Step 3 - House Rules' examples πŸ—οΈ

This list shall serve as inspiration for your own house rules. Why? Research shows that teams who clarify joint behavioral principles perform better. And while a physical office gives you cues on how to behave, moving into an online office can be confusing. Happy co-working!

Our Work Context (tools - what to use how)

  • We use Teemyco for internal oral communication (Slack for writing & files; Google Meet for external calls; emails for external written communication)
  • We all use an avatar picture so we easily find each other in the virtual office

➑ Rooms & Behaviors

  • Room layout: We may all add rooms & amend all rooms except for the ones below. Never-used rooms can be erased.
  • Rooms that may not be changed or erased without checking with the team: Lounge, Focus Area, Open Workspace, Dev Room, Team Room, Founders Corner, Gone Fishing.
  • The person adding a new room explains the purpose & behavior in the room description field
  • For important or sensitive discussions we lock the virtual room (signaling do not disturb)
  • β€œCrashing” into social areas such as the Kitchen or Afterwork bar is always allowed
  • Being in the Kitchen does not mean one is lazy, it means the person is open for a quick break. We encourage social breaks.
  • For Thursday Lunch roulettes we meet up in the Kitchen and split into smaller groups & rooms. We encourage participation in Thursday lunch roulette but it isn't mandatory.
  • All other rooms may change names temporary (by anyone!) as long as the description field explains the expected behavior or purpose (nonsense welcome!).
  • We synch group remote Gym or Meditation sessions on Slack beforehand & pre-schedule them.
  • We do not have so many rooms that one must scroll in the main view, as orientation of who is who then becomes too hard.
  • Anyone may pin a link into a room. Pins that shall not be removed are marked with "keep!" in the link title. E.g. our House rules and/or the Games.
  • We encourage nonsense rooms & experimentation.

🀝 Meetings

  • Internal Meetings: We all use individual cameras in meetings; also if two of us are co-located
  • External Meetings: We only share room links of rooms specifically marked as external meeting room. If in use Zoom / Hangout we use the phone booth
  • For Daily Standups we use the Dev Room, Customer Room & Founders Corner.
  • The weekly team meeting is mandatory & happens in the Team Room.