Hey Reader,

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What if all the excessive communication at the office were to be eliminated?

Imagine you could get away from the tyranny of collaboration as if doing stuff together worked all the time, especially now in the era of AI, distributed teams and systems?

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There ACTUALLY is a way for that and it’s simple.

If you deal with teams that are remote or distributed, the “hybrid” mode must actually be “remote-first”. Basically, it means that:

1️⃣ we focus on asynchronous communication most of the time.

1️⃣ synchronous moments are rare and specific, and expensive, and exceptions.

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The secret in this is to focus on the workflow.

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Workflows get a bad rep these days, as if they were not something that is both invented AND executed by people! But I don’t know anything that works as wonderfully as a set of steps that define how our usual (not the exception) work is to be executed.

How we find and prioritize and assign work. How we communicate, coordinate and review it.

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A workflow is a big piece of the system around us at work. And the system is strong. We don’t have to rely on willpower and heroics when systems are properly designed.

Deming was quoted to have said

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So, if your team has a remote component to it, it’s time to stop making chats and emails the main communication avenue, and stop “collaboration” as the word of the day and equating it to agile.

Basically, those things are wonderful… when people are collocated!

If that is not the reality of your team, and you force everybody to chat as if they were sitting side by side, what you are doing is chaining people on desks and creating anxiety around work.

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I’m assuming if you work remotely or hybrid there is a reason. And if that is the working model, then the execution model should also be hybrid. Not “an office in remote”.

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It simply doesn’t work.

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But workflows are a simple way of communicating effectively and timely when your team is spread across offices and timezones.

🗝️ Map the workflow: Make sure your workflows and tools represent the work as it is. Not as you wish. Not as in the exception cases. So, have people communicate with their tickets and tasks. Yes, how magic is that if at any given point in time tasks are actually representing the reality? Nobody needs to ping you or ask for status reports.

Bonus points: you will start collecting SO MUCH data about your execution, a necessary step into continuous improvement.

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🗝️ Design the rules. Steps in your process have ownership, so define and enforce them. If you do have separate statuses like Dev and Test, make clear who is dev and who is test and make them accountable to pick up a task, instead of pushing it on them.

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🗝️ Record artifacts and transitions. I know most tools allow you to define the stages of your workflow, but look for ways, either in your ticket system or in your build system to also document the transitions. this extra step pays off.

For example, if a specific performance test report must be attached before a release is triggered, how about make it a part of your steps officially? Like so, nobody would be able to make the mistake of releasing without performance testing AND reporting on it.

Now, if an exception or emergency release is required (we can debate it…), then you would use the more cacophonous synchronous ways: call a manager, email a VP. When that’s the exception, things just run smoother.

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Effective execution is important for agility in your teams and departments. I’ve been talking about this from the Kanban perspective in some of the past blog posts and videos:

👉 Kanban Practices and Principles​

👉 How to start using Kanban the right way with STATIK​

👉 When should you use Kanban​

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I’ve also shared a few posts on agile retrospectives, as they can be the place for you to start these conversations. Make sure to tune in here:

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Las but not leas, the latest video dropped was a webinar we did with the awesome Sumeet Moghe about his playbook for async-first. You wont' want to miss it!

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Can you imagine how much simpler summer vacations can be when people are safeguarded by excellent workflows? When emails and IM are just a secondary option?

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Let me know if something is bugging you on this topic. I’d love to hear from you and it would be my pleasure to share more insights.

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Stay curious, stay agile!

P

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