Just before the start of the lockdown I wrote an article about the rare gift of time we had been given in terms of not having to commute to a physical office.
On a personal level, this has been fantastic for me. In the time I would have been commuting, I was able to fit in more training and complete my first half marathon.
I also said that within our companies we would have more time to do some of that intelligent thinking and get through our backlog of ‘nice to haves’ as well as urgent priorities. At 2i we have and continue to achieve this, especially with the launch of our new website.
But an added bonus, one I hadn’t even thought about back in March, is that not seeing your team makes you one team. We were a geographically dispersed workforce with offices in Glasgow, Edinburgh, London, and a number of client sites too. Some days we happened to be in the same office together, most days not.
This meant that some 'water cooler' conversations took place organically in a geographical location. Our best planning sessions were huddled round the whiteboard in our Glasgow Office with post it notes and colour coded ideas.
However, these weren’t our best planning sessions - our best planning sessions have happened since we have no physical location. Daily stand ups and virtual Kanban means that everyone has visibility of all of the outcomes we want to achieve. While the team is now physically ‘invisible’, the outcomes couldn’t be more visible.
