Co-creating game solutions remotely

With all the talk of people having to work from home thanks to the Coronavirus, I am a little bemused with the panic this is causing. As the CEO of a fully remote team spread over 5 countries in 2 continents, this is business as usual. It is how we have been working for the past 8 years, we even manage to co-create solutions with our clients this way. In fact, a few clients who due to geographic location, project urgency and budget we have never met in person, only ever online. The way I see it as long as we have a good internet connection and an overlapping time-zone we can co-create your game or gamified process.

As the CEO of a small but growing company, we currently have a team of 8 and will likely grow to 15 in the next few quarters of this year, we have learned a few tricks. I thought I would share some of our practices and top tips, to help those of you that are now struggling to make remote working work for your team.

Set-up a communication and sharing structure

For every team rituals and habits around communication are essential, even when there are just a few of you. We have a weekly meeting and aim to keep that on the same day and time every week, so everyone can structure their work around it. In the meeting, I give an update on all the ongoing projects and any new ones coming up and we also have the same information available on one of our kanban boards (more on tools later). Then we do a round of the team in a style similar to scrum meetings where they say what they have been working on, what they need help with and what they plan to be working on. We also discuss other pertinent items related to specific projects or any other business.

For everyday communication, we use a combination of email, Slack and Skype. Client related communication typically arrives to us via email and I then distribute that to the relevant people in the team. For each project, we have a Slack channel and a Kanban board (we use Ora.pm). On Slack the team can ask each other questions and discuss things, on our boards we have a task list per project and it shows what is to do, who is doing it, what is in progress and completed. Some of the team tag me into their tasks when they need answers from me to proceed. I encourage the team to jump on Skype if they need more explanation than a few lines in the text and they self-manage that with each other.

For every client which you take on the virtual co-creation journey, you do exactly the same. You set up a communication schedule and tools that allow for everyone to see what is happening. We host workshops on Clickmeeting and Uberconference or tools that have been approved by corporate firewalls. Even our gamification card deck exercise, which we use as part of the design thinking process in virtual workshops and live workshops, is possible online thanks to the gamification solution BlueRabbit.

Tools as enablers

The internet and a way of connecting to it is essential, without that obviously remote working becomes a whole lot harder. Assuming this is possible here are our day-to-day tools:

• Microsoft Office 365: out of this we use Sharepoint, Outlook, Word, Excel, Powerpoint the most. Sharepoint is where our documents live, Outlook is mainly for external communications and passing messages from clients to the team and then the office suite we use as daily work documentation.
• Skype ( We know it is owned by Microsoft but anyone can use it without Office 365) we use for our team meetings and client calls. Some days it has login issues and in those cases, we jump to Uber-conference or Clickmeeting or any tool a client has access to.
• Slack is our everyday chat and quick communication tool
• Ora.pm is our Kanban board solution, we chose this one because it was more cost-effective than other tools on the market. Each project has a task list and we know who is working on it. The tool also allows for time tracking, which I ask the team to do for estimating billing and managing workload reasons.
• Miro is another one of our favourite tools, it is basically an online whiteboard where everyone can be pulled in and share in the brainstorming. We use it for brainstorming, mind-mapping, story creation, narrative, doodles, mood boards, concepts etc. Basically, unlike a real-life whiteboard, it stays and you can re-visit it, multiple people can collaborate at the same time and give feedback. You can also share it with clients if that is appropriate or invite clients to collaborate on them with you.

Depending on the role then you may have access to other tools essential to the job, but for the majority of my team. This is all of it. For most corporate structured teams, this would be plenty.

To showcase our solutions to clients we sometimes use a dedicated Sharepoint folder or InDesign or even Adobe XD, it depends on the technology that the client has access to. Most frequently the information gets relayed via online presentations. Our surveys and user research again we carry out via regular online meeting tools and we use Zoho survey which we have as part of CRM solution to gather feedback from the wider target audience.

Let go of micro-managing

Remote working and leading a remote team is as much about setting good ground rules as it is about letting go of micro-managing. I thankfully never was big on micro-managing but for those of you who need to know what everyone is working on at any time, there are kanban boards and instilling a delivery focused mindset. In everyone's induction conversation, I will mention that they are in charge of their workload. As a female business owner, I will often say, I am not your mother, I do care but more importantly I hired you to get the job done.

