This year, 2020, was the year that remote collaboration tools came into their own. For some businesses these tools might have been essential already, but for me, it was the year that they became essential.
In February, my toolkit as a Scrum Master was typical, I had my post-it notes, sharpie pens/textas, wall spaces, and then Jira. By the end of March, the post-it notes were gathering dust, and Slack, Jira, Confluence, Microsoft Teams, online whiteboards were all getting a workout. We were trying out different methods and tools to help our teams collaborate online. Even PI Planning (part of the SAFe scaled agile framework) was online.
Since then the companies offering the remote team collaboration tools have been expanding their product offering – look at the improvements made to Microsoft Teams for example. These companies are experiencing a heyday of sorts, and who knows, they may even become essential, and the sticky notes will become a thing of the past.
Communicating
Slack
Slack has been a bit of a recent standard for communications both at work and outside of the office. My last two employers have made great use of Slack. Slack is really a chat tool with channels, but on top of this it also has voice and video conferencing, as well as integrations with other tools, such a Jira. It is reasonably easy to get started with.
Microsoft Teams
Of course Microsoft has a tool for communications (even if it does own Skype!). Teams is a bit more complex, as it offers a calendar (that integrations with Microsoft Exchange), video and voice conference, broadcast mode for webinars, teams channels (that offer an ongoing video conference plus chat facility, plus chat only. It is a bit of a complex beast to get started with, but there is a lot on offer here, especially for larger organisations.
Zoom
Teleconferencing, video conferencing and webinars are zooms forte. During Covid-19 times Zoom’s popularity soared to new levels because of its ease of use. It does offer a bunch of integrations with other tools (like Slack does) – for example getting notifications from Asana or Wrike (see below for these project management tools). Zoom is free get started with for meetings running less than 40 minutes, with less than 100 participants.
Google Hangouts
A free tool from Google, offering video and voice conferencing. Really simple stuff. If you combine this with some of their other tools, like the Google office tools, you can run a small company remotely without having to pay for these collaboration tools. I think that’s a pretty good deal.
Skype
Skype is similar to Zoom, a voice and video conferencing tool that works after multiple platforms, including phones and web. You need to pay to use Skype to connect to regular landline phones, but it is free otherwise.
Collaborating
Collaboration tools have come a long way, both in terms of functionality but also techniques. Most of these online collaboration tools are not just online whiteboards, they have templates to facilitate various collaboration facilitation techniques, and the functionality to allow you to create your own.
Microsoft Whiteboard
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-365/microsoft-whiteboard/digital-whiteboard-app
The whiteboard offering from Microsoft comes in two flavours – the basic white you can draw on using a virtual pen (web version) and the native app that has the extended functionality you need for effective remote collaboration.
For more information visit the Microsoft site.
AWW – A Web Whiteboard
AWW is probably the quickest one to get started with, as you can create a whiteboard without logging in, although if you want to save it you will need to create an account and login. I’d have to say that it is extremely easy to quickly get up and running with this tool, and if you needed to create on the fly, then this is the tool. It also integrates well with Zoom.
Ziteboard
Ziteboard provide a range of functions you’d expect, plus a graph plotting add-on PDF import and export, customisable hotkeys, saving a board as a template, and various other cool features.
The paid versions provide integrated voice and video, as well as chat. If you need a whiteboard solution to integrate into your own application, then Ziteboard also have a ‘white label’ feature.
Sketchboard
Sketchboard distinguishes itself from the competition by providing a huge number of icons and illustrations to integrate into your whiteboards. You can upload your own images to the board, as well as draw lines and shapes. Using this combination you can do almost anything using the tool. The power though in this tool is sketching up ideas and brainstorming designs.
Mural
Online collaboration can be done simply using an online document tool like Google Docs and Confluence, or is a more structured and visual way using tools like Mural, which lets you structure the page in different ways to suit the type of collaboration you want. Mural is a tool that gives this ability, proving templates for a variety in collaboration formats, from basic team retrospectives and collaboration, to more complex techniques, like using design thinking techniques such as customer journey mapping across multiple skill sets. It does have a free option, and various levels of subscription right up to enterprise.
You can read more about Mural in our more extensive review here.
Stormboard
Stormboard is another online whiteboard or canvas with a great range of really cool features. It has been designed to keep meetings on track, and with a clear picture of what happened in the meeting and which tasks were assigned to whom. There’s a great selection of templates and wide range of reports and export features.
You can read more about Stormboard in our more extensive review here.
