Anyone who's worked in a remote setting can testify that communication can be challenging without appropriate tools. Something that I've done to improve communication in remote environments is to ensure everyone agrees to the tool selections and is comfortable operating within those tools.
I've found that teams are often either short on tools to perform the necessary tasks, overwhelmed by tools that overlap in functionality, or are using tools that don’t fit the work being done. It is important to identify the need for new tools but overcompensating by overloading teams with tools can be disastrous for productivity and organization.
During the retrospective, tooling is an issue that will often come up. You should use this opportunity to identify and address any tooling inefficiencies and develop a plan to eliminate those impediments. This can be done through researching and implementing a new tool or exploring the capabilities of existing tools.
For example, if my team is struggling to visualize different aspects of team communication, I can evaluate the tools my team is using and determine whether there are any sufficient visualization capabilities. If not, I can then look into incorporating a new tool, such as a virtual whiteboard, to remedy this inefficiency.
Incorporating something as simple as a virtual whiteboard can significantly improve the efficiency of distributed members. Even if the team composition is a mixture of collocated and distributed members, a virtual whiteboarding tool can be applied across operations, facilitating communication and knowledge sharing between all types of members.
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