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A retrospective is an integral part of product management. It’s a dedicated timeframe where teams reflect on what has happened and learn how to do better. They are a place to celebrate success and understand failure. Only then can teams work towards continuous improvement.

However, many still do not know how to run a retrospective successfully.

Retrospectives promote knowledge and value sharing while working together towards a common solution. Employees can express concerns freely through a sense of trust and open communication.

They are also a form of risk mitigation. By evaluating tasks on a recurring basis, employees are able to spot issues early on. They can solve them before they become detrimental. At the end of a retrospective, teams are left with a clean slate, ready to take on the next sprint.

Retrospectives speak to the wider advantage of running agile projects that break a large output into smaller tasks. If you’re adopting an Agile project management framework, consider implementing these meetings.

‍According to PwC, agile projects are 28% more successful than traditional projects. It is no surprise that agile methodology is used by companies such as Apple, IBM, Microsoft, and Procter & Gamble. Agile practices are not only an effective strategy to make sure that a team is effective. They also make sure everyone feels listened to and valued.

If you are looking to foster agile practices in a remote setting, knowing how to run a retrospective is paramount.

What is a remote retrospective?

A remote retrospective is a virtual team meeting that occurs at the end of a project or sprint. Team members can think about and discuss how they can improve their future performance and what went wrong. The positives are also included and successful work is celebrated.

Keep in mind that a retrospective differs from a mere review meeting. A review meeting would entail team members presenting their completed work. However, a retrospective has a specific goal: to make sure work is continuously improved by identifying strengths and weaknesses.

A remote retrospective addresses specific questions:

• Which tasks have carried over?
• What are the completed tasks in a sprint?
• Which tasks are no longer necessary?
• How can we improve the project in the future?

How to run a retrospective: Agile methodology in remote settings

A remote retrospective is part of the wider frame of agile methodology in project management. Agile methodology is a way to manage a project by breaking it into smaller tasks and phases - sprints.

A sprint is a timeframe with a clear start and due dates where a team completes a set amount of tasks. You are breaking down large and complex projects into bite-sized pieces to improve productivity.

Remote retrospectives promote continuous improvement as work is regularly evaluated and then enhanced.

Benefits of a remote retrospective

Remote retrospectives are an integral part of ensuring project management is effective and the workflow runs successfully. Let’s take a look at some of the benefits of running a remote sprint retrospective.

• Continuous improvement: By reflecting on what went wrong and what went right, a retrospective fosters continuous improvement throughout a whole project.
• Team empowerment: Team members have a voice in the retrospective and the ability to change the way they work. This makes a team feel empowered as if they are taking charge together.
• Increased productivity: The agile methodology increases productivity. A DeltaMatrix study found that agile teams are 25% more productive and 50% faster to market than other teams.
• Highly documented: Conducting a retrospective remotely facilitates the documentation process, making task management easier afterward. Managers can assign tasks, track progress, and access files without having to rely on meetings or chat messages.
• Open communication: Speaking freely (albeit politely) is key to team relations. Retrospectives allow team members to evaluate their work and the work of others in a safe and honest space. Many feel more comfortable speaking up in a virtual setting, rather than in person, according to Indeed.
• Risk mitigation: Retrospectives allow you to fix issues early on in the process, rather than after completing an entire project. By evaluating each sprint, team members can fix the small issues before they become large ones.

5 Steps to Follow Before a Remote Retrospective

If you are wondering how to run a sprint retrospective, make sure to prepare before it even happens. Let’s take a look at the 5 steps to follow before a remote retrospective.

1. Document information

Team members should document all the materials and information throughout their sprint. This is essential in making sure a remote retro runs smoothly. Team members can prepare any questions they might have beforehand. They can also understand beforehand what each team member has been working on.

This will reduce any time-wasting during the meeting. You do not want to spend the meeting discussing completed work. It is not a sprint review where you present your tasks. Rather, you want to evaluate its quality and discuss how to keep improving it.

However, having the right remote work tools is crucial to ensuring this is possible. With Rock, you can document every step taken to complete a sprint, from individual tasks, notes, feedback, and more.

2. Set clear agenda with discussion points

Managers should set discussion points in advance. It's important to establish a clear blueprint that you can use to stay on topic during the retrospective. Managers do not need to be too strict to make the retrospective feel too cold and formal.

However, it’s helpful to have these guidelines. If you’re looking for some retrospective template questions, here are some useful ones:

• Where and when did it go wrong in this sprint?
• What went better than expected in this sprint?
• What do you expect and from whom?
• What helps you be successful as a team?
• What did you learn during this sprint?
• What was your biggest challenge?
• What problems came up most often?
• Would we have benefited from a different approach?
• What should we do differently next time?
• How can we improve this entire process?
• What don’t we want to change?
• What are we still unsure about?

You can also check our meeting agenda examples to further structure your meetings and make sure they are productive and relevant.

3. Share remote retro notes at least 48 hours before

Whoever is organizing the remote retrospective should share any important information at least 48 hours prior. This includes the decided-upon discussion points and any other necessary materials. This reduces time wasting and allows team members to clarify any questions before coming into the retrospective.

Managers can easily send these through Rock. They can also send a quick Loom where they explain all the discussion points and answer any questions. By leveraging asynchronous work through tasks, notes and files, teams can get a lot of the work done in advance.

This way the retrospective meeting can focus on the most important points.

4. Be mindful of invitees

Do not invite people to the remote retrospective that do not need to be there. Be mindful of everyone’s time. If someone only worked on a small task in a sprint, chances are they do not need to be there.A retrospective can also get messy if there are too many people involved.

While cross functional collaboration is valuable, a certain department might not need to be present. In fact, you want to foster a safe environment where everyone feels comfortable speaking out. A smaller team might not feel safe doing so in the presence of “outsiders”.

5. Introduce fun retrospective ideas for remote teams

Running a remote retrospective might sound challenging, but you can be creative and make it a unique experience. There are plenty of creative virtual retrospective ideas to use. A fun one could be having interesting virtual backgrounds. Set a theme beforehand, maybe it's your team's favorite movie or favorite color.

While sticking to the agenda is important, think about some check-in questions for meetings or quick icebreakers.

For example, ask your team members to go around the room and say one thing they would bring to a deserted island. Fun retrospectives will keep your team members engaged. We also recommend running virtual retro ideas by your team members and giving them a chance to get creative.

5 Steps to Follow During a Remote Retrospective

To make sure your sprint retrospective runs as planned, here are 5 steps to follow during a remote retrospective.

1. Designate a leader

Everyone should have their voice valued in a retrospective and a chance to express their concerns. A designated leader makes sure everyone gets the chance to speak, nurturing a fair environment.

The leader does not need to be a manager. Switching up the leader after every sprint is a great way of making sure every team member feels valued.

2. Nurture creativity

A remote retrospective is not too heavy or formal. While structure is important, fostering a creative environment is equally necessary. Every team member needs to feel like they can express a diversity of opinions and feedback.

Only then will they produce innovative outputs going forward.Being open to creativity will boost your team’s engagement, making them feel more connected to other employees and the company.

According to a Gallup report, companies with a highly engaged workforce have 21% higher profitability and 17% higher productivity.

3. Stay on topic

While creative strategies have their place in a retrospective, staying on topic is important. This is not the time for informal conversations about the weather. You can set time aside for these.

The leader is key here. They must guide the discussion within the designated guidelines and every main point addressed.

Whenever the conversation is going too off-topic, they should bring the team back to the discussion points at hand. However, without the prior preparation of a clear agenda, this will be hard to do.

4. Recognition matters

A retrospective is not just about righting wrongs. Managers should ensure they recognize their employees and make them feel valued. A study found that 37% of employees feel most encouraged by personal recognition.

Show your appreciation for what went right during the sprint and recognize those individuals publicly. By highlighting what did go right, improvement becomes continuous and natural. You will also be paving the way for better performance and driving team members to become more productive.

5. How to run a retrospective: Set next steps

A successful retrospective entails setting up actionable next steps. Ideas are great, but how will you implement them?

Too often, those leading retrospectives forget to actually set a framework to execute new ideas.  Make sure to figure out how tasks will progress to put these ideas into practice. Who will take on what tasks and in what timeframe?

The next steps should also be realistic so as to not overwhelm your whole team. Again, this is where everyone’s input should be equally respected.

5 Actions to Take After a Remote Retrospective

Now that you know how to run a retrospective, what comes next? A remote retrospective is important in itself. However, the actions that come after are perhaps even more impactful.

Here are 5 actions to take after a remote retrospective.

1. Set tasks & deadlines with online retrospective tools

During the retrospective, you will loosely discuss your next steps or whether you are starting a new project. After the meeting, it’s time to get these down on “paper” and set those deadlines. Make sure these are reasonable and respect the decisions discussed in the retrospective.

