The new norm

Everyone seems to have posted their tips/tricks/techniques/tools for the new norm with dev teams working from home, so I’m probably not going to post anything groundbreaking (wow, way to convince people to read this post!) but simply what we currently find works for us – it’s just some hands-on experience which might be helpful.

We still have access to our regular tools for kanban boards, wiki (lightweight docs), code repositories, etc. but there are some things which we are just used to doing face-to-face, with sticky notes and whiteboards so these were the tools for which we needed to find alternatives.

Firstly, it was important to let the teams find what works for them – there’s no point in telling everyone to use a particular tool if it doesn’t meet their needs, and who knows better than the teams themselves. Even though we use BlueJeans for video chats and Slack has built-in video calling, when asked how they’ll stay in touch throughout the day they picked Discord – they’re familiar with it (as gamers) and it’s proven to be stable under heavy load.

For retrospectives, we tried a variety of tools; Retrium works well but has a limited set of formats; for more freedom we picked Mural (i.e. it’s just whiteboard) although Google Jamboard or BlueJeans’ built-in whiteboard are great for impromptu discussions as they don’t require us to send out invitations. (Note that when the BlueJeans call ends it just wipes the whiteboard so remember to grab a screenshot!)

One feature we like with large groups is BlueJeans’ facility to set up breakout rooms; using that in conjunction with 1-2-4-All from Liberating Structures.

Obviously, we need to make sure not to put anything confidential or sensitive on these public tools but for ephemeral discussions, they seem to do what we need… at least until we find a newer, shinier alternative 🙂 so what are you finding works well?

Update: The addition of Snap Camera has made video calls more entertaining – it’s owned by SnapChat but it can be used with BlueJeans.