Organizing your team is essential for establishing work flows and keeping everyone on the same page. Based on experiences with different forms of communication and organization at Serlo Education, we suggest the following steps and tools.
In case you don't have a Google email address yet, we recommend creating one in order to be able to use Google Drive.
Exchange contact details
It is important to collect contact details of team members and external partners. It is useful to collect these information in one place. In the templates folder on Google Drive you can find a document called "Team organization" that helps you to organise contact details. Your Serlo Contact can give you access to the folder. You can find more information on Google Drive below.
Organize weekly meetings
Weeklies, or weekly meetings, have proven to be very important for a well working team. Weeklies help to update everyone on current tasks and future plans which is why they are a central platform for planning and communication. Therefore, you should find a weekly timeslot that is suitable for everybody in the team.
Even if you don't know what to discuss in the upcoming weekly, stick to it anyway. Beside organizational stuff, the weekly is also important for teambuilding and to create some pressure to get things done.
Organize sprints
Sprints are dedicated to specific tasks, like creating example content or finding a mission statement. While weeklies guarantee regular exchange, sprints help the team to get a substantial amount of work done. Therefore, the duration of a sprint is between two hours and a whole weekend.
Be creative in combining the sprints with having a good time, e.g:
Start off with having lunch together and then working for three hours to complete a given task.
Choose a cozy café with Wifi in the city a your co-working space.
Prepare one of your flats as part time office.
Ensure, that there is always plenty to eat and drink.
May be you can ask a startup or company with a beautiful office, if they are willing to donate some space for your new serlo.org team?
Tools
Slack
Slack is the main communication tool for the Serlo team. It consists of chat channels for different teams and topics. Your team will get its own chat channel that facilitates easy communication. If he didn't yet, please ask your Serlo Contact to invite you and your team members to Slack.
Google Hangout
For conference calls we suggest the use of Google Hangouts. A Google Hangout works like a Skype call, but it has the advantage that you don't need an account to join a hangout. Only the person starting the hangout needs a google account. You can learn how to use Google hangouts here.
Google Drive
Serlo Education uses Google Drive as a platform to store and share documents. It works like dropbox, but also allows you to edit documents simultaneously and offers larger capacities for saving.
In case they didn't do so yet, please ask your Serlo Contact to invite you to your templates folder. There you can find several documents that will help you with the organization of your team.
