In the states, remote work has long been no wonder. For a year already in 2003, our RP at one of the rallies during the obligatory introductory small talk let slip that he was sitting in his house in California in his underpants. Then they recalled it to him for several months, and I myself, being on site in the glorious state of Iowa, witnessed a lively non-verbal reaction of "business" to such a revelation. All this mess happened not with a garage startup, but between quite reputable companies. The RP was from IBM, a project for one of the largest state banks.
I was on the development side, now I would be called a technical project manager, or a team lead, or an architect. It doesn't matter what you call it, the main thing is that the development was also carried out by a distributed team from Moscow, Minsk, and the same states, there were even guys from Egypt. Different time zones, different language, mentality. But everything worked great!
Since that moment, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge, but it so happened that all my experience was connected precisely with organizing the work of remote teams. For a long time, I worked with Vega ECM Solutions, whose feature was the implementation of projects in geographically distributed teams, where all employees worked from home. Even when the company opened a very decent office in Irvine CA, it was often empty and served more as a representative function. People preferred to work from home, and the management did not interfere with this. Why, when everything works well and efficiently?
Someone will say, "Well, this is an American company, ours is different." Not at all. Remote development management principles work the same everywhere. They act the same on Americans, Indians, Russians, Ukrainians and Egyptians. The Russian company "Business Logic" had several geographically located offices and product teams were formed from employees from different offices. Someone was in an office in Moscow, someone in Ufa, someone in Krasnoyarsk. Several people worked from home. Everything worked great thanks to the same principles, which will be discussed later.
Observing what often happened in some very large Russian companies this summer, the question often arose - what is wrong? Why communication floats, why progress on the backlog has become slower, how to do something at all? There is a specific answer to each of these questions, but the common root, the breeding ground from which all these problems grow, is a very low level of management. Its not systematic, not regular and reactive. The forced retirement in some companies became the very child from the famous fairy tale. And the king is naked ...
For remote work to be not evil, but an effective, practical way of working together, much is not required. You just need to organize the process using simple, obvious mechanisms. To govern, and not let everything go by itself, hiding behind mantras about "self-organization". The principles below are about remote, but is it only about it?
Principle 1. Work strictly according to tasks in the tracker
The principle is obvious, about the same as the need to wash your hands. However, not everyone and not always wash their hands. Until now, in some companies, a certain number of tasks pass by the tracker. Or tasks, as it were, in the tracker, but not always correspond to what is actually being done. If during office work this is somehow acceptable - everything is in sight, then when remotely tracking all significant tasks is mandatory. What is a "significant task" is determined empirically. My criterion is "any task that cannot be done in 15 minutes." In this case, you do not need to stand with a timer. If for some kind of consultation, analysis of an error, etc. If it suddenly takes not 15, but 16 minutes, or even 17, then it may well not get into the tracker, provided that there are few such tasks. Likewise in the other direction. If the task takes 5 minutes,but during these 5 minutes the developer makes a change in the code, then such a task must be registered. Otherwise, how will you determine in a year why you suddenly changed this line of code?
Which tracker should you use? The answer is whatever you are used to and which is convenient. My teams worked with fat. Redmine is fine too. Even Trello.
But ...
Imagine that you are working in an organization where the tracker is monitored hard. Different and multiple performance indicators are calculated and someone else knows exactly what. On these indicators, meetings are held, reports are built, and line managers are banged on the heads for deviations. In general, a lot of important and useful work is being done.
Is it possible to organize normal tracking of tasks in such conditions? The answer is no. Any careless step can lead to a violation of the metric, but we just want to work, plan, make life easier ...
And if it turns out the other way around - everything is very complicated, then a simple and good idea to work with a tracker breaks down. Of course, the team is tracking something, but in a minimal volume so that the reports do not spoil ... A
harmful thought ... But what if the real working tracking is carried out in an alternative system? Trello, for example.
Principle 2. Daily report on spent time
There have been fierce debates on this topic in the community for a long time and I have no desire to argue abstractly on the topic of "good" / "bad" . I describe what works and makes sense.
In accordance with Principle 1 "Work strictly according to tasks in the tracker", all tasks are tracked with us. At the end of the working day, each employee remembers what tasks he performed today and enters into them the time spent with a short description of what was done. The description may well be "thought a lot". In order to write off the time for "minor tasks", you can create a separate task - a conditional "dump". It is clear that a little working time should go there, since the tasks are "insignificant". For such tasks, a description of what the time was spent on is also necessary. For example, "Angela's consultation". By the way, if you see that a lot of time is being written into the "dump" task, then this is a signal that something is going wrong and something needs to be done about it. The manager's job is to hear the bells and take actionto rectify the situation.
