The Covid-19 pandemic, which has suddenly taken the top spot on the world agenda in the last few months, has affected almost all of our working lives. With the rapid spread of the pandemic, technology companies have also taken measures regarding their working structures. Many companies have switched to the remote working system in order to maintain the continuity of business while maintaining social distance. With the transition to the new system, different methods have been developed to minimize the problems caused by environmental conditions and external factors.
Which communication tools do technology teams prefer?
In this period when the number of people working remotely increased, the software tools used by agile software teams for meetings also competed with each other. According to the results of the survey and research; Tech teams use “Zoom” the most, followed by “Teams” and “Skype”. The biggest benefits of software tools in running meetings are; It contains many communication features such as voice, video, messaging, screen sharing, allowing collective participation. Thanks to these features, although it is not as effective as face-to-face meeting, the lack of communication can be eliminated and business continuity can be ensured. The most preferred method is to conduct meetings with the microphone open. Thus, team members can express themselves verbally. Some teams, on the other hand, prefer to conduct their meetings with the camera on in order to achieve higher communication. Communication options such as messaging and e-mail are less preferred over the powerful communication methods of software tools such as audio and video.
What are the potential problems foreseen in online meetings?
Although the software tools used during remote meetings offer effective solution methods to the employees in order to advance the process in the best way, they can cause minor problems in some cases. The most common of these problems is the late participation in the meeting due to technical reasons such as poor internet connection and the loss of time due to waiting for all team members to be involved when important meetings are to be held. Since these technical problems encountered in some cases also cause a lack of voice, they may result in conversations within the team at the same time or talking about situations independent of the subject. Many situations can be encountered, such as the inability to fully talk about some issues due to lack of time or lack of intelligibility, voices coming from the external environment causing distraction due to the connections being made from outside the company, and the inability to follow the participants in multi-participant meetings. However, as a result of the observations, it was noticed that these situations were not seen very often, so they did not become a problem.
In general, no power, including Covid-19, can stop the efficient working system of agile software teams. The problems caused by technical inadequacies, changes in the working environment and meeting planning are eliminated by taking various precautions. As mentioned in the Agile manifesto: “The team periodically reflects on how it can be more effective and efficient, and adjusts and adjusts its behavior accordingly.”