Exploring Remote Teamwork
Summary
Due to the pioneering work by frontrunners such as Google, Dropbox, Slack, Microsoft, and Zoom this quick transition could be facilitated reasonably well, while improvements are also being made continuously. For four years STBY has been working as a trusted partner with Google, focusing on a series of collaborative projects that explore the use of digital tools for remote teamwork with the aim to identify opportunities to better support ongoing team productivity, communication, and alignment. A typical example could be a team worker who uses email with certain colleagues, and Slack, Whatsapp, or Google Chat with others, then getting tagged in online editing tools, and still keeping track of their other tasks somewhere else. The stories we collect through this method provide a rich and vivid sketch of how many teamworkers are jumping between multiple tools and platforms to collaborate, track progress, produce and deliver, and also to maintain social engagements with their remote colleagues. In addition to regular new projects within this extensive body of work, we also jointly make sure to put together the knowledge learned from previous studies into aggregated journeys and to use these to generate even more interests for cross-product-team collaboration.