An intuitive, mutually agreed upon digital productivity tool stack is the biggest challenge facing companies in today's world of distributed workforces.
When there's limited or no in-person time, keeping track of notes of recurring conversations (be they a standup, commentary around a big project, performance reviews, or otherwise) is of the utmost importance to ensure your team is always up to speed and on the same page.
As a designer / product manager, I use a complex digital tool stack to stay on top of cross-functional initiatives involving stakeholders with a breadth of technological comfort. These include:
- Strategy Docs -- Google Docs + Figma
- Dev Project Management -- Linear issues + Figma frames + Loom voiceovers 📈
- Non-Dev Project Management (Creative / Content / External) -- Google Docs / Slides / Sheets + Monday
- Design Feedback -- Loom comments + Figma comments + Slack public channel comment threads + Slack DMs + live video calls + emails 💀
- Recurring Meetings (Digital Weekly, All Hands, etc) -- Google Docs + Sheets
- 1:1 Notes + Performance Reviews -- Notion + Google Docs
- General Communications -- Slack + Zoom + Meet
The above productivity stack doesn't include all the tools I'm using to actually DO my job (Contentful + Shopify + Photoshop in addition to the above). It's not ideal, but different branches of the business have different digital tool preferences, and as a cross-functional player I've learned to be fluent in all of them.
As I understand it, Assembly enables companies to easily structure and stay on top of their internal conversations. Every company has their own way of doing things, so their custom flows are awesome to ensure recurring check-ins (be they stand-ups, performance reviews, or feedback syncs) happen at the cadence and with the agenda beats relevant to you. Assembly also condenses most of my digital productivity stack into one place, meaning less brainpower devoted to remembering where I put threads of conversation and more time spent getting things done.