Managing Remote Teams

Frequently, as managers, we have to face the challenge of building teams for developing different kind of projects but with some restrictions, such as economical or related to the limited physical space at the office, among others.

In my own experience, a great solution for this situations has been the constitution of 100% remote teams.

As there are some Industries and Projects where working on goal-driven basis is not quite simple to apply (may be because of continuously business priorities changes or because of the complexity which involves planning all possible scenarios from the early beginning), I do prefer building remote teams with people that I see, are willing to work on a full time basis, as if they were seated by my side at the office.

Many times I’ve been asked: ‘How can you ensure that team members are working all the time?’ Well, let me tell you that nobody works all the time. Neither at the office nor remote. However, there are some techniques which in my case, have been very helpful all along this years in order to achieve my goals.

First, It’s always helpful to implement a working methodology. In my case, Agile, specifically, SCRUM.

Every morning we have a daily meeting where each member exposes what he/she has been doing the day before, what he/she will be doing in the current working day and at the end, if there is something which is avoiding them to accomplish their current goal.

This meetings, I think, are very important for many reasons. First, they give visibility to each member’s work within the rest of the team. Also, it helps them to understand that they are a very important piece of a whole and finally because they can see how their daily work contributes to the final results.

Besides, these daily meetings are also very important for the complete interaction between team members as they give them a space where they can ask questions each others and get some support for their decisions.

Keep always in mind that we are talking about teams whose members have never met each other face to face and that they are probably working home alone.

I also love to manage presentations where each member can expose to the rest of the team a module, functionality or just a new technology on which they have been working.  In my opinion, this not only helps them to consolidate new acquired knowledges but also constitutes a great motivation for the person, who takes this duty with both compromise and seriousness in part because of the challenge of teaching their partners about their work.  Video calls and Teleconferences platforms are very helpful tools for these expositions.

Nevertheless, in my opinion, the essential trick will always be a continuous communication. The facility in interpersonal relationships and dialogue added to empathy are decisive soft skills in order to effectively do a follow up on the team. Phrases like ‘How is it going with your task?’, ‘Do you think that we’ll be able to achieve this task at midday in order to start testing on it by the afternoon?’, ‘Can I give you some help with that?’, ‘Would you like to jump on a call with the rest of the team in order to discuss about this issue?’ are much more effective than orders, impositions or even pressures.

It is true that in many countries, internet and power failures are sometimes recurring and generally  

these exogenous issues attempt against the great performance of high leveled professional who suffer interruptions or delays on their deliveries. Unfortunately, this unexpected events cannot always be avoided and that’s why it is very important that the team member which we are planning to hire, already has contingency plans available for these situations, such as an UPS, an alternative internet conexion or even the possibility to relocate him/herself in another place in order to go on with work within minutes.

And what about time difference with other countries? Well, I’ve always seen this as an opportunity instead of a problem. Frequently deployments or some DB's adjustments are required and most of them cannot be done when users are working with the system or when there is too much traffic on the platforms. So that, having team members starting their working day a few hours earlier or ending it a few hours latter can be taken as an advantage for this tasks.

In conclusion, in my personal experience, working with remote teams has always been satisfactory and totally comparable to on-site teams.

By using the appropriate tools and methodologies (adding willingness and great communication skills) team leaders, managers and companies can constitute teams with members all around the world with less budget and higher results.