Mihai Mafteianu » Tips

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 5/5

Mihai — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 03:00:33 +0000

Fifth and latest post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Connecting remotely at a personal level

Working remotely is not working alone

Not being present in a physical work environment does not allow a member of the team to stop communicating actively with his colleagues. On the contrary one must ensure that all others know what he’s working on at all times, provides consistent status updates and helps the project manager track his or her progress.

Frequent video calls between team members

Video calls are closer to a physical interaction than emails or simple voice calls. Using video adds a personal touch and helps at better understanding each other. One on one video calls are possible via Skype and for more participants solutions like Dimdim or WebEx can be used. At least the weekly team meeting must have video, as well as most of the one on one Skype calls.

Meeting at the beginning of the project in person

While not possible for all teams, meeting at the beginning in person offers a boost hard to replicate otherwise. It is easier to agree on responsibilities and see each other’s communication and work style in such an environment, but it can as well take place later in the project. Many distributed teams meet in person at least once a year for this reasons.

All meetings are well documented with clear agenda and meeting notes

While a remote meeting has less human interaction this can be overcome by better managing the meeting process. Setting the agenda and sending back and forth some emails to clarify what is to be discussed will help set the focus better when the actual meeting takes place. A team member, taking the role of the meeting facilitator, will keep meeting notes and will ensure the agenda is followed and the meeting stays on time.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 4/5

Mihai — Mon, 14 Jun 2010 02:00:08 +0000

Fourth post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Online collaboration and sharing tools

Google Apps for Domain

With Gmail being the email option of choice for the vast majority of Internet users nowadays having Gmail for the domain name used for the company is a welcome addition. For this one can use Google Apps for domain for free by only setting up an account and changing the MX records with the domain register.

Google has thrown into the mix a number of other apps that the remote working team can benefit from like Calendar, Docs, Wave and a couple others.

Dropbox

For pushing files between team members nothing beats Dropbox’s simplicity. One just needs to install the Dropbox plugin and throw the files in the shared folder. Changes are automatically pushed to everyone who was invited to see the folder content.

Basecamp / Pivotal Tracker

Both Basecamp and Pivotal Tracker are two simple tools that can help distributed teams maintain focus and have clear next actions.

While Basecamp is focused around To-Do lists and Milestones, on Pivotal Tracker the team can do Agile development on a story-based method. Pivotal Tracker calculates the team’s velocity and accordingly estimates how much work will be done in the next iterations.

Git Repository

Git is a version control system created by the same person who wrote the Linux kernel, Linus Torvalds. He used this for the development of the Linux kernel, which is created by the effort of thousands of developers.

Using Git lets everyone easily make changes to the code, while keeping a clear record of every change and push and pull changes back and forth from other team members.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 3/5

Mihai — Mon, 07 Jun 2010 03:00:10 +0000

Third post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Skype and how to use it properly.

Open group chat

The Skype group chat is the direct correspondent of the open space in an office environment, with some nice extras.

Each domain group can have its own group chat, so messages don’t get mixed up.

When a team member needs to focus he can turn Skype on Do Not Disturb and stop receiving chat notifications.

Skype stores the messages on every client and automatically makes sure the chat session is synced among the participants. If the team is chatting in a group chat and all by one leave the session afterwards, the remaining participant Skype client will automatically broadcast the chat history to all group chat members that were offline at the time of the chat, but come online at a later date.

Screen sharing

Skype offers a cross platform screen sharing solution. This makes activities like remote pair programming and live discussions on design wireframes convenient and accessible.

Sometimes it’s easier to show something on the screen and make the modifications on spot as opposed to moving files back and forth and discussing via email.

Conference calls

Conference calls with up to 25 people can be easily done for free via Skype. By using the Skype-Out feature one can include in the conference landline or mobile phone numbers too, at the expanse of call credit.

Adding new participants in an existing conference is an easy as drag and drop from the contacts list.

One on One video calls

Connecting between team members requires personal communication done on a regular basis. With emails and group chat providing clear and efficient communication, video calls will be used between team members to better connect with each other and discuss topics that can be misunderstood otherwise. In a perfect world such video calls would not be necessary, as they are more time and energy consuming, but sometimes they also help at getting faster to an agreement.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 2/5

Mihai — Mon, 31 May 2010 04:00:09 +0000

Second post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Email communication done right.

Everyone should have world class email skills

Have clear and concise subject lines. Sending an email without a subject line makes it more difficult to asses the urgency of an email message and setting the right expectations before opening it.

Write short email messages. One or two paragraphs are enough most of the time, but one line emails that spark conversation about a topic that requires a decision later on are also a good idea.

