Teams Rituals

Rituals are regular meetings that help us stay organized and disciplined. They create a habit of positive actions. By scheduling them in our calendars, we set boundaries that we respect. They improve our performance and satisfaction in our work.

In this article, I will share with you some of the rituals that I love and that have made a big difference for me. I have categorized them by frequency, from daily to monthly.

Daily

Stand up

Standups are a key component of the SCRUM framework and help the team stay on track with their tasks. They are especially useful in remote work settings where communication is more challenging.

In these meetings, we answered three questions:

• What have you completed since the last meeting?
  
• What do you plan to complete by the next meeting?
  
• What is getting in your way?

I won't explain the details of this meeting as you can find better resources online. What I can say is that it is a very important meeting for me as a leader to monitor the progress and offer my support to the team.

Design Reviews

We usually have a meeting every day, but sometimes we do it spontaneously when someone has made progress or wants to hear the group's opinion. We are flexible and adjust the meeting format according to the need. It can be a quick question on the Team's chat about a detail or a full team meeting where the presenter explains the context and the feedback they seek.

The goal is to keep it light because not everyone feels comfortable presenting their work, especially when it is not ready. To reduce the stress, we adapt to the need. However, it is essential for the team to be involved in the creation and review process.

This is one of the most important meetings to keep the quality at the top level. Design is a team sport. As a group, we inspire each other. 

Weekly

1:1

One-on-one meeting is very important for managers and their team members. In this meeting, we have 30 minutes to an hour to talk about anything that the team member wants to share, such as their goals, challenges, feedback, or feelings. This is a great opportunity to support their growth and well-being.

This document is a recap of the main points we covered in our meeting. I created this document to help me stay organized, as I have more direct reports now. This document was accessible only to me and the team member, and we both had the ability to edit it and include topics we wanted to discuss.

The agenda was not fixed and we could deviate from it if we had other pressing matters to deal with. However, I always made sure to ask the personal check-in questions to see how they were feeling.

The discussion topics section was where the team member could write down anything they wanted to raise in the meeting. It was an open document, so we could see each other's topics before the meeting started.

The action items section was for me and the team members to note down what we committed to do after the meeting. It could be anything from reaching out to HR to requesting a design change.

The last section was about goals. These were the milestones that each team member had established in their personal growth plan. We checked their progress and discussed how they could improve in that area.

All hands - Designer's Power Hour

This is a meeting where the agenda is focused more on hanging out with each other. As a remote team, all the meetings are around business and there is no room to interact with each other. We meet to talk and get to know us better. We can play a game or have just a chat about things that are happening in that week.

This is an opportunity for us to bond as a team and have some fun. We work hard every day, but we also need to relax and enjoy ourselves. We can share our hobbies, interests, challenges, successes, or anything else that we want to talk about. We can also play a game that will help us improve our communication, collaboration, and creativity skills. This meeting is not about work, but about us as people.

www.gather.town - relly cool virtual space to hang out and play games 

Monthly

UX Forum

This meeting is a great opportunity to showcase UX, inspire others with our insights, and celebrate our achievements as designers. We welcome external stakeholders and share our work in progress, key milestones, exciting results from research or anything else that we think is relevant for people in the company who are not closely involved with us. Our goal is to be open and honest about our process and outcomes. Anyone in our company can join or watch later to get the latest updates. Plus, designers can improve their public speaking and presentation skills.

Retrospectives

A retrospective meeting is a valuable practice that we conduct after completing a significant task or project. The purpose of this meeting is to evaluate our performance and identify the strengths and weaknesses of our work process. We reflect on what went well and what can be improved, and we use the feedback to make adjustments for the future. This way, we can learn from our experiences and enhance our skills and efficiency.

Show and Tell - Expand your pallet

To become the best chef in the world, you need to expose yourself to different cuisines and flavors. You can't just stay in your kitchen and repeat the same recipes over and over. You have to go out and dine in various restaurants, and discover what you like and what you don't. By exploring, you can refine your taste and improve your skills.

The same principle applies to our work. We can't just design same experience and think we are done. We need to broaden our horizons and learn from other domains. That's why we started a new meeting series called Expand our palette.

In this meeting, one of us will present something that we find inspiring, cool and exciting from the world of design. It can be anything we find interesting: UX or UI patterns, physical products, designer portfolios, architecture, technology, fashion, design trends, etc.

Quarterly & Yearly

Quarterly meeting

This is the time when we reflect on our achievements, discuss the next quarter's goals and celebrate our success. The celebration is a vital part of our culture. We don't want to just rush into the new projects and forget what we have accomplished. It is always a rewarding moment where we can look at our work from a distance and say we did it!

Summer and Winter Party

Our company hosts a party twice a year where we can enjoy ourselves and socialize. It is a great opportunity to network and chat with people we might not encounter in our daily work. We get to know each other better and it strengthens our team spirit.