How to Start Your Remote Project Team Off on the Right Foot
April 6th, 2007 (6:00am) Sabra Aaron 9 Comments
Congratulations. You have a new project. You’ve found someone new to bill for the next few months or, if you’re an employee, a higher-up within your company sponsoring and supporting your work. Your project plan is practically done because the spec in your winning proposal is just that good. You have a virtual team to work with, scattered across multiple places. You are ready to kick out the jams.
Not so fast, buckaroo. Working with a remote team requires more than basic project management techniques (although they’re important, too). Before starting work with a brand new team, make sure that the team is ready to work effectively together. Invest a little bit of project time so everyone can get comfortable with the web tools that you’ll be using. This is more than just where to click and how to log in; you should get a feel for what your customer and colleagues expect, and demonstrate how to get that using the tools at hand.
Start by establishing a framework for where, when, and how you will communicate. You may do your best work between 10:00 PM and 3:00 am, but if the client needs an update for the 9:00 meeting with her boss, you’d better be prepared to end your “workday” with a detailed email about what you’re up to. Ask both about preferences and how to indicate when communication requires an immediate response will help you keep the conversation on track from the start.
Using online tools like Basecamp, GoPlan, Kayuda, HiTask and their ilk is a great way to put project working documents and progress reports in a place where everyone can get at them at their convenience. Remember, your new client and team members may have never heard of these things. Spend some quality time in your first few project meetings to go through the online workspace of your choice in detail. Show everyone exactly how to find things, put things, get things, and make sure that everyone who needs access to project materials has a login and knows how to use it.
Almost every project requires a lot of meeting, and if you’re not close enough to zip over to the client site on your Vespa, you may need to help your team use videoconferencing and other virtual meeting tools. Send the project team a few cheap web cams and set up instant messaging accounts for the team members. Again, a little time spent getting people oriented will pay big dividends when the client is available to you for a quick question, or when you can see the frowns pass over their brows when you present your design.
Be alert to problems. If a key contributor can’t seem to get the hang of editing documents jointly, call him privately and offer some extra help in learning to use the online environment. If someone is a terrible typist, don’t belabor the IMs; use an online phone call or videoconferencing instead. Don’t let people suffer in silence — if you don’t hear from someone in a couple of days, ping her in another medium and see what is going on.
Investing in making your team and your customer comfortable online will have a direct impact on your bottom line. For more tips on making virtual teams as effective as possible, see Seven Habits of Successful Virtual Teams and The Challenge of User Adoption with Small, Remote Teams.
What is the best technique you’ve tried to cajole clients and colleagues into the web work world?
9 Comments Post your own comment
How to Start Your Remote Project Team Off on the… says: April 6th, 2007 7:32am
[...] How to Start Your Remote Project Team Off on the… [...]
Nerd Guru says: April 6th, 2007 8:37am
Great tips all. Making sure everybody understands how the team will be using remote tools helps insure consistency, certainly.
I’ve found that with remote teams that, in addition to taking the time to make sure you are all working within the same parameters, it pays to build in some “friendly time” too. Since you aren’t sharing the same physical work space, you have to simulate those water cooler type “So, how was your weekend?” conversations that won’t otherwise happen. That sort of thing builds synergy among teammates and build familiarity you might not otherwise get. If everybody knows you have a sick relative, for example, they’ll cut you some slack when you’re late for that 7am meeting since everybody knows you were probably up all night helping someone close to you.
I’ve seen a couple of things work well, icluding a rotating “show and tell” time the first 15 minutes of the weekly staff meeting. Somebody presents something going on in their life that interests them whether it be a hobby or vacation photos. I’m always surprised at how much side chatter that creates and discovery among people that they had something in common with someone else that they otherwise wouldn’t have known about.
Also, remote teams don’t typically get together for traditional team-building activities since they are so geographically distributed. You have to be careful to not let it get out of control, but but a lunch hour network video game session can help with that. Driving games, which even non-gamers can relate to, that let you split up into teams and play cops and robbers types of things can get pretty competitive and build camaraderie. It’s not quite the same as running that dreaded survival rope course out in the woods somewhere, but it’s as close as you can get with people separated from each other.
Dean says: April 6th, 2007 9:53am
Great little tips. I am starting to except new jobs and they usually require some over-sees communication via BaseCamp and Skype. You bring up an interesting point about virtual schedules and how each person has a different one. I live in Oakland and the developer lives in Spain. I know that I’ll have lots of emails with correspondence first thing in the morning so that I need to be prepared or come in earlier.
Skype and Basecamp have been the most successful means of communication for me.
mcdave.net » links for 2007-04-07 says: April 6th, 2007 11:22pm
[...] Blog Archive How to Start Your Remote Project Team Off on the Right Foot (tags: Collaboration productivity project) [...]
Web Worker Daily » Blog Archive Alternatives to Basecamp for Project Management « says: April 7th, 2007 4:08pm
[...] many people are on the team, and numerous other variables. While you’re deciding, check out these tips for getting your virtual team started on the path to [...]
MODE - A Vehicle For Change says: April 13th, 2007 12:06pm
[...] work a couple days a week from home. Her boss is also new to her rule, so I’m sharing this piece on building a remote team from WWD with you in hopes that Leslie and her boss read it [...]
Il Blog della cantina della nonna » Blog Archive » Link del 13/04/2007 says: May 9th, 2007 6:23am
[...] Progetti con team distribuito - intendo distribuito sul territorio; lo so che voi siete amanti del contatto fisico, della presenza del team di sviluppo in una stessa stanza ma dato che il mondo cambia anche i team di sviluppo diventano 2.0 e sono costretti ad un contatto virtuale, e allora sono necessarie delle contromisure per evitare di perdere il contatto e organizzare bene il lavoro. Notate i software di gestione di progetto che cita, sono tutti molto web2.0 [...]
great site says: July 12th, 2007 2:02pm
great blog
forums
How do you optimize remote teams? | Nerd Guru says: March 30th, 2008 9:34pm
[...] over at Web Worker Daily had an interesting article on Friday regarding remote teams, entitled How to Start Your Remote Project Team off on the Right Foot. The main point of the article is that you need to set up the parameters under which you will [...]