Aligned with agile methodology, set up another sprint where your team will work to complete a set of smaller tasks. Rock simplifies such task management. You can update the task board with new tasks, choose your time frames, and assign various assignees.

You can then view your tasks in a calendar, list, board, or compact view for better organization.

2. Gather feedback

A post-meeting feedback survey is a great way to measure your retrospective’s success.

As a leader, you won’t always know what was on your team members’ minds. Through an anonymous survey, they can be as honest as possible without the fear of judgment.

You can also have 1-1 meetings with each of your team members if you want more extensive feedback. For many, this is a safer environment that makes employees more comfortable communicating honestly.Whatever tool you decide to use to gather feedback, make sure to act upon it.

If there were issues expressed, brainstorm how you can improve your next retrospective. A retrospective does not just lead to the improvement of projects, but also of your management skills.

3. Share retrospective materials

The recording of the retrospective should be easily accessible for those who want to refer back to it. It could very well be that team members forget all the previously discussed details. This way, everything is right where you need it.

With Rock, you can share a video attachment in the notes feature with a list of the next steps to take. The comment section allows employees to ask any questions about the attachment or even provide more feedback.

Having such organized documentation will make the sprint workflow run smoother. It could also be beneficial for the next retrospective to look back at the progress made.

4. Follow up with the team

Agile methodology is all about continuous progress and improvement. After a retrospective, you’re not done and dusted. It’s necessary that managers follow up with their team so that they can continue to produce high-quality work.

A remote team meeting could be a way to follow up. However, if you see that an individual has a more complicated task, a 1-1 is always a good idea.According to Forbes, one-on-ones are one of the most important productivity tools that managers can use.

When conducted properly, a 1-1 is a valuable way to build trust and make an employee feel supported.

5. Highlight new goals and metrics

This point is different from just setting deadlines and tasks, that’s more of an project management task.

Highlighting newly established goals is what will drive productivity within your team and motivate them to reach such objectives.

What metrics are you trying to reach? Perhaps you came to the conclusion that you must reevaluate some of your previous goals. Maybe you planned to have 5 websites developed, but only finished 3.

Make the necessary adaptations to goals so that you can more realistically evaluate them in the next retrospective.  

How to run a remote retrospective: common mistakes to avoid

Remote retrospectives can easily go wrong. Not because they are remote, but because they often involve various stakeholders with different outlooks. Without the right structure, a retrospective won't achieve its objectives.

Here are common mistakes to avoid in a remote retro:

• Lack of prior preparation: Without prior preparation, your retrospective will likely be a mess. To prevent any disorganization, prepare a guideline with discussion questions beforehand
• Going off-topic: Sticking to an agenda is key. Without a set goal and blueprint for the discussion, it won’t be a real retrospective. Instead, team members will go off-topic and not be able to foster improvement. This meeting is not the time for an informal conversation about your team’s personal life.
• No clear actions set after meeting: Even if your team members were able to evaluate their work successfully, don't neglect the actionable steps that follow. To ensure continuous improvement, make sure that clear actions are set and tasks are assigned.
• Too many voices: A common mistake is inviting too many people to the retrospective. Too many opinions can lead the meeting to focus on unnecessary factors. It can also be detrimental to open communication within a team as some might feel uncomfortable voicing their opinions. Make sure to invite those that need to be there only and that every voice has equal opportunity.

How to run remote retrospectives with Rock

Agile practices are all about breaking daunting and complex tasks into manageable ones. It requires organized task management where everything is documented and available for team members to review. Rock is an online retrospective tool that provides an all-in-one messaging with tasks, notes, files and so much more.

Rock is so effective that it avoids teams having to plan a retrospective altogether at times. Let’s be honest. Too many of us spend an absurd amount of time in unproductive meetings, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Stay mindful of the relevance of scheduling a retrospective. Meeting every day might be less productive compared to a retrospective every 2 weeks or once a month.

How to run a retrospective with Rock

Rock makes it so that not only the retrospective runs smoothly, but also the aftermath that follows. Employees can easily implement the goals defined in the retrospective with quick access to all the necessary materials:

• Meetings: Jump on a Zoom or Google Meet call for your retrospective.
• Tasks: Manage tasks, assign them to employees, and even start a new sprint. Managers can add labels and filters to these including their urgency.
• Notes: Attach a video of the retrospective and upload it with notes so it is easily accessible to all. Team members can also comment on any feedback and additional questions with notes or files. You can also send out a video loom where you present the discussion guidelines prior to the retrospective.
• Files: Connect cloud storage providers to your space and attach cloud files from Google Drive, Dropbox, Onedrive and more to your tasks and notes.

A retrospective with Rock is also a lot less time-consuming. Rock brings together different ways to communicate such messages, tasks, files and notes into one place. Tightly connected, you can add files to notes or mention tasks in messages.

All in all, the key to conducting a successful remote retrospective is having access to the right online retrospective tools.

As an all-in-one alternative, Rock provides full-fledged project management functionality in one place. Features allow both employees, managers and external stakeholders to prepare, conduct, and participate in retrospectives in an intuitive manner.

Workspaces have arrived! With workspaces, you can easily group and manage spaces and people together in one place. Set up a workspace for your marketing team, a specific client, or any other functional team and give everybody access to the same spaces by sharing the workspace link. Invite people to your workspace and manage their permissions and access from your workspace settings.

This release also includes a Rock bot for Slack, pinboard across devices, and reminders to make sure you don’t miss important deadlines.

Read along to learn more about this release!

Workspaces

You can now organize your team and spaces in a single place with workspaces. Once you create a workspace, everyone is directly added to it. Quickly onboard new people to Rock and have them communicate and collaborate in multiple spaces without sending separate space invites.

Everyone you invite to a workspace will have access to all selected spaces. Workspaces allow you to get your team more organized in a bunch of different ways:

• Add or remove spaces from a workspace so everyone has access to the right set of spaces.
• Quickly invite users to your workspace with a workspace link or by email. You can add a pin code to entering your workspace as an additional security measure.
• Manage user permissions for all spaces in a workspace with guest, member, or admin permissions for each user in your workspace.
• Add, manage and remove users from your workspace with a dedicated user management panel.

Workspaces can be used in a lot of different ways. Here are some suggestions from the Rock team:

1. Communicate with your team

Most teams have multiple spaces where everyone from the team should be present. Think of an All-Hands for company announcements or a watercooler/random space where your team can share memes, GIFs, or non-work related topics. Each new workspace comes with 4 spaces to get things going with your team:

• All hands: General communications, announcements and team discussions.
• Random: Your very own water cooler space. Share GIFs, memes and get to know your team better!
• Goals & Objectives: What are you trying to achieve as a team? Set milestones, goals and objectives and track them with this space.
• Resource Center: Rock is all about documentation. Connect cloud file storage providers, upload documents and define company policies in notes or topics.

You can easily manage spaces once the workspace has been created. Add more spaces, adjust the template spaces, or remove them if you don’t need them.

2. Building communities with workspaces

Want to bring everyone together in a community? Workspaces are the solution you have been looking for! Each Rock space accommodates up to 500 people and can be used for messaging, topics, notes, tasks, and so much more!

Bring together your community on Rock with your workspace’s very own Quick Connect link or manually send email invites to the users you want to add to your community. Workspace admins can quickly make sure users have guest or member permissions in all spaces. Give a new moderator admin status in all spaces or remove a user if they are no longer welcome in the community.

3. Workspaces for different business functions

If you have different business functions in your team such as marketing, engineering, customer support, or operations - workspaces can make it so much easier to get things organized. Create workspaces by business function and invite relevant people to more easily manage your different workflows.

Quickly start new projects without sending invites as everyone in the workspace is directly added. New hires or team members can also be seamlessly added to the whole workspace, so they always have access to the spaces they need to be in.

4. Client and partner workspaces

Bring client attention and support to the next level with workspaces. Use multiple spaces for different activities and make sure that clients get the care and attention they deserve. Manage the members in a client workspace to make sure that the correct account manager, support or salesperson is connected with the client across spaces.

Workspaces across the free and paid plans

Workspaces are available for both the free and paid plans. While every free user gets 1 workspace with up to 10 spaces, paid plans get a higher limit on the number of workspaces and spaces that can be added to each. Here’s how it works:

• FREE: 1 workspace with up to 10 Spaces
• PRO: 3 workspaces with up to 20 Spaces
• TEAMS5: 10 workspaces with up to 50 Spaces

TEAMS 10, 20 and 30 will have more workspaces with the same space limit. Curious to learn more about workspaces? Check out this dedicated guide.

