One of the specific challenges we faced was capturing the collaborative, serendipitous spirit of an office environment, where spontaneous meetings and conversations in the kitchen could lead to breakthroughs or solutions to pressing problems. To promote and facilitate communication across the team we adopted a number of collaborative techniques and software applications including Google Meet and Miro, in addition to expanding our usage of industry standards such as Slack, Jira and Confluence.

We also replaced our Friday afternoon hangouts in the office with a Virtual Happy Hour. This gives everyone a chance to catch up and make casual conversation about the week’s events or weekend plans. In place of our monthly team events, we implemented a Virtual Team Lunch on the last Thursday of every month, where we order lunch delivery from a restaurant of choice and hang out before our regular Thursday afternoon team meeting. There’s nothing like being together, but all in all it’s not a bad substitute for some team bonding.

You might ask “when can we see what you have been working on?” And the answer May be soon. Until then, it’s classified…