How I improved communication in my team despite being the only remote engineer
Simple but effective set of steps to take to ensure my team was running more in-sync.
I’ll start this article by setting the scene.
My team is based in London, and I am based about a 3-hour journey away from them.
So, we’re still in the same country and timezone. ✅
But they meet twice a week, while I meet them possibly once a month. ❌
That is where the discrepancy lies.
Despite us being in the same time zone, there was still a lot of communication happening with the team in-person.
But, this communication was happening with the leaders of the team, not the entire team.
This led to a few incidents of miscommunication that occurred within the team, which I had raised and taken charge of to correct.
This article will provide techniques that my team leveraged to improve our communication and keep ourselves aligned.
✍️ Embracing Asynchronous Communication
The first step to improving communication was ensuring that the team had in writing the context of our projects.
Step 1: Our Slack channel
We already had a private slack channel set up just for the engineers, product manager, engineering manager and designers. So essentially, just the core team.
We were already using the channel to provide asynchronous updates such as pull requests that needed reviewing and whether we were logging out early or going to be off sick.
I suggested making use of this channel more and adding useful context needed for the team to keep us running well.
This included things like:
A change in priorities
An upcoming deadline
Feedback for the team from key stakeholders
All of these categories had to include things that were useful for the team such as the “why” and the actions that were required from us as a team to facilitate this.
Step 2: Jira
We also made sure that we were making use of Jira as an accurate reflection of where the team is at any given point in time.
I made sure to check with the engineers during stand up whether their ticket was in the right column, and asked the team to start adding comments within the Jira tickets to provide a paper trail for the ticket.
Step 3: Engineering Slack channel
Finally, I also created a Slack channel for the engineers, specifically.
I believe that this has been really helpful because instead of asking each other technical questions in our DMs, we’ve posed the questions to the group to answer.
In doing so, we have created a knowledge-base for the team tech stack, specifically that has helped other engineers solve problems quicker.
🧑💻 Optimising Synchronous Communication
When it came to optimising synchronous communication, I started with our daily standup.
Step 1: The daily standup
I wanted this to not just be a status-updates meeting, I wanted it to be a meeting where we left the meeting feeling confident that we were working on the right things.
I suggested that we extend our meeting by 15 minutes, and I knew I would receive some pushback on this, so I said specifically that this is optional.
The main purpose of this was to open up a forum to discuss anything that we were not sure of as a team without feeling like we’re taking up each other’s time.
We used this time to discuss things like:
How confident we felt about meeting a deadline
How we felt about a shift in priorities
To highlight / shout out any positive momentum we have built as a team
Step 2: The tech refinement / tech sync
I also added an extra 30-minute weekly meeting for the engineers. I called this our “tech refinement”, but I am still thinking of a more apt name - possibly something like “tech council” or “tech sync”.
The purpose of this meeting was to do technical deep dives on our upcoming work.
For example, if there is a ticket required to improve the performance of one of our APIs, then in this meeting, we would discuss in detail how we can achieve that.
This also had the added bonus of avoiding silos because all the engineers were present in the meeting, and therefore, had all the context required for the different areas of work that the team is responsible for.
🤝 Camaraderie
My main aim with improving how we communicated as a team was to build camaraderie as a team.
I wanted us to work more as 1 unit rather than 4 engineers with a mutual goal of keeping the team afloat.
Since I introduced these changes within the team, here are the results that we have noticed:
More familiar with our tech stack
Picking up tickets more independently
More accurately forecasting work
We have also been better at supporting each other to move our tasks across the board quicker.
My next step to improve camaraderie would be to get the team to engage in virtual team-building activities such as quizzes, games and collaborative brainstorming sessions.
I believe this will help us build more rapport as we start to understand each other better on not only a professional level, but a personal level too.
🔑 Key Takeaways
Centralized Communication: Use Slack and project management tools (like Jira) effectively to document project context, updates, and decisions. This creates a single source of truth for the team.
Knowledge Sharing: Establish a dedicated channel for engineers to ask technical questions and share solutions within Slack. This fosters knowledge sharing and prevents redundant efforts.
Focused Stand-ups: Shift stand-up meetings from status updates to discussions about blockers, uncertainties, and priorities. This clarifies roadblocks and ensures everyone is aligned.
Deep Dive Sessions: Hold regular technical deep-dive meetings (like the "tech refinement" concept) to collaboratively tackle complex technical problems. This avoids information silos and fosters better solutions.
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