Rock bot for Slack

Receive notifications on Slack for Rock updates. This Rock bot for Slack allows you to set up custom notifications in Slack when new tasks, notes or topics are created in Rock. You can also configure the bot to receive an update in Slack when a task, note or topic is edited on Rock.

The notification message on Slack you receive contains a direct link to Rock alongside some object details including the title, description and author of the new object. For object updates you receive a message with a direct link to the task, note or topic that was changed on Rock.

Curious to learn more about the Rock bot for Slack? Check out this dedicated product guide!

Note: Your space needs to be changed to PRO if you want to set up a Rock to Slack automation.

Pinboard across devices [PRO & TEAMS]

In addition to the pinboard feature on mobile launched with the previous release, you can now also pin items relevant to your space on web and desktop. The pinboard was added to Rock spaces to make it easier to document and centralize important communications.

You can store tasks, notes, messages, and so much more in a panel accessible to everyone in a space.

Pinboards can be a powerful tool for teams that are looking into setting up a dedicated knowledge base, releasing frequent announcements, have urgent activities that involve everyone in a space, or anything else that involves most users in a space.

You can access the feature in PRO spaces by clicking on the pin icon next to the space name. Curious to learn more about the pinboard? Check out this dedicated product guide for more information!

Reminders

Don’t leave your tasks hanging with reminders! You can now set reminders on Tasks to receive a notification in advance of the official due date. There are currently 5 different reminders you can configure:

• 5 minutes before the due date
• 10 minutes before the due date
• 30 minutes before the due date
• 1 hour before the due date
• 1 day before the due date

You can also select which user receives the reminder on a task. Note that only the assignees and the person setting the reminder will appear in the panel.If you want to select anyone else, you will have to add them as an assignee.

Mobile updates

We have added a bunch of improvements to the mobile experience.

This product release includes the following changes and fixes to the mobile apps:

• Workspaces: Collaborate in more organized ways by organizing your team and spaces in a single place.
• Reminders: Set custom reminders for tasks to never miss a deadline again!
• Rock bot for Slack: Configure a Rock bot in your Slack space to receive notifications for updates to tasks, notes and topics on Rock.
• A whole lot of bug fixes and smaller improvements.

Download the mobile app

Questions about this release? Feel free to leave us a message in the Rock Support & Updates space or open a space with us.

Fosca Cordidonne started using Rock a little over a year ago. Rock became her go-to project management and messaging platform after an online search for alternatives.

"I find Rock to be far superior to any other tool I've tried (and I assure you I've tried pretty much all of them!)" says Fosca.

Fosca works as a UX/UI designer and low-code developer. As a digital artisan she focuses on creating digital experiences for startups, small businesses and other clients. Her projects include websites and other personalised digital products and experiences.

In her free time she enjoys retrogaming and pizza, something very typical for creative and low-code freelancers, she says!

Reliable and all-in-one functionality makes it easier for freelancers like Fosca to get work done

Fosca says that what makes Rock great for her is the combination of tasks, messaging, and files in a single tool. Many other popular tools do not have that all-in-one approach. Most tools either focus on project management or on communication but not both at once.

Quick and personal support is also a highlight of Fosca’s experience on Rock: ‘Last but not least, the best support experience I have ever had! The team continually seeks feedback from its users and is so easy to get in touch with.’

Day-to-day client management becomes a breeze with all-in-one messaging

When working with many different clients as a freelancer, collaborating through different channels can become a real challenge.

‘As soon as I started freelancing for startups, I realized that I urgently needed a platform where I could easily save documents, assign tasks and communicate with my clients.’

‍Getting work done in one place is the safest way to make sure that nothing gets missed out. It also helps keep everyone on the same page. Fosca creates a space for every client or organization she works with.

She continues all communication, collaboration, tasks, and file sharing in that dedicated space. This way everything can be accessed easily by all parties involved.

Her clients often start using Rock as well. Fosca says, I show clients how to use Rock, they become autonomous and start creating tasks, notes or topics themselves.’ Clients get used to Rock and the collaboration within the platform becomes even smoother. Because Rock is very intuitive and simple to use, clients get on board in no time!

Rock + Notion + Cosmos is all Fosca needs to manage her client communication and collaboration

Three online platforms are crucial for Fosca’s online communication and collaboration. She uses a combination of Rock, Notion and Cosmos to document information, give work updates and connect in-person when needed.

Cosmos is a virtual office where Fosca and her clients meet up synchronously. Often used by remote and hybrid teams, Cosmos creates personal experiences and a sense of belonging to the remote workers.

New users can create avatars, personalize their office space and mingle with others. It gives a great personal touch when communicating in remote environments!

Fosca uses Notion for file storage and documentation. Clients can quickly access relevant project information, design wiki’s and important docs in an organized manner.

Rock offers a Notion integration which allows users to add project information directly into the Files mini-app. This way freelancers like Fosca can quickly share new updates with clients, and even attach Notion files to tasks.

Rock brings everything together with integrated messaging and tasks. The combination of Cosmos + Notion + Rock allows freelancers to truly balance synchronous and asynchronous work.

This combination allows Fosca to reduce the number of apps she uses on the daily, and collaborate in a few places only!

What Rock functionality should freelancers check out?

Fosca highlights two features to check out for freelancers: the Topics mini-app and calendar view in the Tasks mini-app.The Topics mini app can be a powerful ally for freelancers.

‘It’s great to have conversations organized by topic inside a space. It gives our communication more structure.’

The Topics mini-app can be compared to threads, but more organized. It works well when you aim to discuss things asynchronously, as everyone can respond to a topic in their own time and still keep it well structured!

You can also quickly find information or discussions back as you don’t have to scroll past thousands of messages. You can learn more about the Topics mini-app here.

Fosca also recommends checking out the calendar view in the Tasks mini-app. Time management is essential for freelancers and the calendar view helps to improve it. It allows freelancers to keep track of important deadlines or show deliverable dates to clients with a timeline.

It is also possible to create, edit and filter tasks from the Calendar View which enhances your overview on projects.

How to get started with Rock as a freelancer

Fosca recommends Rock to any freelancer who is looking for a reliable and feature-rich tool: ‘Explore Rock, there are many features that you haven't even noticed yet!’

Some tips from Fosca for freelancers who are starting to transform their work via Rock:

• Read guides on the help center: Rock has a lot of helpful material on how to use different mini-apps. Also, you can find step-by-step guides on integrations or imports from other tools.
• Bring your clients to Rock: centralize your communication by creating a dedicated space for each client. You can easily do that by sharing your Quick Connect link. Bring in a personal touch in your interactions by combining Rock with tools like Cosmos.
• Help clients become autonomous: once your clients are familiar with Rock, your work becomes so much easier! Help them to get on board by setting up a short session to introduce them to Rock. Alternatively, share relevant materials on getting started.
• Make use of cloud storage integrations: file sharing is important for any freelancer! Integrate your preferred storage tool. Besides Notion, you can integrate Figma, Google Drive, ACC, Dropbox and more.

Fosca’s first-hand experience shows that freelancers can enhance their productivity and go headache-free by using the all-in-one approach on Rock. Bringing your clients to one platform saves time and allows you to focus on the results!

If you would like to get to know more about Fosca’s work or/and her experience on Rock, feel free to get in touch with her via Rock, Linkedin, Instagram or Behance.

Are you rarely communicating with people across functions in your company, except for at the occasional Christmas party? Then it might be time to collaborate with cross-functional teams.

Bridging the gap between different teams is important as you can achieve better results and widen team expertise.

Collaborating across functions allows employees to resolve issues and produce projects with perspectives and knowledge.

What is cross-functional collaboration?

Cross functional collaboration involves teams with different priorities and responsibilities in an organization working together for a common goal. This can entail joining forces on a specific project or collaborating long-term as an ongoing process.

Permanent collaboration tends to be more successful, according to the Harvard Business Review.

Implementing cross functional collaboration can be challenging, particularly in a remote setting. It takes a shift in the entire business culture.

Due to physical distance, your product marketing team can’t just walk down the hallway to ask the social media team a question. So why go through all the trouble?

Benefits of Cross Functional Collaboration

Cross functional collaboration eases chaos by building harmony across business functions in a team. According to Forbes Advisor, cross functional team collaboration allows employees to efficiently tackle problems by working with various viewpoints and expertise.

When different teams collaborate, innovation and productivity increase. It fosters new relationships between teams that would have never crossed paths. This creates an innovative environment and space for fresh ideas.

The common goals of an organization are promoted through cross collaboration. Without it, a team just focuses on particular issues related to their role. It allows teams to see the big picture, rather than having tunnel vision. For example, customer success issues with clients might not feel like a priority to the marketing team that wants to launch a new product.

