It’s 4 p.m. and you’ve got a welcome call with your newest team member. Ideally, you’d feel full of life, ready to welcome her with enthusiasm and get her excited about the weeks to come.

Problem is, this is your 6th video call of the day and you’re overrun with Zoom fatigue.

You’ve been turned “on” (not in a good way) for the last 7 hours and are severely lacking in enthusiasm, let alone excitement.

The worst thing is, the majority of those meetings were unnecessary, everything covered in them could’ve been communicated asynchronously.

Simply put, asynchronous communication involves communicating remotely without expecting an immediate response. This can be done via iMessage, pre-recorded video/audio, making suggestions to an existing project (think: Google Docs/Sheets, Github, Jira).

The challenge is knowing, when and how to use synchronous vs. asynchronous communication methods. Fortunately, this post is here to teach you just that so you can avoid Zoom fatigue and stop being real-time, all the time. Feel free to skip to a specific section of the post using the links below.

• What is Zoom fatigue?
• Avoid Zoom fatigue by making sure communication is always intentional
• Avoid Zoom fatigue: Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication
• Advantages and disadvantages of synchronous vs. asynchronous communication
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication tools at Process Street
• Synchronous vs. asynchronous communication: Wrapping up

Let’s get started!
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Do you have a brand that you go back to, time and time again?

If you do, what is it about this brand that’s captured your loyalty?

I do not doubt that an exceptional customer experience plays its part. That is, think about how that brand makes you feel. Good huh?

According to Bain & Company, businesses that invest time and effort to optimize their customer experience (CX) flows, experience above-market revenue growth between 4-8%. With the vast choice of products, services and brands available, exceptional customer experience comes as the ultimate seduction and differentiation for businesses to stand out above competitors.

In this Process Street article, you’ll learn how to engage your customers at every point in their journey with you. You’ll learn how to consistently create a service with a smile, a product to praise, and a beloved brand.

Learn from the best as we take a glimpse into the CX operations used by the likes of Netflix, Microsoft, and of course Process Street. You’ll then be given 5 tips on how you can optimize your CX flows, taking into account the changing business landscape, and the impacts of digitalization on customer behavior and experience.

Click on the relevant subheader to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all for an in-depth understanding of CX.

• What is CX?
• Case studies: How top tech companies deliver excellent CX
• How to optimize your customer experience flows
• Using checklists to optimize your CX flows in 5 steps
• Understanding customer experience flows in a digital world

Let’s jump to it!
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I hate email.

Who really likes answering emails? You get into work, switch everything on, and right off the bat there’s an inbox full of company memos, check-ins from your line manager, updates from colleagues, reminders for meeting after meeting after meeting…

It’s not a great way to start the day, amiright?

Well – and I am totally going to gloat about this – that’s just not how we roll at Process Street. If you’ve hung around us for five minutes, you’re probably aware that we are Slack superfans here on the Street. All of our company communication happens through Slack, and it’s been life-changing.

I’m not just saying this to stir up envy, though. Being such Slack aficionados, we’ve figured out how to use Slack features to increase productivity, improve collaboration, and just plain make our day-to-day easier.

I’ve broken them down into three easy sections, so no matter your level, you can jump straight to the tips you need – and hey, no one’s gonna judge if you want a little refresher!

• How to use Slack 101: Back to basics
• Taking it to the next level: Slack tips for the already initiated
• Expert tips for the Slack-savvy

Ready to dive in?
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“Well-defined values don’t sound like the safe platitudes of a Hallmark card” – Patrick M. Lencioni, Management guru

Lencioni also wrote that “Most values statements are bland, toothless, or just plain dishonest. [They] create cynical and dispirited employees, alienate customers, and undermine managerial credibility.”

For early stage startups, formal value statements are multi-functional; they should help your team understand and act on your internal best practices and empower them to make decisions that will benefit the company as a whole.

These values are the boundaries within which your business will operate in pursuit of its goals, and set the tone for day-to-day operations.

