Many teams have had to adopt a remote-first mode of working recently. It can be a difficult transition, where you need all the help you can get.

That is why I have collected a list of the best and most trustworthy free resources for remote teams faced with this situation. I will keep on expanding these lists if and when I come across other great and trustworthy free resources.

Mother Lodes

First up, the resources that have it all, comprehensive collections of everything. These might take a while to go through, but if you are able to navigate them, they will have answers to most of your questions.

• Collaboration Superpowers website by Lisette Sutherland, the author of Work Together Anywhere. Lisette is the foremost expert on remote work online. I have been lucky to get to partner with her in a couple of remote team coaching assignments and I can say I learned a lot working with her. And I had fun, too!
• We 🧡 Remote Work Slack, where you can ask about anything and get peer support (and their growing resource collection)
• GitLab’s All Remote Guide: GitLab is 100% remote company, they tell you how they make it work

Communication in remote teams

• Basecamp is a famous and successful 100% remote company. Here is their guide to how they communicate

Pair-coding and pair-designing

• Figma is a design tool that allows live collaboration. It is browser-based. It has tools for: UI design, illustration, prototyping, version control, feedback and developer handoff. Here is an experience report from a long-time Figma user () . And here are some tutorial videos
• For pair coding, you can for instance use Visual Studio Live Share extension (see Getting started guide & A detailed tutorial video). Live share is available for both free and fully OpenSource Visual Studio Code (Linux, Windows (including WSL), Mac) and proprietary Visual Studio (Windows only) and it seems to work nicely across operating systems.

Remote retrospectives

• Tips for remote retrospectives from Esther Derby and David Horowitz (1 hour webinar recording)
• 3 tips for remote retrospectives by Chris Murman
• Lisette Sutherland’s tips for remote retros
• Google Jamboard is an awesome, easy to use platform for remote retrospectives
  

Fostering a trustful and safe environment in remote teams

• Wade Foster from Zapier shares his advice
• The check-in protocol is an effective way to allow for sharing of emotions and context daily or at the start of remote meetings
• Virtual coffee breaks allow connecting between team members in a humane way
• Introduce a Kudo practice, a way for team members to thank each other, in your team
• Hold regular retrospectives (see above)
• Do some of the work in pairs (see above)

Better online meetings

• Mural: The Definitive Guide to Facilitating Online Workshops (Not strictly free, as you have to pay by giving your personal information to get it)
• Jonas Rajanto’s blog post on remote meetings, in Finnish

Tools for remote work

• What tools we use at Flowa and why (post by my colleague Tero)
• List of tools by Collaboration Superpowers
• Jonas Rajanto’s blog about remote tools in Finnish

Check these out as well