Nevertheless, both projects might see improvement if teams collaborate to include key customer pain points in the communications for the product launch. Working collaboratively on projects means that the goals of the organization are all aligned.

Working in isolation is often inefficient, restricts innovation, and is time-consuming. Along with hitting those KPIs, the well-being of team members in a remote setting improves by avoiding such a business culture.

How to Improve Collaboration: Cross Functional Teams

Bridging the gap across teams can be difficult, particularly in a remote work setting. Cross functional partnerships must be deliberate in such a setting. Let’s take a look at how you can improve collaboration in cross functional teams in a remote setting.

Here are our five main tips to collaborate cross-functionally:

1. Foster personal relationships first, get to know employees across departments
2. Find cross collaboration meaning and value with shared goals across departments
3. Develop clear collaboration plans
4. Send a weekly loom to increase collaboration
5. Introduce a sub-space for communication within different teams

1. Start building company-wide relationships

The first step is to break the ice and encourage everyone to get to know each other. This is a lot more intuitive in a physical setting. Nonetheless, it can still be successful when done remotely with the right tools.

Without a sense of trust and communication, different departments are unlikely to want to work together.

Book some old-fashioned team bonding time, but across departments. Schedule short 1:1 coffee chats where employees from different departments can take a break from work and meet a coworker. You can also look into opening virtual coworking slots with tools such as Gather if the team is looking to connect more.

Transition to more work-related events such as company-wide “show and tells”.

Employees present projects they are working on and other teams from different departments can provide input with their expertise and knowledge. It could potentially lead to useful feedback or an innovative new project emerging from discussions.

2. Establish a new set of shared goals

A major challenge you might face to promote teams to collaborate cross-functionally is a misalignment of priorities.

If you assign a collaborative project, team members of a particular department might feel like that task is not a priority. Find shared goals that benefit all involved to avoid the feeling that departments are working toward opposite ends.

A common goal could be a user-focused goal that all departments benefit from. This collaborative approach allows all departments to be focused on the user, whilst bringing in a diverse expert point of view.

At times, it might seem that departments are working towards opposite goals, but this is not the case. The entire business structure is carefully considered and risks assessed by providing different perspectives on a project.

For example, the product marketing team is looking to set up a new help center, but SEO and content is only focused on increasing traffic. Value of the help center also depends on how easy help material is to find for users, which is where the SEO team can provide value to the end project.

Both teams can share a metric in the project to work towards the same goal: creating seamless education flows for users.

3. Set up a collaboration plan

Assign a project that lies at the intersection of two different functions and set a clear plan. Think outside the box. What business functions rarely work together but could generate an innovative project? Business functions that often clash in their way of thinking could be your best bet.

For example, the marketing and IT departments. Putting distinct types of people together leads to cutting-edge ideas that would otherwise never occur. The key to setting a collaborative project in a remote setting is to present clear proposals. Identify a shared goal, timeline and time commitment.

Starting a new project, especially when it involves various stakeholders, can feel like a time-consuming and scary task. With a clear collaboration plan, both parties have a clear understanding of the task at hand and are more likely to be eager to collaborate.

Having a set plan is especially important if you are an employee looking to collaborate with someone from another department. Employees are not always welcoming to the pitching of new projects. Be respectful of them by outlining their workload and role honestly.

Define each individual activity in the project, where ownership lies, and how it all concludes in a common goal.

4. Replace standups with weekly looms

Another easy way to foster collaboration remotely is to plan an asynchronous weekly standup that is open to all departments. Instead of the traditional weekly standup you can share short-form videos through Loom with information that might be interesting to the whole team.

A virtual loom actually makes it easier for people with different roles to add their thoughts and feedback. People can add comments at certain timestamps, and the author of the loom receives a notification that someone has added new comments.

People can be more thoughtful of their feedback when done asynchronously. Instead of being limited to a 20 minute standup every morning they can add a comment to a loom or watch a new standup when they have time.

Maybe someone from customer service or finance makes a point you had not considered and offers solutions. You might even find that they are willing to connect and get involved in the project to help you out.

5. Sub-space for communication

While a weekly loom goes a long way, having a set sub-space for communication fosters a long-term open environment for employees in different roles.

Back in the office, people with different functions were likely to bump into each other in the hallway or during their coffee breaks. They were likely to talk about their ongoing projects and the roadblocks they were facing. In a remote setting, introducing a digital sub-space for communication that replaces these moments is imperative.

Instead of having a single chat for the product marketing or SEO team, collaboration should be more centered. For example, set up a sub-space for all employees to discuss new projects, goals and objectives under the marketing umbrella.

Sending a message to pitch a collaborative project or asking for a different point of view will become an intuitive part of the workday.

Using Rock for Cross Functional Collaboration

The lack of effective cross functional collaboration can negatively impact the growth of a company, even in “normal times”. According to Accenture, this can prove disastrous in times of economic downturn.

While improving collaboration is more easily achieved when a common workspace is shared, there are plenty of technological solutions to mitigate remote collaboration issues.

Rock’s all-in-one functionality makes collaboration with cross functional teams a walk in the park. Rock empowers remote teams to be more productive with full-fledged project management in one place.

Change how you collaborate remotely with multimodal communication that allows you to collaborate in different ways through structured documentation, communication and project management.

While employees will not be running into each other at lunchtime, Rock’s features still foster an environment of open collaboration and communication.

Collaboration with Rock: Task Management and Organization

Task management is highly organized on Rock and makes collaboration simple. If you want two employees of different functions to collaborate, you can assign a task to both. You can also filter through all tasks to see which ones have more than one assignee to track their collaborative progress.

If you find that some employees have no converging tasks, think of ways in which these could collaborate through their distinct areas of expertise. Remote collaboration is also more organized than in the traditional workplace as everything is highly documented.

When two employees collaborate on a task, they can document details with attachments, statuses, and descriptions of each task. This makes it easy for a third party to join in the process at any stage and nurtures the ongoing collaboration.

A third employee can figure out what still needs to be done and then go on to document their progress on the task. With asynchronous work features that aid in communication and task management, Rock fosters cross functional collaboration.

From real-time messaging, video looms, and more, Rock mitigates the collaboration challenges that arise in a remote setting.

Time is lost when you spend most of your day tracking down information or finding documents. These best practices for staying organized at work will be key if you're looking to organize your day-to-day activities and maximize productivity.

Your current projects have moving parts that you need to stay on top of. Organized work allows you to keep all pieces together. Whether that’s a variety of stakeholders, clients, and team members to work with. Your project may also have multiple stages and phases that should be properly managed.

Being more organized streamlines your activities, allows you to focus, and reduces your stress levels. You should spend time on things that maximize your productivity so you can be confident in a job well done.

Save yourself time and keep deadlines at bay by following these simple tips. While staying organized looks different for every person, these best practices shed light on how to organize a project. Make sure to follow them and set yourself up for success in any remote work environment.

1. Use asynchronous communication as much as possible

Relying on asynchronous work makes it easy to reference past conversations or decisions. Asynchronous communication, like messages or tasks, allow you to document information. Work becomes a relay race instead of a sprint. Pass over work when you’re done with it or get started with new tasks without depending on others.

Synchronous work, like messages or meetings should be kept for more urgent or creative matters. As a rule of thumb: if communication is very urgent or requires creative input, go synchronous. Everything else, communicate asynchronously.

2. Reduce the number of meetings

Keep your meetings for when you need to have important, complex conversations. When you have meetings, make the most of them by sharing an agenda ahead of time to ensure a defined plan and objective.

If you’re feeling lost, check out this meeting agenda examples article for some tips on getting the best agenda prepared ahead of your next meeting.

In addition, you should summarize the meeting at the end. Reiterate any action items to confirm that everyone understands what they have been asked for. After meetings, make the notes available to your team and add them to project documentation and weekly to do list template as needed.

3. Start organizing projects with tasks

Wondering how to organize multiple projects at work at once? With task management, you can organize your to-do list template so you never miss a thing. Assign a task to a collaborator and rest assured you’ll be able to track their progress.

With tasks you can make sure things get assigned to the correct person with sufficient background information and deadline for the task. Rock offers multiple task views so you can switch between lists, boards, and calendars for free. Use labels to categorize tasks in a more visible way.

You can also filter by labels to get a subset of tasks in your task view. In addition, you can sort tasks by priority level to make sure that new team activity is organizing projects by priority rather than anything else. Feature rich task functionality is essential to properly organize project goals.

Get a high-level overview of project progress, and resolve any roadblocks on the horizon with a visual work management system that is with you in every step of the way.

When you have a new project, you can create a space for and bring everyone who needs to be included—like product managers, designers, and engineers—together. Unlimited spaces and invites mean that no one gets left out.

