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Corine Ahlrichs's avatar
Corine Ahlrichs
Copper Contributor
Mar 20, 2021

Working principles

Which topics does a team need to discuss to agree on unique working principles? I miss, or are unable to find, more information on application of standard features to working habits of a team. For example, notification settings depend on how colleagues agree on agreeable response time. Camera settings depend on the agreeable interaction level required in team meeting. Who has literature or experience to refer to? Looking forward to your learnings and thoughts.
  • Karuana_Gatimu_MSFT's avatar
    Karuana_Gatimu_MSFT
    Icon for Community Manager rankCommunity Manager
    Mar 25, 2021
    I normally refer to this as a teams "operating agreement". Individual settings should be left to individuals. Normally a team operating agreement (formal or informal) includes:
    1. Where will we collaborate? (SharePoint, Teams, other?)
    2. How will we conduct our meetings? (Status reports, hot/blocked issues only, open round robin)
    3. How will we make decisions? which also ties to...
    4. Do we have a project/program/service Roles & Responsibilities document that everyone has seen and agreed to.
    5. How will we ask for help or executive support?

    These agreements are foundational to good operations. Once these are established you can create more details around meeting types (camera free or visually engaged) and the like. It is normally not at all successful to try to mandate for end users what to do with notifications or other individual settings. You will normally get a lot of dissatisfaction on that. It is however useful for individuals to use their Out of Office message more frequently to advise of off hours, time differences or vacations.

    Service outage or customer facing notifications are a very different thing and I have not covered that here. I hope this is helpful!
    • Corine Ahlrichs's avatar
      Corine Ahlrichs
      Copper Contributor
      Mar 28, 2021
      Thank you Karuana. The topics you shared are helpful for sure. In your experience, are participants able to emphasise enough in what is needed for successful collaboration and apply the functionalities to there full potential? I love the idea of ‘What iff scenario’s’, to extract collaboration needs in a certain situation. Consider your notifications example, you can use a ‘What if every team member posts daily and uses the team mention?’ to explore the consequence together. And subsequently advise on notification settings. What are your thoughts on this approach? And has anyone have more valuable What if scenarios in mind?

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