There are a host of tools available to help you communicate like messenger, emails, social media, project management software etc
Don’t lose the face-to-face chats though. I’m not talking about the structured meetings where you rattle through a preset agenda and update the people that don’t work in your team, I’m talking about talking. This is how creativity comes about.
Use a shared office and have impromptu chats, go for lunch together, get drinks after work. The whole team including developers, designers, marketers and the guy that is really good at looking busy (we all have one). Have something to scribble ideas on as well, best thing is an entire wall!
This is where the best ideas come from. An unrestricted chat allows everyone to freely express their opinion. Designers can suggest marketing tactics, developers propose a new design style and that busy guy might even reveal what he actually does. This is where the best ideas come from, verbalizing opinions and bouncing off each other. This is what turns a run-of-the-mill project into something unique and truly effective.
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” – Henry Ford.
The best part of these get togethers are the passion people get from the brainstorms and ideas. If a designer, programmer or marketer is working on a project that has come from somebody else’s idea and passed down via a series of boring meetings it’s unlikely they’ll really care about it. When people work on a project that they helped evolve the idea for, they inevitably take pride in it and become passionate about the results.
This type of communication will create a sense or project ownership from the whole team, something that improves motivation and the overall result as well as keeping the team together on the same path.
Don’t assign a label to these chats, don’t use strict agendas and don’t suppress anyone’s opinions (except maybe the busy guy’s).
Do you find the standard meetings or the informal brainstorms yield better ideas?
I love the benefits that are created by brainstorming sessions. Normally, about once a month i get together with 3 others and we just throw the mud against the wall and see what sticks. Don’t you love what a good sessions can make you walk away with