Best tools for working remotely and managing a team

Let's face it, we all got hit by surprise. With almost no warning, we were told to stay home and without knowing for how long. This crisis forced us to reinvent ourselves and the way we work.

For some of the "lucky ones" that did not get decimated by this crisis, we had to quickly adjust, innovate, and work from a new and unprepared environment. 

Keep Calm and Work from Home. 

My team and I, had to quickly agree on a shortlist of tools to ensure that we are still very productive, agile, and most importantly, exchanging essential information efficiently. 

Here's my personal shortlist of the best tools, that I'm using almost every day. Items are listed in terms of usage frequency, from several times a day to a few times a week.

Note: I'm not affiliated with any of these tools nor receiving any compensation. Just sharing my thoughts and best tricks as my contribution to the world :-) 

Enjoy the list and thanks for recommending your best tools as well. 

1. Workflowy

For Thinking

The brain organizer tool.

By far, my favorite tool of ALL time, hands down.

Without a doubt, this tool is my favorite of all time, I felt the need to mention it again :-). I've been using this tool for years now, it's accessible on all my devices: desktop, mobile, tablets, work devices, and personal ones. Very simple, yet extremely powerful. This single tool will help you organize all your cluttered ideas and thoughts with ease. In my opinion, better than any mind-maps tool and Note app out there. If you are like me, very creative, sometimes a bit too much, managing many projects, a lot of priorities, and maybe a team, then you WANT and NEED this amazing tool. Workflowy will force you to have only one number one and only one number two on your list etc. Very flexible to use during video calls, since you can organize all items in buckets, expand and collapse and at the end of the call, share the list with a simple link. Want to zoom in on a specific item? Simply click on the bullet, and boom, you are in distraction-free mode focusing only on this specific element. In this case, less is definitely a lot more.

https://workflowy.com/

2. Cloud App 

For Seeing

The screenshots captured, cloud-stored, and easily shareable tool.

Another tool, that I use many times a day, is CloudApp. With a simple keyboard shortcut, it will allow you to: 1. take a screenshot, 2. auto store it in the cloud, 3. creates a short URL link, 4. store that link in your clipboard and ready to be pasted anywhere.

By far one of the fastest tools, to take screenshots and share them in a heartbeat. It works like a charm. More advanced features are also available, like screen recording and gif creation.

https://www.getcloudapp.com/

3. Skype 

For Communicating

The daily communication tool, for calls and instant messaging tool.

Really, Skype??? Why not the very trendy Zoom? I know..., looks like everyone is using Zoom now and that you must be using it to be in the gang. I know Zoom, I have used it here and there, but overall I still prefer Skype. First of all, I find it a lot more intuitive, it's always there, ready to go. I can easily create small groups, take screenshots, record the call, exchange files, and works well on mobile devices. Once you add someone, he or she will always be on your contact list. It's perfect if you want to really establish a new connection with someone vs being "transactional" and losing that connection once the call is over. An oldie, I agree, but still works really well. 

https://www.skype.com/en/get-skype/

4. MoqUps

For Imagining

The "Let me draw you an image to show you what I mean" tool. 

I've tried dozens of visualization tools. On their website, everything looks easy and intuitive, but once you get into the thing, suddenly you realize that it's not that easy to use and get hit by a steep learning curve. After trying almost of all them, I found that MoqUps does the job really well. With this tool, it's easy to duplicate, group, adjust elements, expand the canvas, and the final visual always looks great. You can quickly generate a shareable public link to send to your colleague or clients. The link remains the same even if you update the visual on your side. The color palette is also nice and it will make your colors work in harmony.  

Few minutes to learn it and once you adopt it, you won't look for another tool.

https://moqups.com/

5.Trello 

For Planning 

The lightweight, never forget a thing, aesthetic project management tool

Almost every week there is a new, supper-dupper, project management tool that gets launched and promoted. Don't get me wrong, I value other project management tools as well such as Asana, Monday.com, Basecamp, Wrike, Jira, etc. If you are managing a development team, or a team with hundreds of small tasks and need to micro-manage every single item, then go with a more advanced tool. On the other hand, if you are just looking to have something in between a To-do list and the mega full-fledged project management tool, then you show opt for Trello. Great during your status update calls, you can quickly store discussed information and organize the board that way you want. Since you will be looking at it very often, the first thing to do is to choose a beautiful background :-) 

https://trello.com/

6. Google Sheets and Slides

For Elaborating 

The: That's where the heavy lifting

is done tool

Anytime I want to elaborate in detail on any project and at the same time easily collaborate with a team, I always find using the Google suite tools the go-to solution. From Google sheet to Google Slide, documents are always there, in the cloud, no need to worry about where the latest version and very easily shareable through public or private links. 

Takes a few minutes to understand how to properly share documents, inside or outside your organization, but once understood, you will find it very easy and reliable. 

https://www.google.com/sheets/about/

7. Cloud stored Chrome Bookmarks

For Accessing

The Never lose your important bookmarks again tool. 

How many websites, pages, documents, lists, tools, dashboards you need to handle to properly do our job? In my case, I would say, maybe a hundred... :-) but even if you have just a dozen links that you need to regularly access, I find that using the Chrome bookmark synced with my Google account is the best way to access everything and never worry about losing a bookmark. Make sure that you are syncing your bookmarks online, by login into your Google account and you'll be fine. If you want to divide your personal bookmarks from your professional ones, then simply have two google accounts and sync your bookmarks with the appropriate account. Create folders and hierarchy to make sure they are easily findable.  

https://www.google.com/chrome/

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The End.

I hope you enjoyed this list and some of it will help you become more productive. Let me know if I missed anything important. I'm also curious to know about your favorite tools, the ones that you can't live without them?

Cheers and be safe,

Elias