Once everyone is in a space, you can create a project list with all required tasks and discuss with everyone.

4. Use a good file management system

File management is important to consider when thinking of how to organize work projects. A file management system standardizes how information is organized. This familiarizes everyone on how to upload new files and where to find stored documents.

Instead of separating file management by individual practices, a shared system will save you time and keep everything organized. With a file management system in place, you can spend less time looking for things. This can help keep your team on the same page, especially with asynchronous work.

If you’ve already got a system in place, remember to optimize it so that it works for you and your collaborators. It should seamlessly integrate with your messages, notes or meetings.

5. Communicate transparently with your team

Make sure to be upfront about your experiences, workload, and feelings with your team. Especially when working remote and asynchronously, it can sometimes be hard to keep in touch with everyone in the team.

This way no one will be surprised if you ask for help getting tasks done or offer to lend you a hand when experiencing downtime. Having work organized with tasks and an asynchronous by default workflow also provide flexibility to switch responsibility.

If your task load is too big, other team members can easily filter by your name and see where they can jump in to help.

6. Organize your project with everything in one place

With these best practices in mind, you need to figure out how you are going to be organizing project management steps. Rock provides messages, tasks, notes, files, and meetings centralized for this exact reason.

Teams can document information, share files and manage tasks without having to leave the platform.Cloud storage providers like Google Drive, Dropbox, One Drive are seamlessly integrated within the file, note and task functionality. Once you add an integration, your docs, sheets, and presentations will be just a click away from any message, task or note.

Video conferencing (when done right) is also helpful to teams which is why Rock integrates with Zoom and Google Meet in every space. So when you need to meet, it’s easy and painless.With all your information in one place, you can more easily access important information across spaces.

You can even Set Aside information from different projects in a dedicated panel for follow up.

Use a multi-modal tool to stay organized and get work done

Looking into how to organize projects at work? Rock combines multiple ways of communicating so you spend less time switching between tools.

Everything in one place also enables in-product synergies. @mention tasks and notes in the chat, attach cloud files to tasks or convert message strings into comments under relevant tasks or notes.If asynchronous communication is what you need, you can use tasks, notes or topics.

If you need to switch to more synchronous ways of communicating, you can send a message or start a meeting right from within the space. All without leaving the app.

Getting (and staying) organized will help you focus on what needs to get done. These best practices allow you to keep work at bay. Reduce your stress, and streamline your workflow so you're free to work on what matters.

As an all-in-one tool, Rock can help you share documentation, communicate, collaborate with task boards, and manage your to-do list.

In this case study, the founder and creative director of the design studio/creative agency New Aesthetics, Maximilian Helldörfer, talks about his company’s experience on transforming the way they work by using Rock.

Maximilian shares tips for marketing teams facing challenges related to remote work, having too many tools, and deep work.

An all-in-one approach helps New Aesthetics document information and manage communications without constant platform switching

New Aesthetics journey on Rock started around one and a half years ago. Before that, the agency was mainly using Slack for communication and Trello for task management. In addition to that, the company's clients would often come up with more suggestions for tools, like Microsoft Teams or Google Drive.

Maximilian describes the point in time when the agency decided to look for a solution which would help to keep all their communication and documentation in one place.

‍‘We realized that we can’t use so many different tools based on our clients as it gets all over the place. That was the moment when we decided that we need to look for a new tool which has an all-in-one approach.’

Having all their work centralized in one tool has improved their efficiency and given more time to focus on deep work.

Tasks + messaging in one place to bring order to the chaos of multi-channel communication

New Aesthetics shares that the biggest challenge before using Rock was information management across platforms.

‍‘If you use many different tools and send emails around, it’s inevitable that some information falls through the cracks. Also, it might happen that things are more up to date in one place which can cause confusion. This can be avoided only by having one tool which offers everything you need. Somewhere where you can store information and communicate, and this is exactly what Rock offers.’

An all-in-one approach means teams don't have to juggle apps and update work on different channels. With everything in one place, one update is more than enough.

The agency found that Rock replaced the combination of Slack and Trello and allowed them to keep everything in one place, which was their main challenge before discovering Rock. With functionality that natively switches between mini-apps, one can save time and easily jump, for instance, from tasks to messages or notes.

Leveraging tasks to collaborate more asynchronously, document information and organize work while working remotely

The Tasks mini-app quickly became a crucial part of the New Aesthetics workflow. The agency uses different labels to track the status of a task, for example, 'awaiting for client feedback'.

Maximilian shares that tasks helped them to save time by indicating the statuses instead of constantly chatting or meeting to share progress. The time which is saved can be used for deep work which is the key for making good progress.

Their team also loves the Activity panel feature: ‘It gives such a great overview of what the team has been working on’. One more unique feature which the team enjoys is the Set Aside panel. Set Aside allows users to store relevant tasks, messages, and notes in a dedicated panel.

‘Whenever a person says they can’t answer or do something straight away - I always suggest to set aside and do it later. It’s so nice that there’s a feature which you can refer to in those ‘I can’t answer now’ moments!’ - shares Maximilian.

Collaborating with clients on Rock to reduce inbound emails and platform switching for new projects

It was easy to get clients on board, too. Maximilian shared that the agency does not accept emails anymore and tries to bring their clients on Rock to collaborate. Even though some clients do not know about Rock at first, it does not take long for them to get used to it and start opening their own spaces.

We were curious about what New Aesthetics would suggest for creative teams who are looking for an all-in-one solution.

‘Just get started, experiment and find what workflow is best for you. Rock gives all options to find a way that works best for your specific case. Especially if you are a creative agency, you don’t want to make a burden for yourself by over organizing! Rock gives you the opportunity to create your workflow in an easy way’.

4 tips from New Aesthetics on getting started with Rock as a creative agency

Switching platforms can be a big change for teams. It often comes with transferring tasks, restructuring everything and getting used to new workflows. Here are some suggestions from Maximilian for creative teams looking into getting started with Rock:

• Try out different workflows: Rock provides teams with resources to find a way that works best for your specific case. Give yourself some time to think about how you want things to work.
• Experiment with features: Rock is flexible and provides different ways of customization. Experiment and find a way to organize your work the way you want.
• Start at your own pace: In the first weeks you might not need much complexity and depth. When you get more familiar with Rock you can incorporate more and more features.
• Fine-tune task management: focus on task statuses, assignee statuses or labels, or all of the above, to organize your tasks.

New Aesthetics’ story shows us that constant platform switching and scattered client communication can be avoided when communication is centralized. Tasks + messaging provides the foundation for more productive teams. Deep work is prioritized with asynchronous work, leading to a more productive team.

After the widespread adoption of remote work, work performance metrics that used to be relevant for in-office work have become outdated or harder to track. This leaves many with the question on how to improve work performance for remote environments.

It no longer makes sense for your performance to be graded based on who is present or speaks up in meetings. These are less relevant in workplaces where you and your team are in different cities, countries, or continents.

This leaves many wondering: how can I improve my work performance?

You do not want to waste your time and energy on performance metrics that you are no longer being evaluated on. Many of the opportunities to demonstrate your skills and work ethic aren’t easy to do with remote work. Since you and your team aren’t in the same location, it’s not as easy for them to see your workload, attitude, and capabilities.

With coworkers who may be located around the world, managing relationships will take a different set of skills than when you could catch up in the office on a daily basis. These quality tips will get you started off on the right foot.

8 Ways to improve work performance

While workflows and relationships to team members are different, you will also be evaluated on different performance metrics. This doesn’t mean you have to rethink the way you work, but you should remember that some rules might not apply anymore.

To figure out how to improve work performance in the world of remote work, you need to adjust your mindset and implement new strategies. Here are some improvement ideas to get started with.

1. Make sure your work is visible

Although “butts in chairs” is far less applicable in remote work, it’s still important to make sure that your work is being noticed. When your projects and work are more visible, it’s easier for you to point your successes out to managers and leaders. Using tasks is a helpful way to ensure that your work is easy for leaders to see.

Task management makes it easier for you to organize your workload and clearly illustrates what you are doing and what you’ve already completed. For metrics, you can track how many tasks are completed, what type of tasks you typically work on, and how long it takes you to finish them and your projects.

These numbers will provide a useful and easily quantifiable demonstration of your work—to both you and your team leader or manager.

2. Use asynchronous work for performance improvements

Because asynchronous work treats work like a relay race instead of a sprint, daily workflows are different than they are for in-office work. Asynchronous work empowers people to be more independent and impactful. This empowers you to work at your own pace; it’s also easier to focus on the task at hand.