Think of core values as one of the three pillars of principle holding up your business operations; the other two being mission and vision.

In this Process Street article, we’ll explore why core values are important, how they align with mission and vision, and some examples of core values from other companies.

We’ve also got some statements from our own team about how they live and act on our own internal values in their day-to-day work.

• Start with why
• Vision, vale, and mission statements
• Why core values are important
• Examples of core company values
• How the Process Street team lives our core values
• Core values: the backbone of daily business operations

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We’ve cut our development cycle by 70% since making the move to Shape Up.

This alternative development method is a breath of fresh air from all things Scrum, Agile, Kanban, Scrumban, Fake Agile, Bad Agile… you get my drift.

What started off as Basecamp‘s internal approach to developing and shipping software at lightning speed, has become a clearly written (and illustrated), freely contributed, and easily accessible e-book: “Shape Up: Stop Running in Circles and Ship Work that Matters“.

Although I sincerely recommend you read the book, this post is here to save you from studying the 143 pages of text by providing you with three nifty checklist templates. The checklists take you through the Shape Up process and its 3 key phases: Shaping, betting, and building.

In this post, I’ll briefly touch on the fundamental concepts of Shape Up’s approach. I’ll also introduce each of the phases and their corresponding checklist.

• Shape Up process: Key concepts
• Shape Up processes to help you get started
• Shape Up process: Shaping
• Shape Up process: Betting
• Shape Up process: Building
• Shape Up process: Summing up

Let’s get shaping!
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When I was still teaching, the three main points of advice I found myself repeating were:

1. Take your time.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Don’t bite off more than you can chew.

As it turns out, those three statements apply to most things in life – including business. Especially business.

I know. We’ve been in an era of calculated risk, mainlining entrepreneurial spirit, and the pervasive (-ly annoying) go-big-or-go-home philosophy for so long that “going above and beyond” isn’t even status quo; it’s bare minimum requirements.

Hear me out.

No matter what else you’re doing with your company, you have to take care of your customers. You have to understand them: what they want, what they need, and what they will need down the road.

That understanding of your customer and their relationship with your product is a crucial aspect of becoming a successful product-oriented business.

So you’ve read our previous post on product-led growth (PLG) and now know all the nuts and bolts of a PLG go-to-market strategy. It’s a super-exciting concept and exactly the direction you’ve wanted to take your company in.

But. (There’s always a “but.”)

Your business – the entire customer lifecycle every user of your product goes through – revolves around the traditional sales-led approach of painstakingly coaxing every customer through each step of the sales cycle from demo to trial to paying user.

You can’t go in tomorrow morning, clear out all your established processes, and tell your sales team: Right, we’re totally changing everything right this second. Even if your sales team doesn’t laugh you out of the office, it’s not going to work.

So how do you navigate that transition and maintain your success?

I didn’t know the answer to that, so for this Process Street post, I went straight to the horse’s mouth ( ) and asked PLG champ, author, and founder Wes Bush about how to make PLG work and become a successful, product-oriented company.

• Wes Bush, PLG Champion
• Product-led growth: Where it all began
• The end-user era: Software for the people
• PLG: Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication
• What goes up, must come down
• Essential metrics to measure product-oriented success
• A final word on the product-oriented evolution

Let’s get started!
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I wrote a post about Shape Up, a development methodology, and you the reader wanted me to dive deeper. So, I did just that and interviewed Process Street’s Product Designer, Ivy.

Ivy answers common questions concerning how Shape Up works in practice, and although I briefly touch on the core phases of Shape Up’s approach, this post should be seen as a follow up to my original post which provides a full low-down of what Shape Up is and how it differs from alternative development methods like Scrum and Kanban.

So, make sure to read my last post on Shape Up so you have all the context you need for this post.

