Go async-first with your team.
If you and your team wish to work async-first and you’re not sure which practices to adopt, you've reached the right place. This method stack offers ideas for small changes you can implement on your team to go async-first, one step at a time. The launch video on this page (from a few years back) offers a quick overview.
Use the filters below to find async-first methods that are relevant to your team. For detailed articles, check out the blog.
Promote skin in the game
Don’t tell smart people what to do. Give them autonomy and allow them to take risks.
Manage by outcomes
When you measure performance, ignore presence and focus on what people are actually achieving.
Practise radical candour
Use Kim Scott’s model of “Radical Candour” to share effective feedback.
Create slack in the system
Without the space to pause and reflect, you’ll rarely improve your systems. To get better, you need slack.
Shift left on retros
Think retro as a process that has two parts - take inputs asynchronously and run it synchronously.
Drop the sprint planning meeting
Sprint planning is amongst the most time consuming activities for development teams. One could argue that the value you get is not proportional to the effort you put into these meetings. With some effort you can drop sprint planning meetings completely.
Identify indicators for change
You won’t know if your changes make a difference, until you have indicators and metrics in place. Use the leading and lagging indicators in this method, as your sensible default.
Team values workshop
Identify your team values using a short, one hour workshop. By the end of this exercise, you’ll have a list of values and rough notes about what they mean to you.