Complete Guide to Remote Work and Remote Project Delivery

A Collection of Best Practices around
Remote Work and Remote Project Delivery
from the Who is Who of Remote Working.
The 5 Steps
We Used to Setup
Remote Working
Successfully
1. Why do it? -------- 2. The Basics -------- 3. How to -------- 4. Common Gaps -------- 5. Detailed WoW

Why this guide?
 Lots of Great Resources
There are by now lots of great resources on working remotely.
 Focus on Working from Home
Most of them focus on working from home. Which is a very
valid and ever increasing arrangement for a lot of people.
 Remote is more Common Than One Thinks
Few consider that quite a lot of work is nowadays done
remotely. Be it with the offshore team in India or your
colleagues in the US to align sales strategies, financial
implications of activities, running your IT.
This presentation tries to be a practical guide for your average
remote interaction which for a lot of people is not very
satisfying.

There Are Good
Reasons for Virtualization

Resources
Have best resources possible/available in and outside of
the company
Flexibility
Flexibly react to new challenges, i.e. change, build new
efficient teams as required, i.e. IT and non-IT
Efficiency
Improve efficiency of existing virtual teams
Cost
Save cost by hiring cheaper and get existing virtual teams
to work more efficiently

“Dispersed teams can
actually outperform groups
that are collocated.”
“To succeed, however, virtual collaboration must be
managed in specific ways.”
Reference
Sloanreview: ”How to manage virtual teams”, Frank
Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-manage-virtual-
teams/?use_credit=0a2a51dac6138826127f093500461d91

The Cost Savings Story
 The Background
Moving work to cheaper locations has been the hype in
the last years. Simply google near- and offshoring.
 A Simple Case
• Yearly cost of a junior developer in the US: 100,000 USD
• Yearly cost of a junior developer in Germany: 60,000 USD
• Yearly cost of a junior developer in India: 20,000 USD
 Challenges
• But as a lot of you might have experienced, working with someone far
away has its own set of challenges, apart from half of his family
dying, disappearing and other bizarre challenges your remote
colleagues sometimes seem to be dealing with.

Current Key Challenges for
Remote Teams
 Isolation and lack of Integration
• Most studies and articles are looking at remote working purely
working alone from home and not at distributed teams.
• Still a level of isolation remains if all other people in your office
work on different projects unrelated to yours.
 Supposed Inefficiency and low productivity
• People seem to fade away and become unavailable and less
productive.
 Mixed teams (office based and remote) not being treated
equally
• It is often observed that decisions are being made by the office
team gradually making the remote workers second class project
members. http://joel.is/questions-i-ask-myself-about-working-as-distributed/

Current Key Challenges for
Remote Teams
Most of these challenges are due to weak
management and poor staffing.
Reference
In German we have a saying that the fish always starts to
smell at the head...

Special Challenges for Projects
 A project is in many ways different from standard
operations.
• Not 1 or 2 new people to an existing team but 10 new people and
often no common basis to work from.
• Quickly developing requirements and deliverables every day with
challenges raised on an ongoing basis in and outside of the project.
• Building the virtual team will be during the form and storm phase –
everyone in the team is trying to find their place - of a project team.
• Often the work focus is still in flux so tasks and who does what are
not clarified.
• Power challenges can happen until everyone finds their place.
Form, Storm, Norm, Perform
Reference
Tuckman's stages of group development:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuckman%27s_stages_of_gr
oup_development

“Virtual Working Has Its
Benefits If Done Right”
“Remote work is on the rise, and there’s research that
makes it a very compelling proposition: one Stanford
study found that employees who work from home work, on
average, 9.5% longer than those who work in an office (a lot
easier to do when you don’t have an hour-long commute),
and are also 13% more productive.”
Reference
Stanford University: ” DOES WORKING FROM HOME
WORK? EVIDENCE FROM
A CHINESE EXPERIMENT”, Nicholas Bloom, James
Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun Jenny Ying
https://web.stanford.edu/~nbloom/WFH.pdf

Culture, Team, Tools, Processes
Building Blocks of
Successful Virtual Teams

Culture Team
Tools Processes
Virtual
Teams
Reference
Harvard Business Review, Sean Graber, «Why Remote Work Thrives in Some Companies and
Fails in Others», March 20, 2015
https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-remote-work-thrives-in-some-companies-and-fails-in-others
Sloanreview: ”How to manage virtual teams”, Frank Siebdrat, Martin Hoegl and Holger Ernst,
http://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/how-to-manage-virtual-teams/?use_credit=0a2a51dac6138826127f093500461d91
Wade Foster: ”How to run a remote team”, April 2015,
https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-working/how-manage-remote-team/
Gregory Ciotti: ” Why Remote Teams Are the Future (and How to Make Them Work)”, Oct 23,
2013,
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/virtual-teams//

Culture
 All must be on board
The concept of remote & virtual teams must be fully embraced
by the organization
References
Harvard Business Review
Successful remote work is based on three core principles: communication, coordination, and culture. Broadly speaking,
communication is the ability to exchange information, coordination is the ability to work toward a common goal, and
culture is a shared set of customs that foster trust and engagement. In order for remote work to be successful,
companies (and teams within them) must create clear processes that support each of these principles.
Joel Gascoigne, CEO Buffer
The decision to be a distributed team
During the few months I spent focused on the decision of whether to commit to Buffer being a distributed team, I sought
advice from many people. Some of the best advice I received was from David Cancel, who I had the chance to sit down
with and chat over coffee. His key insight was that in his experience founding a number of companies so far, he has
found that two scenarios work well, while one doesn’t work too well. He advised that we either be fully distributed, or
have everyone in the same office. David said that the time he had a main office with the majority of people there and
only one or two people working remotely, that didn’t work so well.
http://joel.is/questions-i-ask-myself-about-working-as-distributed/

