Some notes on Remote Working

Staff starting to work from home? What can you do quickly to ensure you and your team are still productive?

Disclaimer: The following is necessarily generic and should be used as pointers to think about!

Accessing your software and files

The key piece of advice is to have a good think about what jobs need to be done. Then get your IT support involved to help work out how to enable you to do that job! 

Some questions to ask yourself:

1. Hopefully a lot of what you do is already cloud based, but if not ask yourself whether you need to use the computer on your desk? Why? Maybe you just need access to your files. Some solutions include:

   • Move files to cloud storage e.g. OneDrive, Google Drive, DropBox

   • Use a VPN to get access to the office network drive

     You are also going to want to think about the sensitivity of the data you’re working on and whether you even want the data on a home PC.

2. Do I need to use the software on my work computer?Are you sure you can’t just install it on your home computer? Could you simply move the computer home? If not, then you need to look at using remote access software, but one where the connection can be initiated remotely. Some examples include TeamViewer, LogmeIn, RemotePC. There are lots, so check they meet your particular requirements.

Meetings

Software to enable virtual meetings include: Teams, Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom, Whereby. Again there are lots, so check which has the facilities you need, like multiple screen sharing.

If you are new to virtual meetings, I would suggest keeping video off to start. Not everyone likes seeing themselves on screen! However, it really is no big deal and the occasional cat walking past can lighten the mood of an otherwise dull meeting. 

Meetings can be unproductive when you’re all in the same room… it can easily get worse when they become virtual. Tips for an effective virtual meeting are mostly the same for normal meetings (e.g. https://slackhq.com/run-effective-meetings) . I would re-iterate the following:

1. Nominate someone else as the scribe (I like to round robin this task amongst team members)

2. If it’s anyone’s first time using the software then ask them to check installation, microphone etc BEFORE the meeting starts. Organise a “pre-flight checks” meeting to ensure the main meeting runs smoothly. 

3. Assign Tasks and get them recorded by the scribe!

4. If its a regular meeting, the first agenda item should be to review previous action points

Remotely Managing People/Projects

Lots of people manage their team by “presenteeism”. They look over shoulders when standing near people’s screens or, when bumping in to a colleague, they suddenly remember “Oh, Dave... how you getting on with {insert random task they just remembered}”. When these cues disappear, keeping on top of things feels a struggle.

I like using Trello to keep tabs on all my spinning plates. Its ad-hoc nature means you can use it in a variety of ways, from simple “To Do, Doing, Done” to multi team coordination of a single project, to Kanban, to overviews of multiple projects. 

It’s very old but the following gives a brief overview of using Trello https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N_e9HvhtPLE

If you’re on Office365, then Microsoft has its own version called Planner. 

Side note: There is a much bigger conversation to have about different project types and appropriate tools to manage them, but briefly it might be worth looking at   https://support.office.com/en-gb/article/when-to-use-microsoft-project-planner-or-to-do-8f950d32-d5f4-40db-a8b7-4d1b82b55e17

My suggestion is to have a Daily Stand-Up, although it’s your call whether it is weekly or Daily. Software development teams have been able to work remotely for years, so take a note out of Scrum and have a virtual Stand-Up - https://www.agilealliance.org/glossary/daily-meeting

I suggest using a Trello board (or Planner) to capture the projects/tasks. Then go through the 3 Question:

1. What did you accomplish since the last meeting?

2. What are you working on until the next meeting?

3. What is getting in your way or keeping you from doing your job?

https://martinfowler.com/articles/itsNotJustStandingUp.html has some great pointers, particularly how a good stand-up helps with the following:

• Share understanding of goals.

• Coordinate efforts.

• Share problems and improvements.

• Identify as a team.

These items tend to be the biggest losers when working remotely, so using a regular Stand-Up really can help!

Communication - email v Slack/Teams

As a rough rule, I think of email for external communication and Slack (or Microsoft Teams) for internal. This applies even when office based, but as soon as someone in your team is working remotely it makes sense to introduce a tool such as Slack to capture the “conversations”. 

Read a few articles about how best to setup (e.g. https://standuply.com/how-to-use-slack or https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/teams-overview). Most important is to create Channels for each topic or project so conversations are centred and specific. As a general user, master the basics of sending messages and look at how to control Notifications.

I still get asked why not just use email (often these people don’t use WhatsApp!). Email just isn’t very good at grouping content together and maintaining a conversation. Email is for a monologue, whilst tools like slack are for conversations. However, even if you’re a regular Slack or Teams  user, there is still a place for an internal email, especially when the content is more formal.

Like most good tools, the better skilled you are the more benefits it will provide. Once you have mastered the basics, start researching what else you can do. The power of automations and linking your other tools really starts to pay dividends.