Typically, there are fewer meetings when a team uses an asynchronous approach to work. When you have meetings, you can make them more impactful. Make sure that your meetings are necessary, short, and planned out. Meeting agendas can help your team prepare for any topics or questions.

With these things in mind, you can demonstrate your effectiveness, even if your team members are in different places.

3. Get the hang of documentation and file management

Working remotely entails managing a constant flow of information, projects, and feedback. The biggest pitfall of remote work is that details can be siloed or fall through the cracks. To stay on top of your work, stay organized and store information where it’s accessible to everyone who needs it.

Mastering the art of documentation and file management comes in handy for this. With these skills under your belt, you can record details and ensure that you and your team have the information you need, right at your fingertips.

For example, when a new team member is being onboarded, it’s easier to provide them with resources and training materials that can answer their questions and help them learn. If your team has outdated or unclear documentation, volunteering to clarify it can be beneficial when looking into ways on how to improve on work performance.

For evaluations, you will be able to point to your organizational skills and the many benefits that they bring to the team and company.

4. Master the art of communication

It’s important to have your communication strategies well-defined when thinking of how to improve work performance. Being a good communicator will help you stand out. Making sure that your asynchronous communication is effective is key.

Avoid overwhelming coworkers and team members with a constant stream of information that they need to sort through. Make sure that messages, tasks and notes you create on the daily are well thought-out. They should provide the recipient with all of the information they need to make a decision, complete a task, provide feedback, or take the next step.

If you’re overwhelmed, delegating work can help take things off your plate. Knowing that a team member may be better at a task or type of work is a strength—use it. Delegating tasks can save you time and stress.

It also highlights your strength as a team player who puts your work first; what matters is that projects get done, not who does them.

5. Focus on strategies for improving performance

Cut out distractions. Working asynchronously can prime you for “deep work,” a term that Cal Newport uses to describe the ability to work intensely and without distraction. Instead of partially focusing on tasks, with deep work, you purposefully incorporate limited spurts of intense focus.

With asynchronous work, people are free to be more independent and effective. This makes it easier for you to maintain the deliberate focus that deep work requires. Knowing how to prioritize tasks and projects is a vital skill when looking into how to improve work performance.

Complete your most important work first, then move on to the second-most important thing on your to-do list. Prioritization demonstrates you can be counted on to get hard things done.Ask yourself if something is absolutely necessary.

Don’t waste your time on low-level priorities or things that aren’t essential. Those types of tasks or projects can be dealt with when you’re not busy.

6. Build a strong remote work culture

Work culture in remote work settings is crucial to team cohesion and collaboration. For example, if you start a new role with a new team, you may not interact with your team members in person very often.

Without the relationship that coworkers are used to building by sitting side-by-side or in offices, it can be difficult to know who to go to with questions or when you need help. That’s why intentionally building a good and supportive work culture is so critical for teams who work remotely.

Though it may be awkward initially, you will learn more about your team, develop relationships, and get a better sense for personalities and capabilities. This helps when looking for work performance improvements since you can ask coworkers for feedback or additional training.

Helping to build a stronger remote work culture can also demonstrate leadership skills and that you’re a team player. Volunteer to do more tasks and projects to demonstrate your go-getter attitude. Offer to start a series of virtual “coffee breaks” to catch up with your coworkers and stay in touch.

This will increase your visibility and your team members will know that they can count on you for help.

7. Maintain a healthy work/life balance

While it might seem logical to stay online for hours after everyone else logs off, or to log on when you’re sick, it’s not worth the cost to your mental health and well-being. Work-life balance is important because it enables you to recharge and enjoy your other priorities.

Without boundaries, it’s easy to burn out, which harms you in the long run. Not only is it bad for your health, but it can also negatively impact your performance at work. While you might feel like staying online longer is a sign of your dedication, it’s not sustainable.

Log off and spend time with friends, family, or your hobbies to keep your stress levels down. Set dedicated hours for working and stick to those. Prioritizing your projects and tasks can help you figure out what’s essential and what can be done later. Remember: Your personal life is important too.

8. Make sure you have the right tools

Rock is a project management tool with many features that can help boost your work performance. With tasks, notes, messages, files, and meetings in one place, Rock offers a multimodal tool that you can use anywhere.

It also structures your work to keep it streamlined and help you document important information. You can get all of the project management or work functionality your team needs without ever leaving Rock.

Rock is also an asynchronous work tool, making it a perfect fit for remote work. Here are some specific features that can help with improving your work performance metrics:

• Set Aside: keep messages, tasks, notes, files and topics close with a dedicated panel
• Board view in the Tasks mini-app: manage workloads and get a high-level overview of what needs to be done.
• My Tasks panel: get started on your to-do list sort tasks by priority level, due date, or label.
• Messaging and file sharing: mention folders and documents so everyone knows what you’re talking about.
• Google Drive integration: connect your files and folders for seamless sharing and communication with your team.
• Zoom integration: get together for virtual happy hours or meetings when really needed.

Rock empowers you to adapt to all of the changes that come with remote work. Easy-to-use communication features make it easy to stay in touch so you can stay updated on task and project changes.

Task management and documentation are all centralized in one place with Rock, making it easy for your work to be visible and accessible to your coworkers and team leaders. With the right tool and updated strategies you can improve your performance at work and prepare yourself for the future of work.

With work often moving quickly, tracking all of your goals, projects, and tasks can be difficult. Having a reliable weekly to-do list template that works for you is key to staying on top of what needs to get done.

You might find yourself looking through different remote work tools to manage your to-do lists. Thankfully Rock has built-in functionality to replace creating weekly to-do list templates and tools. If you need daily to-do list ideas or if you aren’t sure which things to put on a to-do list—read on.

You can also update these to do lists ideas daily so information is always up to date.One of the most common ways of keeping track of everything on your plate is the to-do list. The to-do list meaning is simple, if it is on the list, then it needs to get done.

These lists can be as simple or complex as you need or want them to be. But success doesn’t mean you just make a to-do list. You will need more than a few organized lists. While the first step is just recording and prioritizing what needs to get done, you shouldn’t stop there.

To level up, you need to figure out how to optimize your task management. First, think critically about the best way for you to start formatting lists. If you need to-do list ideas, Rock offers different ways for you to organize your different activities.

Pick and choose how to organize your to-do’s right in the app, so you never have to switch tools to track your to-do items.

There are different ways that you can organize daily to do list ideas through tasks on Rock. Mastering the art of managing your to-do’s enables you to stay productive and focus on the work that makes an impact.

Everyone organizes their work differently. Here are five to-do list ideas to keep track of all your responsibilities.

All your to-do’s across projects with the My Tasks panel

The My Tasks panel of Rock helps you organize your work so you don’t need a separate to-do list anymore. This feature takes all the guesswork out of planning, so you know exactly which things to put on a to-do list. You can keep working in Rock and update task statuses without switching to different apps or platforms to track your progress.

With this feature, you can see every task in Rock that's assigned to you. While centralizing your tasks in one place helps you locate to-do items, it can be more information than you need. That is why the My Tasks panel lets you filter all of your tasks by different spaces, labels, and assignees.

Important work kept close at all times with Set Aside

The Set Aside feature can function as a shortlist of high-priority or important to-do list items. This makes those items easier to manage, enabling you to focus on them.

If you get busy and need to focus on high-priority items, you can store them into the Set Aside panel. This puts any information into a separate place, easily accessible. You can move tasks, notes, messages, and even cloud files into Set Aside, so they’re right at your fingertips.

Time your projects and to-do’s with Sprints

To keep your weekly to-do list template on a timeline that works for you, create sprints in Rock and add the tasks you want to be done within the week.

Sprints allow you to group tasks by time cycles (pick any timeline such as weekly, bi-weekly, or monthly). This way you can rest easy knowing that everything you need to do in that period is in your sprint.

Manage your work and never worry about missing a deadline by grouping tasks by a given time period. You can reference your sprints when you need to suggest tasks to complete next.

Sprints are available in the PRO and TEAMS plan on Rock. If you don’t have a paid plan, you can still organize your tasks by the due date with labels—just add the sprint as a label on the task, and sort your tasks by their label in the Tasks mini-app or My Tasks panel.

Discuss to-do’s more in-depth with your team with Topics

Ask all of your team members to write their weekly to-do’s on topics in Rock. By including all of the things that need to be completed in a centralized location, such as the topic, you can stay in the loop with the rest of your team.

Including the team’s to-do items also enables you and your team to align on priorities and keep everyone informed on what you are working on. By communicating goals and objectives, your team will have an easier time collaborating and meeting expectations.

Everyone on the team can stay in the loop on daily tasks and to-do ideas. You can use the @ mention feature so people can directly access the different activities in the to-do list shared by each team member.

