Working intensively remote during this pandemic, we rediscovered an old practice of ours we call "comm-work". Basically we share screens (on Zoom) while talking

Working intensively remote during this pandemic, we rediscovered an old practice of ours we call "comm-work". Basically we share screens (on Zoom) while talking about whatever is going on at work. It's sorta of a "open-space" equivalent but online and with a mute button. Comm-work is more about showing than telling. A screen is always shared (or a whiteboard). We share emails on screen and sometimes write them together, we hear in into a customer call (like through Teams whilst we remain connected through Zoom), or we just tune out into our thing. It's an impromptu that can last anywhere from 20 to 90 minutes. It's not scheduled, it's not a standup, you don't have to report status (yuck!) or say anything. Just keep working if you feel like it. You can mute yourself or others. Most of our teammates (not all teams are the same) feel like sharing something, be it a milestone, a cool widget they found or a piece of code they feel are blocking. This works great because it just naturally surfaces issues before they are issues. The bad part, if anything, is that it is run by a manager who knows how to improvise, when to call one up (and call it off if someone has to take their kid to the doctor) or how to dig into the team's mind and create the meeting narrative. It also requires some degree of direct speak ("Hey you, whats up with that task?") which also does not work with every ego around. So this is not something that I think can be taught at seminars as it's not very scientific. It's just natural and basically arises whenever a chat room becomes to chatty. I personally believe comm-work is deeply more effective than any agile standup or kanban, which never ever worked for us. Being such an improv keeps people on their feet. They never know when the team is going to meet, what the next customer email will say. Your code editor becomes not so much of a secret place. I know it sounds almighty corny, but screen sharing is the ultimate sharing at a workplace.