Telecommuting becomes mainstream. Smaller businesses shift to online work or remote work; it’s imperative that you manage your online projects well. Now that your team could very well be dispersed globally, it’s critical to establish certain rules to make sure work happens as scheduled leaving no room for online work faux pas.
According to Tsedal Neeley of HBR, global teams have all sorts of problems by default. Some of them are fairly common knowledge such as lack of face-to-face communities, the lapse in availability, differences in context, the variety of languages, and cultural nuances.
The secret to successful teams is in embracing those problems and working to achieve goals.
There are general best practices to make sure that you are leading your team well online. Then there are rules for you to set up. Some of the common best practices – according to JP Morgan include scheduling and navigating around time zones, creating partnerships, creating a collaborative environment, team check-in, etc.
Here are a few rules you should set up for making your online workflow effective:
One tool, all work
You just can’t afford to keep trying out every new project collaboration tool that’s launched in the marketplace. There’s really no time for that. Once you go through an initial test-apply-test-apply phase, you’d have to pick up a tool and run with it. With that, you’d also work on user buy-in and get used to the project collaboration software as soon as possible. Once you decide on a web-based app or a tool, get to work immediately.
All work has to happen using the project management tool of your choice. Unless you change the tool itself (see point below), there would no other places for the work to show up for your team. Everyone logs in everyday, work happens as scheduled, and all work that happens here stays here.
Be ready to switch
If you do what we suggested in the point above, you’d realize that often your best decisions wouldn’t work for you. You’d have ended with a project collaboration tool that doesn’t fit to the needs of your business. It’d be time to change the tool. Do so, but not immediately. For instance, if your first choice was Microsoft Project but if you had to choose a smaller, leaner, and more relevant option for your online collaboration, keep looking for Microsoft Project alternative like Workzone. Narrow down your options. Repeat the due diligence process and wait for the right time to make the shift.
We only suggest that you shift strategically and phase out the shift instead of doing anything drastic. Over time, plenty of data and information is stored on any given platform and you’d not want to lose any of that. While you can’t be too sure of any particular project management tool, the only way to find out is to work and test out the tools before going mainstream.
If it’s work, it gets on the cloud
Email is a hard habit to break. It’s also equally hard to work with running conversations on emails. Now, try to image those running conversations for multiple tasks and multiple projects. Do you think you’d be able to keep on top of tasks, conversations, comments, and updates? That’s precisely the reason why project collaboration tools are in demand. For the tools to work for you, however, you’d have to first establish a cardinal rule: all work briefing, updates, comments, conversations, and any other information related to tasks or projects has to get to the cloud.
If you create projects and then break it down into tasks, each task and/or project should have relevant updates, comments, and conversations underneath.
Say no to emails. The daily deluge of incoming emails has a nasty habit of making important messages drown or disappear. While working on critical projects for clients, unread emails are disaster.
The rule for TAT (Turn Around Time)
We all know that communication is critical for a project to succeed. Project collaboration tools have various features to allow for this multi-way conversation to happen. Yet, projects fail and communication falls apart.
Why, you ask?
It’s about the tool; it’s about work habits. Setup a rule for communication Turn Around Time (TAT). Depending on projects, deadlines, the time zones each team member finds himself or herself in, etc., create a deadline for response. From 6 hours to 12 hours; from 24 hours to a maximum of 48 hours.
Once you setup a rule, your team has to follow. Don’t bother if your team thinks it’s ruthless. You did account for time zones. You are aware of holidays and other breaks worldwide. You are giving enough time for your team to respond.
If you don’t set up these frameworks, the projects will never end. It’s just the way it is. You did hear about the fact that work fills in and expands to whatever time you set to complete it, didn’t you?
The rule for feedback
Since most communication through project management software is digital, you’d need to know if your recipients (teams, clients, vendors, etc.) did receive your messages. Not all project collaboration tools come with “read receipts” or notifications that this message was seen on _____ at _____”. So that gives way for another rule: make it compulsory for your team to leave a comment or a message to acknowledge messages. It only takes seconds to do so but it makes projects so much smoother and manageable.
Global teams are hot today for the flexibility and the presence of talent anywhere in the world. For that to work, you’d still need to hire the best talent and manage work. None of that would be worth it without establishing a few ground rules. It only works for the benefit of your business, so to speak.
What are some of the rules you think should be establish before launching projects virtually? Did we miss out on any of these ground rules? Share your thoughts with us.