My focus is on outcomes and hitting agreed timelines. I ask each person to tell me how much time they estimate for something and then we agree a time. If I feel that this should be quicker or slower we may adjust. My high performers are always asking me for more work and the ones happy to coast along I check-in with a bit more. I typically will also start people on a shorter contract to check if this way of working works for them. I had people say after a few weeks that remote wasn't for them and that I can appreciate too, some people just love meeting others and need the social face to face.

When someone starts skipping regular meetings and is dropping off Slack and task boards, I usually check-in to make sure everything is OK. Often when this happened there was personal stuff going on that needed to be taken care of. My approach is that family and health is top of the list of things you need to nurture and if sometimes that means that you need to take time, then that is good with me. As long as when we have agreed deadlines that these are met or I receive plenty of notice if for some reason they can't, which allows me to either put someone else on the job as well or review the schedule.

The one thing I frequently remind people of is time-tracking their work. I don't look for every minute of their time. I do want to understand if we are working on a game design concept how long each phase more or less takes. It allows me to be better at planning for future work as well as account for enough budget to cover the work to be done. To get time tracking started, I started tracking my activities and then asked everyone else to follow. I treat everyone in the team as a responsible adult that knows what they need to do and if they are stuck they can ask for help from whoever is best placed to help out. So far, this works well for us.

Flexibility is key and it has always been part of our team. I don't track holiday time and when people consistently deliver on what they promised to deliver, then I am happy with that. If they want to take a break, then let me know and I will work around it. We moved our team meeting a few times to facilitate pick-ups from school and family for one of our Asian team members. We hold the team meeting in a time where everyone is meant to be at work, working across 3 timezones can make this a bit creative, but with a regular pattern, it now works.

Celebrate and share the positives

When it comes to keeping motivation and morale high, I do my best to share positives as and when they happen. For example, we heard back that we entered the second phase of the pitch for a project and I will let the team know as soon as I received the news. When we in a new client the same thing, when a client is delighted with a design I also share it to everyone. If a specific person was mentioned I say it directly to them. It is the small things that make the teamwork and feel like they belong. I want to make many and regular instalments in the positive bank.

When we have a period of high-intensity work when a deadline or launch date is coming up, I make sure that people get to share the glory. We had a 7-month long game design and development project that went live in front of an audience and I fed back pictures to the team and how people felt we did. The feedback on receiving this was also totally appreciated. I have one or two team members that I need to remind to take time out as well, which I will also do. Nobody should be 100% on all of the time, our bodies are not built that way.

Deal with feedback together

Not every project will roll smoothly all of the time, that is a fact of project-based work in every sector. When we hit a point where something doesn't work or doesn't pass the standards of the client we will get together and work on a plan of action. In most cases, things can be worked out as a team and we can come out with a workable solution.

If someone is not delivering well or not what we were looking for or used an approach with the client that I wasn't happy with or whatever the case may be. I will address it directly with the person, depending on the topic this can be via a conversation online, a chat message or an email. The more critical the feedback the better it is to speak to each other. I believe that most of us set out to do the best we can and occasionally we fall off track. If it is a regular occurrence that I need to give feedback and I don't see any change in behaviour then I am happy to take a decision to let someone go.

Lead by example and trust your people

My final words of practical wisdom are to lead by example and to trust your people. As a leader, it is important to be self-aware. I know I can come across as a bit short and snappy especially in writing but when someone speaks to me in person or online they will always find me charming. One of my team members had the courage to bring this up and it was the feedback I wanted to hear so I could be consciously aware of how to make it better. I thanked him for the feedback as well.

Let people know you care regularly, that can be a personal check-in when in our case someone had lost their dog, another whose partner was ill, etc. It doesn't take much to show you care. I equally let them know they can always approach me directly for anything, I may not always know the answer but I can often point in the right direction or find someone that can help.

If you want to instil a positive remote working environment you as the leader need to make that happen. It means having some ground rules, communicating them often and sticking to them. Once people know that you stick to those rules, they also trust that you can be approached when you need to.

The one thing to remember even when working remotely is that behind every phone number, email and avatar is a person trying to do the best they can. If they are forced into working remotely due to the Coronavirus make a point of checking in with the person and not just for work reasons. Their health is their wealth and caring is the least you can do. They will appreciate you for it.