Finish with a clear set of next actions. Don’t only state the problem, but also propose solutions.

Only CC people that have to be involved in discussing the topic. Don’t CC everyone and fill up their inbox with replies and long discussions. Try to inform people of the decisions and only involve in conversions people that are part of the decision making process.

Every day all members do Inbox Zero

If email is expected to be a reliable communication method among team members then all team members should make sure all email messages they receive are processed on a daily basis. Emptying the email inbox daily and including the next actions in the right place (a GTD system hopefully) is a process that can enhance the general reliability of the team communication.

On the other hand, email can be a source of constant distraction if used in a wrong way. For people that need to focus for longer periods of time (developers, designers, etc.) email notification systems with pop-ups and BlackBerries should be avoided. Reading emails twice a day (before and after the work schedule) is enough most of the time.

Team should agree via email on meeting agendas

Meetings are expensive. Getting team members to participate in team meeting that don’t have a clear desired outcome and a meeting agenda, previously agreed by the team, can make the meetings ever more expensive, sometimes to the point of wasteful.

To avoid getting in this situations, remote teams will gather topics discussed via email and include them for a brief discussion (to agree on something previously discussed, not to create lengthily discussions on topics that can be had on email in the first place) in the weekly review meeting.

The next post will be about ‘Skype and how to use it properly’. If you like this series please share the links with your friends using the ‘Share’ button inside the post page.

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: Part 1/5

Mihai — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:24:14 +0000

First post in The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series.

Why working remotely?

Fewer interruptions and distractions

When done right, working remotely shows an increased level of productivity for the members of the team. Working in an Agile, open space environment, has lots of advantages but also some disadvantages. People can ask questions at any time and interrupt the focus of all team members, which has a negative impact on productivity. In the post on Skype we will discuss the best compromise between an open space environment and keeping team members focused on their current activity and only grabbing their attention when absolutely needed.

It is also important that each individual members can organize him or herself in a way to isolate from non-work related distractions. The great thing about remote working is that actual productivity assumptions about ones work output are replaced with measurements of velocity and team involvement, so a non-productive person will stand out sooner than later as compared to the other team members.

No commuting

Commuting every to the office often usually means a couple hours of potentially productive time used to get to and back from the work place. By avoiding commuting, the team members can concentrate better on the most important task and avoid wasted time, money and attention to getting to the physical workplace.

Can have the best team members no matter their physical location

As everyone says, good help is hard to find. Accordingly, when good help if finally found, he or she can be located hundreds or thousands of miles away. By implementing an effective remote working environment, the team can be distributed pretty much anywhere in the world and still provide better value to the project compared to working in a physical office.

The next post will be about email communication done right. Don’t forget to subscribe to the blog’s RSS feed!

The Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely: The Series

Mihai — Mon, 24 May 2010 06:23:58 +0000

In the next five weeks, on every Monday, I will publish a post on working remotely. It is based on years of experience on technology projects done via distributed teams, but I am sure that most if not all the techniques can be extended to other types of projects as well.

The five parts of the ‘Ultimate Guide to Working Remotely’ are:

Why one should be involved in more than one project at once

Mihai — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 13:51:55 +0000

Spreading yourself across multiple companies, startups or projects forms a good approach in shortening ones path to success. Main motive is the increased pace at one gathers multiple skills, having the opportunity to watch and participate in multiple work cultures. The more you do, see and learn, the bigger your chances to succeed at whatever you are planning to do.

The number of projects one can pursue depends on his skill set, level of commitment and time availability. A skilled project manager, for example, can look into managing a couple early stage projects at a time and still obtain good results if he or she has good knowledge of productivity and management techniques and great communication skills.

Such approach is common on freelancing (where one usually works on many projects at a time) and it can also be applied with success on personal business projects. Setting a clear timeframe per week for working on the project and sticking to it ensures a commitment as well as a clear separation between the project and any other tasks.

Diversity usually keeps people excited. Spreading your time and attention across multiple projects along with the fact that one can never know for sure if a business will succeed or not can increase his or her’s chances to create something remarkable.

When one feels that a project has more changes that others will usually allocate right away more time and resources in that directions to increase it’s chances at the expanse of the other projects with less potential.

What is your opinion on the topic? Do you think people should focus from day one on projects or set a timeframe and spread the available work time across multiple projects?

Using Google Wave for Project Management / Collaboration

Mihai — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 13:38:24 +0000

For one of my latest projects I decided to invite everyone on the team to use the Google Wave for team collaboration. Wave is still full of bugs and slow but we managed to do a good job at using it as a project management / team collaboration tool to sharing tasks, comments and discussions. Is it also very useful for copywriting collaboration (better than Google Docs as it is faster).