Keep activities not related to a project or workflow organized through your personal space

We automatically create a personal space for you when you make an account. You can use your space for daily or weekly tasks that are just for you. Organize and store information however works best for you—and that includes your weekly to-do list template.

If you want to have different spaces for personal and work-related to-do items, you can create group spaces just for yourself. That way, you have somewhere to track any type of item on your to-do lists. With this approach, you can have unlimited spaces and organize unlimited to-do lists however you want.

Manage your weekly to-do lists and so much more with Rock

Gone are the days of unwieldy Excel sheet lists or endless Word documents that are easily and quickly outdated. Gone are the days of pen-and-paper lists that never seem to be around when you need to reference.

With Rock, you can keep track of what needs to get done without switching between different tools. You don’t have to interrupt your workflow or sort through files and papers to find what you need to do next. Your to-do lists are built into the same platform where your documents, files, and messaging are stored.

You won’t have to wonder which things to put on a to-do list, because your tasks, files, and folders are in Rock where they can be easily incorporated into a list.

Managing your tasks with a list helps make your action items more visible to you. This helps you better prioritize those items so you can deliver for your team, your collaborators, and clients. With an effective way of organizing your work and formatting your to-do lists, you can put your energy where it belongs—actually getting things done.

We know that productivity is key to workers and their teams. That’s why Rock offers different ways for you to keep up with your to-do items. Stay organized however works best for you and your team.

The availability of cloud-based technologies has helped level the playing field for small businesses around the world. Technology that used to depend on expensive and complicated infrastructure is now available to anyone with access to the internet.

Many small businesses have been quick to embrace this opportunity, especially in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. With 26% of small businesses investing in cloud based technologies such as Google Drive and Slack, according to a recent survey by Xero.

As a result, there has been a proliferation of tools, offering everything from digital payments and instant messaging, to predictive analytics. For small businesses, the challenge is finding the right combination of tools to help make them more competitive.

Unfortunately, this can sometimes lead to small business owners feeling overwhelmed by the number of choices. In many cases, having to reassess their technology stack every time a SaaS provider updates their pricing strategy.

For some startups it might make sense to build their own technology stack from the very beginning. However, most small businesses would be better served by an all-in-one solution that can tackle multiple use cases.

All-in-one collaboration tools for example, are not only able to speed up decision making within individual teams, but across the entire business. Beyond internal communication, they can sometimes also open up discussions with clients, partners, freelancers or volunteers.

Lowers the cost of doing business

The proliferation of cloud based technologies has resulted in products that are designed to perform a very specific business function. This makes sense when targeting a global enterprise with different departments and job functions.

Nevertheless, it is often an overdeveloped solution, especially for startups and smaller businesses with more generalist roles.

Having to purchase a number of different tools can quickly consume a large proportion of a small business’ budget, especially when paying for multiple memberships. These tools are often targeted at larger enterprises as well. This can make them unaffordable to smaller companies, or price them out completely if there is a minimum company size.

These problems especially impact small businesses in the developing world, who often try to compete with less access to capital, and lower purchasing power.

Some of the more accessible tools on the market include Buffer for social media management, Figma for product and marketing design, and Rock for collaboration. These all-in-one platforms enable small businesses to carry out all of the necessary activities for a certain aspect of their business in one place.

All of this without blowing their budget, or having to update their tech stack every few months.

Enables faster decision making

According to a global survey of decision makers at companies with less than 1,000 employees conducted by SAP, 49.3 percent of decision makers believe that technology levels the playing field for small businesses when competing against larger companies.

That being said, technology is rarely in and of itself the thing that allows small businesses to compete. Technology is a means to an end, allowing smaller organizations to be more agile and adaptable than their larger counterparts.

All-in-one tools speed up the decision making process by making all of the relevant information available in one place. Built-in video and messaging functionality can help to reduce the amount of face-to-face time required to make a decision. This enables asynchronous work for teams that are distributed around the world.

Smaller tool stacks also make it easier for everyone in the business to be part of the conversation. Shallow learning curves allow people to get up to speed quicker compared to custom implementations.

Provides access to a wider pool of talent

All-in-one tools make it easier for employees to collaborate because they provide a centralized hub with a single end-to-end workflow. This means more focus, and less time spent switching between different tools.

They also allow individuals to develop a more rounded skill set. Mainly because there is less focus on highly specialized tools and individual parts of a process. Instead, employees grasp the full scope of their role, and even branch out into other areas of expertise.

In addition to the business benefits, these platforms can provide opportunities for people in parts of the world that might not normally have access to job opportunities matching their areas of interest and expertise. In some cases this can be exploitative, but for organizations that embrace equitable compensation, it can be a win-win situation.

For example, a good all-in-one collaboration tool can help small businesses become more competitive by unlocking a global talent pool. With centralized communications and strong documentation small businesses can focus purely on finding the right person for the role.

All this without having to think of considering commute times, office communication mechanics and face-to-face dependent collaboration mechanics.

Even for small businesses that require people to be on-premise part of the time, all-in-one tools enable more flexible ways of working. A helpful option as remote working opportunities create more competitive labor markets.

Empowering small businesses around the world

Small businesses represent over 90% of the business population, 60-70% of employment, and 55% of GDP in developed economies, according to the World Trade Organization. They also form an important part of the UN Sustainable Development Goals to “promote inclusive and sustainable economic growth, employment and decent work for all”.

Much of recent news coverage has focused on household names such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook. Nevertheless, small businesses are facing the same challenges presented by the future of work, forcing many to reassess work.

Speed and agility have always been a competitive advantage for small businesses. But, in order to adapt, and embrace the changes required to succeed in a digital-first world, they also need access to the right tools—without being barred by pricing walls or limited functionality.

I joined Rock in 2020 as a business development working student. A lot has changed since then. I now find myself traveling around the world as a digital nomad while managing a wide variety of marketing activities at Rock.

What does working full-time at Rock look like for you?

There are a lot of things I love about my job at Rock: ownership of awesome projects, a hands-on learning experience, and seeing direct results from my efforts.

My day-to-day looks completely different compared to two years ago. When I joined we were working on officially releasing Rock to the public, with a product hunt launch, listing Rock on different sites, and other business development activities. Now, 2 years and thousands of signups later, I find myself leading content, growth and analytical activities across channels.

A lot of my workday is planned around individual deep work: managing content, changes in our branding across channels, and other less-defined growth activities. With only 4-5 meetings on a weekly basis, I find my schedule to be open and flexible to focus on important tasks instead of being stuck in meetings that could have been emails – or as we like to say, meetings that could have been a task or topic.

Having only a few meetings does not mean I’m not connected to everyone in the team though. With constant updates in different 1:1 and group spaces, I often chat to team members, partners and users from across the world (and occasionally share some GIFs now that they are finally available everywhere!).

Only a few meetings a week and asynchronous-first work means I often don’t work a 9-5 (this doesn’t mean I’m being lazy though!). Splitting my time throughout the day allows me to go surfing in the morning, to the gym at 2pm or leave early on a Friday to go travel for the weekend every now and then.

Because we organize our work with tasks, performance is not connected to when I’m online. Instead, we focus on what is being accomplished in every sprint or week-over-week period.

What does remote work look like for you?

I decided to go fully remote in January 2022, leaving Rotterdam (which had been my home for 5 years) behind. Leaving behind great friends and a city that had given me so much wasn’t easy. But the idea of getting to travel the world while taking my career forward at the same time was an opportunity I did not want to skip.

For my first solo location I found accommodation in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua and decided to spend the next two months remote working there.

What is Nicaragua like?

I was scared of the idea of booking an Airbnb and spending large amounts of time working by myself in a holiday home. Thus, I booked a coliving space, which has an awesome view by the way!

Coliving spaces bring together remote workers and digital nomads from around the world. This makes them a great place to meet like-minded people. Another perk is that they often offer a fast internet connection, a must-have when working remotely. Or as Kenzo likes to call it, the base of the Maslov pyramid for remote workers’ needs.

A definite highlight of my stay was the opportunity to meet amazing people from all over the world with different careers, goals, and dreams. From consultants to freelance copywriters and nutrition & health experts, I shared my ‘office’ (the living room) and free time with people of different trades, backgrounds, and life goals.

Two months in Nicaragua also allowed me to visit places all over the country. I had the chance to visit typical backpacker destinations such as Ometepe, Granada, and León. I also got to surf a handful of times during work days and weekends, do short hikes around town, and check out most of the local bars and restaurants.

Oh, I also got to slide down a volcano which is definitely one of the highlights of my stay here. How does that work you ask? A Breaking Bad jumpsuit, a makeshift wooden board, and some goggles are all one needs.

What’s next?

