Experience Report: Remote Tools and Techniques to Enable Agile Teams!

Agile Friends! I am utilizing the “experience report” category that many of us agile conference attendees are familiar with because I have always extracted the most value and learnings out of these real-life sessions. As an Agile tooling and services organization that has been working remotely as a team for years, we would be remiss if we didn't share the tools and techniques we use with ourselves and clients during these difficult times. There is obviously an abundance of information available about this topic, but we have lived it and experimented with many tools over the years. Below is a shortlist of tools for collaboration, team feedback, and task management we have found to be valuable. Note context is everything, so what works for us may not work for others and vice-versa. The intent of this post is to provide a condensed cheat sheet of tools we have pressure tested over the years for those looking for quick solutions. We hope this helps!

Assessments:

·        Lean Agile Intelligence:  Well of course:) Note the category just happened to be the first alphabetically so this shameless plug is not by design! LAI is a modern-day assessment platform with an outcome-drive approach enabling change agents to customize assessments from an assessment question bank of over 200 questions for every level of the organization.

Collaboration:

·        A Web Whiteboard:  Super simple tool that makes shared virtual whiteboarding sessions collaborative and easy.

·        Icebreaker: Get people engaged from the start! This easy app asks participants a few simple questions to get people interacting and ready for their remote session. 

·        Liberating Structures: Not a tool per se, but a powerful set of techniques that foster group participation, coordination, and trust that can be applied remotely.

·        Miro.com - Collaborative tool formerly called “Real Time Board.” It’s a virtual whiteboard but much more than that. You can customize your own templates or use their own including PI Planning, Story mapping, mind mapping, and more. They even have templates for Kanban. Free with upgrade options.

·        Mural:   Digital workspaces for visual collaboration, inspiration, and innovation anytime, anywhere, on any device. It contains plenty of the common templates used by agile practitioners. Free with upgrade options.

·        Stormboard: Same as the two above that is why we moved it here:) You will certainly be able to find the template of your choice within one of these three tools.

·        Mindiply: Quick polling of the team for decision making. Dot Voting included!

·        Screencastify: Screen Recorder for Chrome

·        Wheel Decide: Something Fun for making random decisions!

·        Ultratimer: Chrome extension used for time boxing meetings and other things!

Retrospectives:

·        FunRetro.io - Free online retro tool with simple setup for your team

·        Retrium: Remote toolbox of retrospective exercises with an intuitive interface and quick setup.

·        Scatterspoke.com - One of the best online retro tools that have a paid enterprise version that handles scaling extremely well. It also can be used for things like Lean Coffees, and brainstorming sessions.

Task Management:

·        Trello! Yep, we still use it! It still does the trick!

·        Clockify:  Easy app that allows you to track the time it takes to complete tasks. And it’s free!

Team Member Appreciation and Feedback:       

·        Kudobox.co: The easiest way on the web to give a team member props!

·        Group Greeting: Easy way to send the cards (Thank You, Birthday, Congrats, etc.)  you typically pass around in the office.

·        Gifted: Same thing as above, but free!

·        Officevibe: A personal favorite that enables managers to driven employee engagement, gain the pulse of the team,  and simply earn trust. Free version available with upgrade options.

Training:

·        Kahoot.com - Online tool that’s great for creating remote training materials. Create tests, quizzes, and more.

Video Conferencing

·        Zoom: You are not here to learn about zoom! But one of my favorite features is the ability to transcribe the meeting.

Virtual Offices:

·        Sococo: Taking virtual work to the next level. Creating a remote network that all agile organizations thrive. Paid service, but well worth it.

From the Lean Agile Intelligence team, stay safe and healthy!