Team Organisation

In this section, we are going to share how our company is organised at different levels. We will talk about how we organise the workload based on our goals, what types of meetings we have in order to coordinate our workflow and how we organise a specific project.

Week, Month, Trimester and Year

At mendesaltaren, our work is goal-oriented. We have four different kinds of goals, based on their size: yearly, quarterly and weekly.

We define these goals based on the S.M.A.R.T. principles, that is to say, they must be Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Timely. Notice that we use a different variant of what George T. Doran established, as we replace “attainable” with “assignable” and “relevant” with “realistic” because, for us, it’s crucial that these goals are feasible and have an impact on the project in general. It’s essential that all goals meet these criteria as this forces us to push aside overly aspirational goals and keeps any sense of self-deception or self-indulgence under control.

Each time we define or redefine our objectives, we share them with all relevant members involved. This allows us to be on the same page and share the studio’s vision.

Lastly, it’s very clear to us that we live in a time that is full of change. Therefore, each trimester we review our yearly goals to see whether we have lost focus and to update them in accordance with any new needs that may have come up. This allows us to adapt more quickly when facing a change and means our yearly goals do not lose their meaning or purpose as the project progresses.

Yearly Goals

Our yearly goals are ambitious. We use them to define where we want to be within a year. These goals are related to our performance, our value proposition, our strategy and our competitive position.

We establish our target with these yearly goals, but we don’t outline the exact way of getting there. That’s because every quarter we review and specify these goals by creating smaller and more measurable tasks.

Quarterly Goals

Every three months we have a meeting to set our goals and relevant KPIs for the next trimester. In this meeting, we reflect on our progress in the previous trimester, we analyse the current state of the company and we update our yearly goals accordingly. This way we can see what we need to focus on in order to improve. Thanks to our KPIs we can closely follow our growth and the attainment of our goals.

Monthly Goals

We set monthly goals to simplify our quarterly goals. These monthly goals are actions we can carry out in the short-term, which help us reach our broader targets. At the start of each month, we hold a meeting to organise the workload, define the goals, and establish our priorities. Monthly rather than weekly scheduling gives us the chance to see everything with a broader perspective and means we can avoid future problems.

Weekly Goals

In our day-to-day life at the studio, we work with weekly goals, which incorporate needs, interests and teams. In order to organise and juggle different teams and projects, we use the Scrum methodology and apply it throughout our work. We plan, review and manage each project in this way.

Meetings

When it comes to calling a meeting, we are inspired by Agile methodology. We pursue pragmatism, empathy and respect towards our clients and colleagues’ time. We always avoid calling purposeless meetings - we don’t want people to waste their time.

We establish clear and straightforward goals for each meeting and we always avoid large open-forum meetings. Having a few small casual encounters of two or three people is much more effective than trying to establish an assembly dynamic which, in the majority of cases, won’t lead anywhere conclusive. We understand that having too many opinions in the room can often lead to deadlock. It’s much more dynamic for a small team to come up with a solution that will be reviewed, and then build from there. The people who make up this small team must be broadly knowledgeable of the topic and have a good overview of all the different angles.

Recommendations:

• Be aware of everyone’s priorities and availability when scheduling meetings.
• This doesn’t mean that we can’t have impromptu meetings with other team members. However, it’s important to plan ahead for meetings which will involve many people.
• Be insightful when anticipating the duration of a meeting. We tend to underestimate their duration but, once we have set the pace with our colleague/partner/client, we will have a more accurate idea of how long they are going to take.
• Leave a 30-minute safety gap between meetings. Otherwise, they will most likely overlap and you will be late, or you won’t have enough time to prepare anything in between them.
• Having the camera on during meetings helps communication flow. Especially in 1-on-1 sessions. This way we avoid talking to a screen and can properly connect with the person.
• Using the layout of your video call tool will allow you to see all the participants at once. For instance, there is a grid view available on Hangouts.
• Separate urgent and important. Not everything requires a meeting. Don’t be afraid to ask to be sent what you need via email or Slack. If we all adopt this way of thinking, we will not invade each other’s time as much and we will learn to be more prepared and/or patient while waiting for the information that we need.
• Record the meetings that might be useful for people who are unable to attend. However, this shouldn’t be an excuse not to attend a meeting. Before recording, ask for all the attendees’ permission.
• Send a summary with all the notes from the meeting and the next steps to every member involved so that they are all on the same page. This summary doesn’t have to be very extensive - it shouldn't take more than 5 minutes to write it after the meeting. It can be written in bullet points and it’s advisable that all notes are taken directly on Notion if possible.

Link to Meeting Template

Resources For Meetings

Working remotely with your teammates or your client doesn’t necessarily imply limitations. You can provide yourself with tools that will make communication much more fluid. We already know how to have a video call (Slack, Hangouts, Skype) in which you can share your screen, but there are other tools that can assist you further depending on the requirement:

• Use Miro, Figma or LucidChart to work online on Kanban, flow charts, mind-maps… It’s a collaborative and real-time tool.
• With TeamViewer you can remotely control the other person’s device and help them with certain tasks.

Weekly Planning

A weekly meeting in which the current state of the project is analysed: we set which goals we need to achieve and what tasks need to be completed.  

Team Planning

This meeting happens on a Monday and all team members are present. In this team planning, we have a look at the current state of ongoing projects. The analysis includes:

• How the previous week went.
• How the current week looks.
• Issues that might have occurred.

Project Planning

Each project head has a meeting with the other members of the project. In this meeting, they establish which backlog activities they are going to complete in the upcoming Sprint, moving those tasks from Backlog onto a Sprint Backlog.

Geekbot Daily Meeting

This daily is completed everyday by all team members. It’s a way of recapping what was decided the day before, the goals for the current day, and possible issues that might have come up.

For these meetings, we use a bot on Slack:

• Each member can choose when to complete it.
• It isn’t necessary for all team members to be present for it to take place.
• Because it’s so easily accessible on Slack, all team members will be aware of their colleagues’ dailies.

In order to make sure that everyone in the team has caught up and knows what they are working on, we must read all the team members’ dailies. To check a colleague’s daily as read, we react with a "✅" on the Geekbot-generated message in the #daily channel.

Daily Questions

These questions are automatically made by Geekbot at the time of scheduling a daily or when we use the report command.

To answer these questions we use the template you can find below so as to unify all team members’ answers.

What did you do yesterday?

Project 1 name

• ✅ Completed task.
• ➕ Completed task that wasn’t taken into account the previous day.
• ❌ Uncompleted task (reasons must be provided in order to inform the rest of the team).
• ⚙️ Task in progress (exclusive for long-term tasks that can’t be split).

Project number 2 name

• ✅ Completed task

What are you going to do today?

Project 1 name

• To-do task
• To-do task
• To-do task

Project number 2 name

• To-do task

When will it be ready?

Because this is a daily, all tasks that are scheduled should be completed on that same day. However, there may be tasks that require more time. This question gives us the opportunity to set a deadline so that the project doesn’t stall.

Do you need help from a teammate?

Mention those people who you need support from.