We have great things coming up for Rock. Now that our help center and blog were recently updated, you can expect to see some rockin’ content across those and some new channels throughout the next few weeks.

My two-month journey in Nicaragua has come to an end by the time you read this article. My next travels are fully confirmed already though. After spending a month visiting friends and family I’m excited to visit Lisbon for 3 months and learn more about Portuguese culture and a new language. Portugal also has plenty of surf and a lot of interesting people to meet for sure.

No more volcanoes though, I think I scratched that itch for the time being by summiting San Cristóbal, the highest volcano in Nicaragua (allow me some bragging rights, it’s a 12-hour hike that starts at 2:30 am).

Will you be in Lisbon or are you interested in e-meeting? You can open a Quick Connect space with me through this link space.new/nicolaas. :)

Saying “no” is an important part of setting boundaries. Without it, we often let other people’s priorities take precedence over our own, which in the workplace, leads to unrealistic expectations, and less time to say “yes” to the things that really matter.

One of the main ways this shows up at work is the inability to say “no” to meeting requests, which is why many of us spend over 30 hours in unproductive meetings each month.

Saying “no” takes practice, and many people won’t be used to hearing it, but once it becomes part of your organizational culture, you’ll realise that work can be so much more than struggling to find time for productive work in between an onslaught of meetings.

When to say “no” to meetings

Before you start saying “no” to every meeting request that comes your way, it might help to understand the difference between which meetings you should accept, and which to reject.

Bad meetings are usually too frequent, poorly timed and badly run, whereas good meetings have a clear purpose, occur only when needed, fit around productive working hours, and are facilitated by someone who knows how to keep a group on track.

It isn’t always easy to spot the difference, especially when responding to a last-minute meeting invite. Here are some hard and fast rules to help you say “no” more often.

Say “no” to meetings where you’re not needed

Andy Grove, founder and former CEO of Intel, categorizes meetings into two types: Process- and Mission-oriented. Process-oriented meetings, such as weekly 1-1s and team all-hands, often require some level of direct involvement, which makes them harder to skip.

Mission-oriented meetings on the other hand, are often focused on a specific decision or project, and unless you’re the project owner, it’s unlikely you need to be in every meeting.

Establish what your contribution to the project is at the very beginning, that way you only need to join the conversation when there is information related to deliverables that you own.

Say “no” to meetings without a clear agenda

It’s not uncommon to receive a meeting invite from someone out of the blue, which often comes with very little, if any, context, and is scheduled at the last minute. Without a clear agenda, how do you know if the meeting will be a productive use of your time?

Before you say “yes”, it’s a good idea to ask a few questions. What is the context of the meeting? What kind of expectations does the organiser have in terms of outcomes and next steps? Is there anyone else that needs to be involved?

You will often find that when you ask the right questions, it becomes clear there isn’t actually a need for the meeting. A little bit of resistance will also force people to think twice before firing off an invite in future, reducing the amount of times you have to say “no”.

Say “no” to meetings longer than 30 minutes

Research suggests that only 50% of time spent in meetings is effective, which means the longer the meeting, the more likely that your time, or someone else's, is being wasted.

Many meetings take longer than needed because so much time is spent getting everyone on the same page. You can accomplish the same thing without extending a meeting by sharing documents and relevant pre-reading material beforehand.

Anyone familiar with Parkinson’s Law will know that "work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion", which means it’s often best to limit meetings to half an hour. In most cases, it will be enough, and if not, you can always schedule a follow-up.

Say “no” to meetings that kill your flow

Getting into a flow state doesn’t happen instantly, which means setting aside distraction-free blocks of time that allow you to focus. Interruptions not only kill your momentum, they can also cost you additional time and productivity in the form of meeting recovery syndrome.

For the meetings that you have no choice but to accept, try and group them together at times when you would normally work on other shallow tasks such as admin and replying to emails. There are even tools you can take advantage of to do it for you, like Clockwise.

Say “no” to meetings for an entire day

Companies such as Facebook and Shopify have gone so far as to introduce no meeting days. Many of them understand the pressures that come with remote working, which is why they have adopted policies at the organisational level that support employees.

The aim is not to shift meetings from one day to another, but increase the amount of time you have available for productive work each week. It might not work for all teams, but meeting days can help you rely less on synchronous forms of communication.

As many of the world’s best technology companies have shown, it’s possible to run a successful business with very few meetings. Synchronous forms of communication like in-person and online meetings have their place, but they don’t need to be the default mode.

5-minute screen recordings and short audio messages can be much more effective than 30-minute meetings, it’s just a question of people embracing a new way of working.

Asynchronous work with Rock

At Rock we believe asynchronous communication will be the primary way that organisations communicate in the near future, which is why we’re working hard to enable people around the world to spend less time in meetings, and more time working on the things that matter.

Rock is working hard to enable remote teams in a way that means less time spent in meetings, and more time working on things that matter — click here to learn more.

No more back-and-forth on which tools to use to work together, as with Quick Connect, you can instantly start working with anyone. If you want a more memorable Quick Connect link, you can now claim your own custom space.new URL when you’re on PRO or TEAMS.

This release also includes link previews and GIFs on the web and desktop versions, a new help center and blog, and many improvements to the mobile app.

Check out the first-ever product release webinar, where Nico & Greta walk you through the latest features and their different use cases.

Quick Connect PRO ?

Personalize your Quick Connect to highlight your business name or the service you’re offering with a custom link.

You can add your Quick Connect link to social media channels & communications, your freelance profile, or client-facing websites or business cards. This makes it easier for people to start a conversation with you and collaborate on anything.

Use Quick Connect to seamlessly get in touch with new clients, offer customer support, or collaborate with anyone for an up and coming business partnership. Make sure to claim your link in time, once it’s taken it’s gone!

We have also added template spaces to Quick Connect to create a more customized experience. Available templates include: operations, recruiting, product design, marketing campaign, engineering, project management and customer support. Customized template options are coming soon to PRO and TEAMS!

Link Previews on web and desktop

In addition to previewing links on mobile, Rock now shares a thumbnail of links that are shared within your spaces. Get a quick sense of videos, articles and other links that people share in a space with a thumbnail and a snippet describing what you shared.

GIFs on web and desktop

You can now share your favorite GIFs on the web and desktop versions of Rock!

GIFs become available in a group space with more than three people. You will receive a notification saying ‘GIFs unlocked ?’ and the GIF button will appear next to the emoji functionality.

Browse thousands of different options from the Giphy library and share them in the chat with your team to say something only the right GIF can express.

Pinboard [Mobile only]

Pin important information in a dedicated panel in each space. This makes it easier to find important tasks, topics, notes, files or messages without having to go looking.
You can pin multiple objects in a space, allowing everyone to quickly check out and access information by clicking on the pin button in the top right corner of the space. This may include a welcome message, a weekly announcement, or an important task or note.
How to pin:

• Messages: keep the message you want to pin pressed for a few seconds and click on the pin icon afterwards.
• Tasks, notes, files and topics: press the pin button in the top right corner of the object. You can unpin items by selecting the same pin button again.

Pinned information can be accessed by clicking on the pin next to the space name. You can also filter pinned information to quickly browse through relevant objects by mini-app.

Import tasks from CSV [PRO & TEAMS]

Are you looking to quickly create a large amount of tasks or move documented information over to tasks? The import from CSV functionality makes it easy to quickly create a whole set of tasks.
Add your information into the provided template and migrate it to Rock within a few clicks. You can access the import from CSV feature in the Import section of your Settings panel.

Log out from all devices

Not sure on what devices your current account is logged in? This feature allows you to log out of all devices your profile is still connected to in one go. That way you can make sure that you’re the only one with access to your account.
You can access the feature from your Settings, press the three dots, and select ‘Log out from all devices’

Rock Help Center ?

Resources, documentation and so much more! Browse the help center for support material on tasks, messages, notes and any other Rock feature.
We will be adding new help center articles on a continuous basis so if you’re looking for something specific let us know by opening a space with us!

The new Rock blog ?️

We have also upgraded the navigation experience on web and mobile for the Rock blog. This makes it easier to find relevant articles and improves the reading experience across devices.
We are also enabling guest posting. Are you a writer, company or user that has a story to tell that you think is relevant to our audience? Feel free to reach out to open a space with us to further discuss possibilities.

Mobile updates

We have added a bunch of improvements to the mobile experience. This product release includes the following changes and fixes to the mobile apps:

• Quick Connect (PRO) - pick your own custom Quick Connect link and use a template for your Quick Connect space.
• Pinboard: pin anything in a space for easy access to all your important tasks, notes, files, and more.
• Force log out from all devices
• A whole lot of bug fixes and smaller improvements.

Download the mobile app

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