Silke English
Our daily stand-up meeting is mission-critical to us, here at Yodel. We are a team of seven and were aware that the bigger our team becomes, the harder it is to maintain communication. Especially when you are an entirely remote team. This is why we really wanted to come up with a way to inform each other about our daily tasks, to ensure the best outcome under high productivity. However, this will not be our forever go-to plan but it works perfectly for the size of our company at this point in time.
In the beginning, we were a team of five, who all fairly knew each other and some of us have been friends for years. The communication and exchange of ideas came along naturally. The more sophisticated our product became, the more we struggled to keep up with our work. This is why the decision to expand the team was made. We realized that through our departments getting bigger and responsibilities changing, the communication process had to change as well.
First, we tried to stay in touch through a video chat, where we all could easily ask other team members questions and receive immediate answers. The issue with the video chat was, that as soon as someone asked a question that leads to a discussion, somehow everyone participated and ended up interrupting their own workflow. This was not ideal and so we came up with our daily stand-up meeting, where there is the space and time to openly ask questions that regard the whole team. It is a great way to share ideas and receive feedback.
Having a daily meeting to discuss current events that are happening within the company is essential to connect with your teammates. It not only pushes productivity and delivers insights on different perspectives to solve tasks, but it also gives everyone the feeling to be connected and equally important to the company’s success. This further leads to a better corporate feeling.
You may wonder what happened to our video chat sessions. We still practice the video chat as well. We believe that this is important on a psychological level to connect with each other when you can see your coworkers. It is also nice to have everyone on the call, whenever there is a quick response needed. However, topics that concern everyone, are saved for the stand-up meeting.
