The start of the COVID-19 pandemic served as a forcing function to re-evaluate the way teams worked together. In fact, many companies are re-learning how to collaborate with their teams. As some move towards being a fully distributed workforce, Atlassian included, we are interviewing those who have worked on distributed teams before so that we may learn insights and share them with customers along the way.
In the first interview in the 2020 "Listening Out Loud" series, Dave Liao, an Enterprise Tools Administrator, discusses his practices while working on distributed teams. A few themes from our chat included:
- Working agreements between team members require upfront and continuous feedback on what each team members need. Examples teams may want to discuss include: schedules, communication channel preferences, how decisions should be made.
- Documentation is helpful not just for processes, but for understanding what is happening across projects so that different team members can stay in the loop. Plus, documentation will not only bring team cohesion within a team (assuming it's in a place people access easily), but will help teams of the future understand how a project worked.
- The new takes time and not everyone will learn at the same pace. However, perseverance + empathy for behavior adoption will help in the long-game.
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Look out for these "Listening Out Loud" share outs every Wednesday on Atlassian Community. If you're interested in sharing your insights with us, comment here or email me at cdelarosa@atlassian.com and I'll reach out!
