The world has been forced into working remotely and for some managers, it was a natural progression but for others a huge challenge. To successfully deliver on projects when you are forced to work with remote teams you need to change the way you manage projects and adopt a new approach. Normal on-site project ceremonies can just be replaced with online ceremonies, and with the current availability of bandwidth, video can be utilised as well to give the team a feeling of cohesion – working with voice only tends to isolate team members after a while, so use that video for every team meeting. To build trust and know exactly what your team is doing, you will have to change the way you plan your projects. You will need more detail but not more granular detail, rather more detail around what will go into your milestones and deliverables – what will the resource be doing day to day. Once you have those “actions”, you can build out your plan and just monitor that the team is on track day to day or weekly. For specifications, architecture designs and scoping sessions with the client, the same process will apply, schedule regular sessions as required, make sure to turn on that video and include your team for transparency and to ensure that the communication lines are clear and open. Once you have your plan ready, the next step would be to monitor progress and to successfully do this, you will schedule regular testing / QA sessions, where the entire team is involved, almost like “show and tell” but remotely, and everybody works through the solution internally as a team to measure what progress has been achieved since the last testing session. Once you and your team are happy with the product or milestone, it gets released and you move on to the next milestone in your plan by rinsing and repeating the process until the project is completed. By allowing your team to own their individual piece of work and utilising technology to simulate co-location, you will be able to manage any project irrespective of the methodology used. You will create more trust within your team, know exactly who is doing what and you will be able to lead your remote teams successfully.
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