So, all working time is taken into account, and its amount should be 8 hours a day. Or 40 hours a week. It is more correct to pay attention to the weekly balance than to the daily one. It is normal when real people sometimes work more, sometimes less. There are different situations, and our performance is quite as uniform as provided by the timesheets.
In contrast to the principle of "Work strictly according to tasks in the tracker", implementing the principle of daily accounting is usually much more difficult. It is important that people write off their time every day, and not at the end of the week, month, or when a kick from the boss arrives. You need to understand that the principle of time tracking takes a person out of the zone of inner comfort, this causes internal resistance and that is why it ensures the effectiveness of remote work.
To implement any undertaking, you must first explain it, and then, especially at the first stage, regularly monitor the implementation and enforce the rule. Inevitability is much more effective than harsh, but random, punishment for failure.
Introducing the principle of time tracking in many teams, I have always heard the same question-statement in different creative options " now instead of developing, we will spend all the time on writing off time ." It may well be. You have every right to take into account the time spent on write-off in the time of the task. It is easy to calculate ... how long does it take to get into the fat, find a problem, estimate how long the task took, what was done and write a few numbers and a couple of phrases? Let 5 minutes... The developer rarely works on more than 5 tasks per day. In total, in the worst case, it will take 25 minutes to write off the time. The company can afford it.
Another common objection is " how do I know. How much time did I spend? " The answer is that you don't need a stopwatch . The time you estimate should be entered at the end of the day. As with any assessment, mistakes are acceptable.
The trick of the principle of time tracking is that it forces each player in the team to conduct a daily individual "retro". After all, you need to remember what you did. To understand whether it worked or not, how much time and what it took. Information on write-offs is open to the manager, the team, so it will not work to write inadequate. It's just a shame. Knowing that at the end of the day you will need to do a time reporting procedure is a very good remedy for procrastination
How not to do ...
When introducing any innovation, you yourself need to be sure of its benefits. Approach - and everyone does this, but an instruction from “above” has come to kill the idea. If there is no inner conviction in the need to use some kind of management tool, it is better to abandon it than to transfer your uncertainty and doubts to the team.
Principle 3. Regular team planning meetings
Communication in a telecommuting team is very important. Everyone should be aware of what is happening on the project, what external changes are, who faces what problems, when to expect the completion of tasks, etc. It is important to understand and feel that we are a team, that everything is in one context, there is a common understanding not only of the goals, but also of where we are now. Even if in a dark and unpleasant place ...
I quite deliberately called such regular meetings of the team "planning meetings", and not Scrum's daily. Scrum is one methodology that is effective in some situations, but not at all applicable in others. Stretching Scrum on all living things is a strange and incomprehensible idea.
Therefore, it is the " planning meetings", although in terms of meaning and format they resemble a daily. We discuss the status, introductory. We transfer lengthy questions to separate meetings. I recommend limiting the duration to 15-30 minutes. The optimal frequency in a quiet time is 2-3 planning meetings a week, in a hot period - once a day.
During the briefings important regularity. it is better to add them directly into the calendar of the entire team. and on the calendar. on udalenke a mandatory management tool and your time and the time of the team. respect Symptom. I need to discuss something important, but I respect you , your plans, so I invite you to the meeting in advance. If the proposed time is inconvenient, we can postpone. If you have preliminary questions about the purpose of the meeting, you can ask, as well as refuse the meeting.
Principle 4. 1x1 communications
When the whole team works in one office, spontaneous communications constantly arise. Near the coffee machine, in the kitchen, someone caught someone in the corridor for a few words. There is no such luxury in remote work mode. There are only instant messengers, telephone. People are different, in IT they are more often introverted, so a situation may arise in which one of the employees is "lost", interpersonal communication breaks down, which is very important not only for achieving results, but also for the socialization of employees. We are people and want to communicate, even inveterate introverts.
Here, “spontaneous”, semi-formal communications can help, when the team lead discusses a 1x1 issue with an employee. The question can be organizational, it can be technical. More importantly, the team lead periodically initiates a dialogue with everyone. Voice is best, but in some situations there may be text messages. The voice is much better! This should not happen on a schedule, and it is good to keep the average frequency of such meetings at least 2 times a week.
This principle comes from the good old offline skill of a good leader - to communicate with employees, pay attention to them. Offline, such communications arise naturally, by themselves. In the remote mode, they need to be specially initiated. Don't forget about people.
I have described four basic principles of remote work to make it productive, efficient and comfortable for employees. One that does not require a return to the office, which in itself is economically beneficial for the company. Of course, the competence of a leader is not limited to these principles, but following them, so simple, can already dramatically change the attitude towards remote work. We cover the main management responsibilities - task tracking provides planning, control, delegation. Planning meetings and 1 on 1 meetings create a single information field. Issues that arise are either promptly resolved or added to the tracker for prioritization.
Nothing complicated.