Charley Valher | The Virtual Team Operating System

Step 1: Tools to use when working with a virtual team.

• Slack for instant messaging and team communication.

• Asana as a project management tool.

• Zoom for team calls.

• SystemHUB for storing all how-to’s.

• Google Drive for documents and storage.

• Loom for video and screen share, when building systems and creating tasks

Step 2: Create a weekly system.

• On Monday morning spend 30-90 minutes:
  • Plan and organise what you want to achieve as a team, what are the goals for the week.
  • Put the priorities on a board in Asana. (See Step 3).
  • Have a call in Zoom with all team members and communicate their workload for the week.
  • Address questions from the team and give feedback.

• Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday mornings:
  • Perform daily check-ins in Slack with each team member to ensure they are on track with their weekly tasks and priorities.
  • If at some point a team member is off-track with a task, re-organise or allocate resources to complete the task on time.

• On Friday morning spend up to 60 minutes:
  • Have a call in Zoom with all team members.
  • Confirm and tick off what’s completed.
  • Allocate resources to tasks that were not completed or delayed.
  • QA (Quality Assurance) – check that the work completed is to your standards.
  • Update your systems on the spot.
    • If you find a mistake or something that you want to correct, assign the responsible team member to update the corresponding system quickly after the meeting.
  • Rollover tasks that are not completed to the next week and re-prioritise.
  • Feedback and questions – check how is your team, what is each person’s workload

Step 3: Organise a Weekly Overview board in Asana.

• Create a board project in Asana, with a separate column for each team member.

• Ask your team members to add and organise their tasks based on priority, from highest to lowest.
  • Note! Only add a task title and a little description if necessary. This board is only for progress overview.

• Review the tasks during the weekly calls with the team and re-organise them when necessary.

Step 4: Set up a separate project for each customer.

• Create a list project in Asana for each of your customers.

• Add a section on top for all the appropriate information that’s needed for the smooth work of the team.

• Add a Tasks section, and list all tasks and details there.

• To each task add details, links to instructions and assign a team member.

Step 5: Setup channels for communication in Slack.

• Use Slack for team communication, instead of email.

• Setup one General channel for the team communications.

• Set up a separate channel for each project that you have in Asana so that all communication and files are in one place.

Step 6: Scale your virtual team.

• You can use the weekly system with a team of up to 12 members.

• Once you reach 12 or more people, divide them into smaller teams and appoint managers to run the weekly system with their teams.

• Update your system to have weekly meetings and overview with your managers.