Below you can find some basic principle we are using in Google Wave for project management.

First and foremost you will want to organize all waves related to a project in a separate folder. It’s nice to set a color to that folder so the waves stand out in your Google Wave Inbox. Below you can see a blue example of the ‘New Awesome Project’ (TM).

Afterwards setup a new wave for every distinct topic and invite everyone interested and create inside that wave new replies with tasks lists.

For managing the tasks lists we use the following set of rules.

You can create a to-do list inside a reply with usual tasks in normal text, bold tasks as high priority, done tasks with strikethrough. For attributed tasks you specify at the end of the task who’s responsible. In case of tasks with a deadline you specify before the task when it needs to get done.

For comments I recommend using inline replies as they can be collapsed and leave the list with a clean look.

Separate in each reply tasks in a GTD-friendly way, with next actions, waiting and someday/maybe groups and after a reply has a large number of tasks (and becomes too bloated) make an inline reply at the end of the main reply and move the completed tasks there. In such way you can keep all task lists clean and current just by a daily reviews for the task lists you are directly involved with and you can ask your project manager to do weekly reviews across all waves including tasks lists to ensure the vision and goals are current and well represented in your waves.

Looking forward for your feedback and suggestions in the comments about this project management approach to Google Wave. It is not meant to be a complete approach, but a simple one that anyone can understand and use right away.

Learn from watching Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Mihai — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 09:18:25 +0000

Apart from their shady practices the Enron executives were indeed the smartest guys in the room. Understanding how the system works to such extend to be able to influence and even fraud the stock market for so many years is a tremendous performance on its own.

Achieving success demands having a profound motivation. Kenneth Lay originated from a poor family and has had a strong motivation and dreamed of becoming wealthy from a very strong age.
Befriend people with high potential. Kenneth Lay became a close friend of the Bush family before George Bush Sr. won the elections as the USA President.
Hire people with visions. Kenneth Lay hired in 1990 Jeffrey Skilling as one of the company CEOs after seeing in him a great visionary with ambitious ideas of transforming Enron for the future. One of Jeffrey Skilling’s new strategies would be to use mark-to-market accounting and book profits immediately after a deal is made even if they prove profitable or not.
When in trouble deny any knowledge. Kenneth Lay was the kind of guy that always denied knowledge when one of his business decisions started an image crisis at Enron. This way he was blaming other company executives for the trouble and keep his image clean.
Create an aggressive corporate culture. At Enron every year 15% of the work force was fired following the reports of the internal Performance Review Committee. This way there was a constant pressure on the employees to perform beyond their comfort zone and sometimes in the detriment of their fellow colleagues.
Let people think the company is doing better than it actually is. Using mark-to-market accounting and generally presenting with every public speaking opportunity of any of the company executives untruthful facts about the company, Enron was able to let people believe they were turning a profit when they actually were losing huge amounts of money across most company sectors.
Tricking the stock market. Enron executives and employees at some point become more obsesses with how their stock was performing than the actual profits the company was making. This was actually lead by a PR campaign ordered in-house to help the executives do stock fraud via a pump and pump strategy.
If there is no crisis you can tie to then you should better create one. It was later proven that Enron had a major involvement in creating the California Energy Crisis from 2000 and 2001 by making use of connections they had in the power plants to close them for short periods of time of false claims of maintenance work. Enron people, especially Kenneth (Ken) Lay were well enough connected to push energy market deregulation in California which enabled them to trade energy there and turn large unethical financial profits in the detriment of Californian citizens.

I don’t encourage using such practices but it should not be underestimated the importance of knowing and understanding how these practices work to be able to protect against unethical business people using them.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/baldheretic/2686397596/

Better way to say ‘No’ to new opportunities and clients

Mihai — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 12:00:28 +0000

For a business consultant or an entrepreneur refusing additional work is as important as maintaining focus on your current tasks. Jumping at every consulting of freelancing opportunity and becoming over flooded with tasks is out of the questions if you intend to keep a certain level of quality of work.

I am going to propose you to think of changing the behavior of just saying ‘no’ with a slightly different approach. It might be the case that the other party has strong reasons why they would want to hire you and better offer them the possibility to pay more for the service you are offering and begin work right away or come at a later time when you might have more free time and accept their job at the standard rate. Think this makes sense especially when such a job would fall nicely in the 80/20 principle of 80% of the benefits coming from 20% of the efforts.

It is not beneficial to refuse a great business opportunity unless you have very good reasons to do so. Better let your clients decide if having you as a consultant is important enough for them to pay a premium.

Photo from http://www.flickr.com/photos/ucumari/580865728/