Being human in the absence of humans: A Q+A for remote product teams
How might we stay connected, motivated, and productive while remote?
In a time when we have all been converted to pixels on a screen, how do we share and maintain the wonderful qualities that make us human? As we navigate these strange waters, we are all left wondering how best to achieve stability in a newly remote life when everything around us is changing so quickly.
thoughtbot has spent 16 years building great software with distributed teams—for ourselves, our clients and the industry. Throughout these years, we’ve prided ourselves on keeping the “human” in human-centered design and development. This is an important torch to carry during these remote times, so we’d like to share our best-in-class practices to manage scope, parallelize work and collaborate asynchronously. Join a panel of our experts as they answer your pre-submitted questions and share favorite tools, tips, and more.
In this online Q&A session you will learn:
- How to adapt agile processes for remote work
- Recommended tech configurations
- How to stay close to customers and users
- Keeping communication and collaboration inclusive and effective
This free online Q&A is ideal for
- Founders and team leads who want to better support their remote product teams
- Managers struggling to facilitate productive collaboration and product progress
- Designers and developers looking to adapt and optimize their workflows
- Anyone seeking an hour of human interaction!
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Hawley Brett, Developer, thoughtbot
Hawley is a web developer at thoughtbot with experience building applications up and down the stack. She has worked on many apps for civic engagement including her time on the fully-remote team at MoveOn.org as a software engineer. Hawley is passionate about helping teams maintain inclusive communication and collaboration, especially in challenging remote environments.
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Kyle Fiedler, CDO, thoughtbot
As Chief Design Officer, Kyle leads the thoughtbot product design team. He uses tools such as research, design thinking, design sprints, and Jobs-to-be-Done to help him best understand what a product is trying to solve, what potential solutions look like, and then validating those solutions. For over 10 years at thoughtbot, Kyle has applied these tools both in person and on distributed teams.
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German Velasco, Development Team Lead, thoughtbot
German is a Senior Developer and team lead at thoughtbot. Working remotely for the past 2 years, he has become a go-to source of best practices and tool recommendations for folks seeking to adapt their workflows for productive and fulfilling work-from-home scenarios that maintain an in-person, collaborative feel.