7 tips & tools for effective "teamwork from home"

My learning of running a community of 15000 highly productive developers working from home. I have been working from home since 2016. I know some things about "work from home" and "teamwork" that you can trust. I condense my learning in 7 important and easy to follow practices.

While many of us are confident to work from home effectively as an individual. It is effective teamwork that drives output and keeps the organizations running. Ineffective teamwork leads to stress.

So how can you be a great team player when working from home? Follow these 7 simple tips

1. Have a dedicated space for work - define boundaries between your work space and family space
2. Communicate proactively - when you're working remotely, you need to communicate more effectively to make sure your team knows how you're progressing/thinking to achieve your work goals. Communicate more and be more transparent. Quick messages on team chat such as "hi, starting my work for the day" or communicating about status proactively even if it's not good e.g. "I didn't achieve today's goals, did some research on__" are example of an awesome remote team member
3. Always be on time for planned team calls, even 2 min late is LATE and can impact team morale negatively faster than coronavirus
4. Have some overlapping time with team - agree to have a fixed overlapping work time(at least 1-2 hrs everyday) with your team members so you can resolve those quick queries, brainstorm and move forward fast
5. Decide your work timings, break timings and family time; communicate the same with your family members, clearly ask them to not disturb and wait till your work time is over
6. Have an exercise routine - it can be running or workout at home or at gym. Do it for at least 10 mins everyday
7. Add some reliable tools in your toolbox- To make your life easier, here's a list of essential tools for the best "work from home" experience

• Zoom for online face to face meetings
• Google calendar to block your work and family time
• Calendly to make meeting scheduling easier
• Developer Diary every person is different and the best productivity advice is the one that comes from yourself. You can accelerate your awareness using this tool by understanding your work habits. This will help you take the right decisions to boost your and team's productivity.

Would love to hear your experience of working from home