices
Process Improvement
Manage Budget Creation
System Team
Risk Management on Agile Projects
Scrum Primer
Tips
Advanced Roadmaps
Test Driven Development
ATDD
Atlaassian
Nexus Integration Team
GanttBan
Kanban Game
Agility
LeSS
A Kanban System for Software Engineering
Jira Plans
Lean and Agile Techniques
Agile Marketing
Agile Release Management
Systems Thinking
Agile
SAFe Release Planning
What Is Kanban
Risk Management in Kanban
Business Agility
Lean Startup
Legacy Code
Kanban Basics
Kanban
Large Scale Scrum
Agile Contracts Best Practices
RTE
Iterative Incremental Development
Self-organization
Acceptance Test-Driven Development
QA
Agile Outsourcing
The Agile Coach
Quality Assurance
Agile and DevOps Journey
Video
Kanban 101
Agile for Embedded Systems
Lean-Agile Software Development
Lean-Agile Budgeting
Scrum With Kanban
Perfection Game
Kanban Kickstart Example
PI Planning
Elastic Leadership
Agile Mindset
speed at scale
Principles of Lean-Agile Leadership
Introduction to ATDD
ROI
LPM
Agile Community
Effective Agile Retrospectives
Agile Basics
Achieve Business Agility
Product Ownership
Continuous Delivery
System Archetypes
Scrum Master
Spotify
Agile India
Scrum Values
Kaizen
Lean and Agile Principles and Practices
PI Objectives
Code
Portfolio for Jira
Agile Project Management
Agile Development
TDD
Agile Techniques
NIT
System Integration Environments
ALM Tools
Slides
Sprint Planning
Continuous Planning
Rapid RTC
RSA
LAB
Certified SAFe
Entrepreneurial Operating System®
Implementing SAFe
Built-In Quality
POPM
Nexus
Value Streams
An Appreciative Retrospective
Releases Using Lean
Reading List
Agile Israel Events
Artificial Intelligence
Lean Agile Organization
Scrum Guide
Scrum and XP
The Kanban Method
Kaizen Workshop
ARTs
Professional Scrum Product Owner
AI Artificial Intelligence
Story Slicing
Accelerate Value Delivery At Scale
Scrum Master Role
Introduction to Test Driven Development
Development Value Streams
Amdocs
Nexus and SAFe
BDD
Agile Games and Exercises
Lean Budgeting
Professional Scrum Master
Presentation
Agile Risk Management
Continuous Integration
Coaching Agile Teams
Hybrid Work
AgileSparks
Logo

Contact Us

Request for additional information and prices

AgileSparks Newsletter

Subscribe to our newsletter, and stay updated on the latest Agile news and events

This website uses Cookies to provide a better experience
Shopping cart