Chapter 02 Distributed Rituals/How distributed teams sketch together
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The whiteboard, reassembled

Four habits for remote sketching rituals.

1
Cluster, don't clutter

Start with sticky notes, not slide decks.

Open the canvas, drop one idea per note, group by color. Decks freeze thinking; sticky walls keep it moving until the team is ready to commit.

2
Cursors over calendars

Sketch live, summarize later.

Twenty minutes of cursors moving together beats an hour-long meeting recap. We replaced four standing syncs with one daily board check-in.

3
Arrows tell the story

Draw the path, not the polish.

A wobbly arrow between two notes is worth more than a tidy diagram nobody touches. Save fidelity for the version teams already agree on.

4
Close with consensus

End every board with a circled callout.

Five minutes before the call ends, circle the three decisions in green. Async readers find them in seconds; nobody asks "what did we agree?".