FACILITATING REMOTE TEAMS

Make Remote Collaboration Work: Advanced Webinar Series with MURAL

HENRY FORD

Keeping remote teams on track is challenging. The risk of “losing” participants is higher than with offline work.

Facilitators ensure everything runs smoothly and goals are met. You don’t need to be a professional to facilitate.

Step up and be the facilitator in your remote team.

Think ahead and put forethought into facilitating remote creative collaboration.

COLLABORATING REMOTELY

1. Prepare team collaboration

2. Run real-time sessions

3. Keep momentum going

4. Experiment and learn

TOPICS

1. PREPARE TEAM COLLABORATION

Creative work done remotely requires planning. Improvising risks failure.

Consider these four area before you begin:

PLAN THE COLLABORATION

1. TEAM: How will participants interact?

2. TOOLS: What tools will you use?

3. TASKS: What process will you follow?

4. OUTCOMES: What are the desired results?

TEAM: MODES OF INTERACTIONEnsure equal participation from everyone.

TOOLS: DIGITALLY DEFINED WORKPLACE

Understand the digital spaces for collaboration.

TASK: PROCESS

Offline methods may not work in remote contexts.

BE REMOTE-FRIENDLYExample: These instructions from the IDEO.org Design Kit course are NOT remote-friendly:

OUTCOMES: FOCUS ON GOALSTeams with clear objectives and passion for their work can be as productive as co-located teams.

● Create a written agenda

● State the meeting purpose

● Set expectations

● Make it fun and engaging (e.g., with games)

Use MURAL for kickoffs and as a project dashboard

GUIDE TEAM WITH MURAL TEMPLATES

RECOMMENDATIONS

● Understand different modes of interaction

● Master tools for collaboration

● Strive for remote-friendly processes

● Focus on purpose

ALSO: Always have a Plan B

3. RUNNING REAL-TIME SESSIONS

MURAL AS THE PLATFORM

Voting results

Built-in chat

Broadcast cursors

Follow each other by clicking on avatar

Comment on content inline

MURAL is built for collaboration real time collaboration

Avatars of collaborators

MURAL is built for live collaboration.

RECOMMENDATIONS

● Set up in advance and test technology

● Provide detailed instructions and examples

● Micro-timebox exercises

● Include everyone and highlight presence

● Leverage multi-tasking

● Reflect as you go

● Capture decisions and outcomes

LIVE BREAKOUT GROUPSRemote breakout groups are particularly difficult due to a single audio channel.

Consider solutions for each context:

1. With split teams, break out by location.2. With mixed teams, open a separate audio channel

for remote folks. 3. With all-remote teams, split audio channels with

multiple rooms or Zoom.

Or, avoid breakout groups altogether in favor of independent work followed by group share-outs.

EXAMPLE: DESIGN FOR AMERICA

“Remote Design For America Leadership Studio”https://blog.mural.ly/2015/08/design-for-america-leadership-studio-event-recap/

MURAL workshop for Design for America with in-person teams

3. KEEP MOMENTUM GOING

a. OFFLINE TO ONLINEIf working offline (e.g., with sticky notes and boards), plan in advance how to capture information after.

RECOMMENDATIONS

● Enlist co-facilitators to help capture information

● Assign roles to participants, e.g., note taker

● Transcribe as you go for better context

● Integrate photos into MURAL

● Or go digital first from the beginning

EXAMPLE: EVENT MODEL CANVASMURAL sponsored an offline workshop with Ruud Janssen, creator of the Event Model Canvas.

EXAMPLE: EVENT MODEL CANVASAs teams completed the exercises offline, co-facilitators captured everything in MURAL.

b. PLAN PRE- AND POST-WORKGive assignments ahead of time, and keep momentum going afterwards.

Pre-work for Lean UX workshop team

RECOMMENDATIONS

● Schedule a prep call before

● Plan ongoing collaboration afterwards

● Assign independent tasks

● Use MURAL as a project dashboard

EXAMPLE: BLOG

Asynchronous collaboration for the MURAL blog relaunch

4. EXPERIMENT AND LEARN

RUN A PILOT PROJECTRemote collaboration takes practice, and every organization is different. Find what works for you.

Pilot remote User Story Mapping effort to learn

RECOMMENDATIONS

● Practice remote collaboration

● Translate methods for online

● Leverage advantages of digital

● Iterate on MURAL templates

● Create an example case study

● Leverage MURAL to scale practice

RESOURCES

“Facilitating Effective Remote Collaboration,”

Interview with Rachel Smith, MURAL BLOG

FURTHER RESOURCES

○ For more about how to use MURAL, see the quick guide on our support site: http://support.mural.ly

○ Join our live demonstrations weekly for a chance to ask questions live: http://mural.co/weeklywebinars