How do you make your team more efficient when employees are split between the US and in Europe ?

When we started to spread out internationally (we're only a small team but across ~23h now) we were a bit disjointed because people we still working on "their own thing" We've now got into a 3x week cycle, rotating our main sprint around our three core products... We find really clear short sprints work well, where folks are running in relay ... so the team have to hand-off properly as the next team picks up the baton. I've also found all-hands *super important*; we go in turns and sound off: - stuff I learned this week - recent successes & challenges - ask for help with something - my KPI update (self-defined) Feedback I've got is that folk love to hear and understand about other teams, help out in places outside their team etc. Helps with cohesion & the cross-disciplinary helping-out keeps the WFH monotony at bay a bit. Hope that helps @valentin_haarscher 🙌

Pay them more.

Make video or audio calls at least once per two days - messages are dry, people sometimes interpret your thoughts differently when they see just letters. So, that is quite important to have a direct interaction with your colleagues/employees for crucial parts of the project. For minor, routine parts of the project, it is always better to use asynchronous communication, so people are not feeling stressed about non-important things (until they get important at least). Just create a project in any project management tool and keep track of it (will require significant amount of time to track) :) As for the tools, Teams and Trello are always good to start with. As of our team, we are actually happy with using Coloban (Calls, Chats, Kanban, Eisenhower, Calendar). Sorry, yes, we are close to that project, but I couldn't resist telling about it :).

Do you really need all hands with everyone present or could you do an async format? Something like: Main presentation 24 hours for questions in writing Presentation answering questions If any conversations need to be continued, use the tools you already use. The best way to unite remote teams in my experience is games. If you have offices, stock them up with Nintendo Wii If not, plenty of browser-based options.

Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier suggested that you have some hours that overlap when everyone is online at the same time. This way everyone can talk if need at a certain time, with also allowing people extended chunk of time to focus without interruption as well.