In this post, we’ll be covering:

• What is Shape Up?
• The makings of a Process Street Product Designer
• Shape Up from a Product Designer’s perspective
• Shape Up’s design process: Key takeaways
• The day-to-day Shape Up experience as Process Street’s Product Designer

Let’s kick things off with a brief re-cap of Shape Up’s key phases .
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This is a guest post by Ray Slater Berry, a freelance writer for Chameleon with over nine years of content marketing and social media experience. He specializes in product tech, travel, SaaS and working one time as a CMO at Study Clerk. Ray is also a published fiction writer, with his first novel titled Golden Boy.

“Every dollar invested in ease of use returns $10 to $100.” – IBM, The ROI of UX

The above statement was made by the global business powerhouse, IBM. The company explains that it’s far more economical to consider user needs early in the design process than to try and solve them later. Based on the returns given in the above quote, we can calculate an ROI of 9,900%.

And considering the user needs early is exactly what a user experience (UX) map does, meaning creating an effective UX map has the potential to bridge the gap between business success and failure.

By understanding your user’s needs in the early stages of a design process, you’re more likely to consistently meet those needs, meaning a happy customer and reduced churn.

This is why we at Process Street have produced this article, your practical guide to user experience mapping.

Welcome and gather around the user experience campfire. Grab a marshmallow on a stick, a cup of something hot, and relax. Today you’ll learn the ins of outs of user experience maps and how you can create one in the leanest way possible.

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice. Alternatively, scroll down to read all we have to say regarding user experience mapping.

• What are user experience maps?
• The benefits of UX mapping
• How do you create a UX map?
• Examples of user experience maps

Once upon a time, in a land not so far from here…
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This is a guest post written by Ashley Ferro, a freelance content writer & copywriter specializing in SEO content marketing.

It’s all too common to find yourself wading through your organization’s shared folders in search of the file you’ve been asked to review:

• PROJECT-PROPOSAL-NEW-v5.doc
• Project_proposal_2020_final+edits.doc
• THIS_is_the_final_proposal_(old-version).PDF

Why does this happen? Why can’t everyone just use proper file naming conventions? The reasons can be lack of proper internal policy or procedure for naming and organizing files, lack of any consideration for folder or information architecture, and just plain carelessness.

With a small amount of effort, you can establish proper file naming conventions and avoid this kind of document spaghetti. The more organized you can be with your internal information, the more efficient and effective you can be in your business goals.

Just imagine – seeing neat, intuitively named folders, knowing which folders contain the documents you’re looking for, and – take a seat – having confidence that the file you’re about to click on will be what you expect it to be.

In this Process Street article, we’ll cover:

Let’s go!

Every 20 seconds, $1 million is wasted globally through poor investments that don’t align well with a given organization’s goals and strategy.

This is according to a 2018 Pulse of Profession (PMI) report. The report also indicated that organizations waste 9.9% for every dollar invested due to poor strategic goal delivery.

Yet, as a solution to these business woes, 89% of executives say BizOps could significantly improve strategic decision-making by improving collaboration between IT and business teams.

The startup bizOps buzz is reimagining older, already pioneered bizOp practices used by the likes of Yahoo, Google, and LinkedIn. Startups are using bizOps (otherwise knowns as business operations) in a more generalist role demanding rapid execution and a larger scope of responsibilities.

Tech startups such as Slack, Dropbox, Ziprecruiter, and (of course) Process Street, are recruiting for and building out their Bizop teams.

But what exactly do we mean by bizOps in this modern world, and how has the concept been reimagined for the startup culture and mentality?

In this article, you’ll learn what bizOps is, from the day-to-day operations to the core activities. We’ll then discuss the importance of bizOps, using real-world examples to display the role in action. Find out how to apply BizOps as a startup or as a large enterprise to significantly improve strategic decision-making in your business.

Sound good?

Click on the relevant subheader below to jump to your section of choice, alternatively scroll down to read all we have to say:

• What is bizOps?
• Key concepts in bizOps
• BizOps activities: Maximizing profit, performance, and growth (with free templates)
• The importance of bizOps (+ business operations examples)

Let’s jump straight to it!
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