No reason remote work can’t be spontaneous, even easier IMO because you don’t have to herd cats into the same space. A ping on chat and within 1 min multiple people can be in the discussion without even having to move.
>> A ping on chat and within 1 min multiple people can be in the discussion without even having to move.
Have you ever tried this? Half of them won’t reply to you for the next x hours, others will have meetings, and others will say not right now I’m swamped. Most of those excuses are because they can’t be bothered joining a “quick call” with you, not because they’re actually busy.
What they mean by spontaneous is things happing by chance. You pinging someone isn’t happening by chance, you’re choosing to do that - to make contact.
Compare to a physical office, where by chance you’re in the cafe at the same time as someone else who you usually don’t think about. But somehow you start talking and a good idea comes from it.
I’m remote and have no problem pinging anyone on slack from my teammate to the CEO — but when I visit the office I always find connections & ideas I would never find sitting at home.
You can also just start talking in chat, even in group channels; doesn’t have to be DMs. And the you’ll have a log of your good ideas. And likely someone random will jump into your discussion.
Personally I've never used a virtual whiteboard that was any good. I blame the much smaller area and the mouse input.
Of course if your ways of working mean you can collaborate without any need for whiteboards, I guess things could be fine. Clearly, things like the Linux kernel get along OK without such collaboration.
You’ll probably want to translate your great idea to a digital diagram at some point for the design doc or documentation. Might as well start there, then you have less work to do later.
There's still benefits to having real bodies in the same physical space, a closer analogue would be closer to a video call. But that's far less spontaneous.
Have you ever tried this? Half of them won’t reply to you for the next x hours, others will have meetings, and others will say not right now I’m swamped. Most of those excuses are because they can’t be bothered joining a “quick call” with you, not because they’re actually busy.