Set up your default status in a way that everyone knows you use the platform in an asynchronous manner.

Plan your week in advance, ration the distractions and use an app blocker to reap all the benefits of async work.

Think retro as a process that has two parts - take inputs asynchronously and run it synchronously.

Let’s be honest. Teams don’t always have something big to showcase every sprint. Without substantive demos, the sprint reviews become a formality and a reporting exercise. Take a pragmatic approach to sprint reviews instead.

Sprint planning is amongst the most time consuming activities for development teams. One could argue that the value you get is not proportional to the effort you put into these meetings. With some effort you can drop sprint planning meetings completely.

If all you want to share is a “yesterday, today, blockers” update, you don’t need a standup meeting.

A single line message that you send to 200 people isn’t a single line message anymore. It’s a 200-line message. Instead, “shrink the blast radius”.

Arguments on chat don’t help. Take a deep breath and slow things down.

Limit chat conversations only to those necessary to the discussion.

In the spirit of limiting messages, use emoji reactions where possible, instead of responding to a message.

It’s ok to write longer chat messages! Save everyone the extra notifications.

Imagine calling someone on the phone, going hello! then putting them on hold!

Estimates aren’t necessary on every project. In such cases, where can you shift your measurement focus?

If you have an established product, then you’re probably less concerned about big release plans. Instead, your priority will be to enhance your product regularly. For such situations, I’m a big fan of Ryan Singer’s “Shape up” approach.

There’s an expression in Latin - festina lente. It means “make haste slowly”. We optimise for speed in software development. Deep work is often the casualty in this quest for speed. Slowing things down through writing has several benefits.

Advocate for a pair programming pattern where two developers act as each other’s accountability partners.

To make remote pairing work, the tools involved play a big role. Make sue you have specialised tools that serve the purpose.

Take a break by going solo on simple coding activities that won’t benefit from the intense code review of pair programming.

Queue up candidate stories for the next sprint, about a week in advance. Let the devs take a look at them and ask questions.

Between the PO, tech lead and tester, you have representation for the three amigos of agile software development.