Dear Ueno: How do you keep in touch with all your remote teams?

Ueno Editors
Ueno.
Published in
5 min readMar 12, 2019

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Dear Ueno is an advice column for people who for some weird reason think we know what we’re doing. Read more about all this, or check out our old advice.

From Minnix, a designer in Colombo, via Twitter:

How do you keep in touch with all your remote teams? (Pigeon post is not the answer)

Dear Minnix,

To answer your question properly, we thought it would be appropriate to ask three different people in three different locations: Andrea Mata, a designer at Ueno NYC, Einar Birgir Einarsson, a developer at Ueno Reykjavík, and Jessica Volodarsky, a producer at Ueno SF.

Here goes.

Einar, Jessica and Andrea collaborated on this post for about five days over eight time zones, using Slack, Asana, Google Docs, common sense and good cheer.

On the pros and cons of remote teams

Andrea: It really depends on the workplace. I’ve worked in places where the collaboration with remote teams was very challenging. At Ueno I think our formula for success is thinking of everyone as equally important for the process, and making sure everyone is always in the loop.

Jessica: I’m just going to put it out there: I don’t think a remote team can fully replicate that fierce creative energy you get at the start of a project when everyone from every team comes together to figure shit out. The conceptual phases that usually demand collaboration between creative teams — strategy, writing, design, tech — and clients work best when everyone is together. The ideas are stronger, more people feel ownership of the work, there are fewer communication breakdowns, and you’re more likely to have alignment across teams on whatever it is you’re doing. In short, you should do everything in your power to have the team in one place.

Einar: I prefer working on-site but it doesn’t matter that much to be honest. It’s more fun and collaborative to be on-site with your team, but on the other hand I also appreciate working on tasks remotely sometimes, in a bit more isolation.

On the tools of the trade

Einar: For communications we use Slack for messaging and Zoom for video chats, meetings and project-syncs. Each project has its own Slack channel. For project management we’ve mostly been using Asana to keep the team aligned, seeing the big picture and delegating tasks.

Andrea: Any tool can work if it’s used consistently by everyone. I could be on Slack sending awesomely customized emojis to a channel but if no one ever signs in, it failed. I do like Zoom for meetings, easy meeting creation, screen sharing, image quality, etc. Maybe Slack should improve their video calls.

Einar: It can often help a lot to talk about things “in person” instead of sending a lot of lines of text on Slack, so we often jump on a quick video call when needed. For off-hours we have automatic ‘snooze’ settings in Slack based on each local time. You need to be flexible but it’s also important to have some work boundaries — you don’t need to be online all the time.

Jessica: Keeping a routine is important with remote teams. In person it’s easy to let things like daily standups slide because you’re often having loose conversations in passing. When you’re remote it’s good practice to uphold the routine of an informal daily standup. It should be only 15–20 min with no pressure to be on video if it’s at an early or late time in your time zone. You go over what everyone’s doing, if there’s anything people need to be aware of, blockers, etc.

On time zone hacking

Jessica: Remote teams can be pretty great when it comes to time zone hacking. If I get feedback end of day from a client in California I can have updated creative by the morning thanks to our team in Iceland. It’s like I have a team working the night shift.

Andrea: Being flexible with time is always very appreciated. Some people start their day earlier or later than you do. If there is anything you can do to make their early hours more productive, do it before you go home.

Einar: The eight hour time difference between Reykjavík and SF means that our day is ending when their day is beginning, so we try to time our syncs accordingly. If I don’t get the chance to check-in with the team I usually drop a short summary of the stuff I did during that day or any questions I have in Slack channel.

On challenges

Andrea: I’d say the projects that present more challenges are the ones that start the branding in one office and continue with the website in another. For these type of transitions, I think it’s important to have both teams working very closely, which is not always possible when people are super busy. But most of our projects involve remote teams, especially here in the New York office.

Jessica: This is painfully obvious but doesn’t always happen, it is always easier when whatever it is you’re handing off to a remote team is locked in terms of design and functionality requirements. A seemingly small design update could end up taking twice or three times as long to update when you’re dealing with asynchronous communication across multiple time zones.

On making cross-office projects go more smoothly

Andrea: They go pretty smoothly already. Although we could force SF office to start working at 6:00 am.

Jessica: Here is what makes managing a remote team run smoothly: A solid scope of work, creative brief, and timeline; clear identification of roles and responsibilities; sticking to a routine of daily standups; flexibility in being up early or late.

We hope that answers your question, Minnix!

Andrea Mata is a designer at Ueno in New York. Einar Birgir Einarsson is a developer at Ueno in Reykjavík. Jessica Volodarsky is a producer at Ueno in San Francisco. But if you’ve come this far, then you probably knew that already.

Are you remotely interested in working with them? Because Ueno is hiring.

Are you in need of more email in your life? Because Ueno has a newsletter.

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