Team
 People, People, People
What location used to be for people are for remote teams.
Careful hiring is underestimated. But it has a complete different
dimension when working together virtually.
Just remember that it took AirBnB 5 months for their first hire.
 Responsibility and Ownership
Each team member has much more responsibility to manage
their own work and ownership to drive it forward.
References
Gregory Ciotti: To boost the performance of its teams, a company needs to implement the appropriate mechanisms
for boosting both socio-emotional and task-related processes.
• Emphasize teamwork skills
• Promote self-leadership across the team
• Provide for face-to-face meetings
• Foster a “global culture.”
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/virtual-teams/

Team
 Autonomy and Leadership
To be effective, remote teams need full autonomy and a leader
(PM, if you will) who has a strong vision and the power to fully
execute on that vision.
References
Harvard Business Review states that a “connected team is a motivated team”. Few things motivate people more
than a strong connection with teammates, which creates an obligation to do well.
https://hbr.org/2014/11/what-maslows-hierarchy-wont-tell-you-about-motivation
Jeff Atwood “On Working Remotely“: To be effective, remote teams need full autonomy and a leader (PM, if you will)
who has a strong vision and the power to fully execute on that vision.
http://blog.codinghorror.com/on-working-remotely/

Processes
 Clear Processes
Clear processes have been singled out as the key success
factor to make remote teams succeed.
 Technology vs. Processes
Many companies focus too much on technology and not
enough on process. This is akin to trying to fix a sports team’s
performance by buying better equipment. These adjustments
alone might result in minor improvements, but real change
requires a return to fundamentals.
References
Harvard Business Review: ...Successful remote work is based on three core principles: communication, coordination,
and culture. Broadly speaking, communication is the ability to exchange information, coordination is the ability to work
toward a common goal, and culture is a shared set of customs that foster trust and engagement. In order for remote
work to be successful, companies (and teams within them) must create clear processes that support each of these
principles.

Tools
 Tools Support Processes
Tools should support processes and usage of the tools must be
firmly aligned.
Tools should not drive processes. There are no ideal tools not
processes. Each organization needs to figure out what works
for them best.
References
Harvard Business Review: ...Successful remote work is based on three core principles: communication, coordination,
and culture. Broadly speaking, communication is the ability to exchange information, coordination is the ability to work
toward a common goal, and culture is a shared set of customs that foster trust and engagement. In order for remote
work to be successful, companies (and teams within them) must create clear processes that support each of these
principles.

Building Successful
Virtual Teams

How to Build: Culture
 Virtual a Must
Set this delivery model as a must for a certain category of
projects.
 No Exceptions
The whole organization stands behind it and supports this as
the new way forward.
 Stick to Ground Rules
Lay out ground rules – behavioral and process wise to avoid
creating outsiders.
References
Gregory Ciotti: Always assume miscommunication over malice. The remote worker’s version of Hanlon’s razor. Some
interactions will feel cold due to the human tendency to misinterpret emotionless text. Jokes and sarcasm don’t
translate perfectly, there’s no body language to interpret, and conversations via chat can be interrupted at any time,
making it laughably easy to assume a severe tone where one wasn’t intended. Stick to assuming positive intent; when
working with great people, you’ll rarely be wrong.
You are responsible for giving context. We went a few months this year without a single internal update on how the
blog was doing, and that was on me. I thought everyone outside marketing wasn’t interested, but of course that was
false—the best teams want to know a little about how everything works. This small sampling brings peace of mind and
even helps improve your own work. I look forward to every support update, for example, because I get to learn that
much more about our customers.

How to Build: Teams
 Resourcing / Hiring
Careful selection of the team becomes more important than
ever.
 Who should hire?
Not everyone is good at everything. Some people are not good
at selecting great people. See who has a good track record for
picking great candidates and involve them in the process.
 Selecting a Candidate and Trial Run
Rethink the hiring process. Best practice is to do a test run with
a selected candidate. Work on a small project for a few days.
 Non-Performers
Equally the quick removal of non performers is essential.

How to Build: Teams
 What to look for in new hires (so true)
• Hire Doers
Doers will get stuff done even if they are in Timbuktu. You don't have to give doers tasks to know that something
will get done. You'll still have to provide direction and guidance around the most important things to be executed,
but in the absence of that, a doer will make something happen.
• Hire people you can trust
Remote work stops working when you can't trust the person on the other end of the line. If you continually find
yourself worrying what someone is doing, then you are spending brain cycles focusing on something other than
the product. Trust is key.
• Trust the people you hire
The flip side of this is you also need to exhibit trust with the people you hire. As a manager, you need to learn to
manage by expectations rather than by "butts in seat," so make sure you can show trust in those you hire.
• Hire people who can write
In a co-located office, a lot of information is shared in-person. In a remote situation, everything is shared via
written communication. Communication is one of the most important parts of remote team. Therefore, good
writers are valuable.
• Hire people who are ok without a social workplace
It'll be important to try to create some social aspects with a remote team. But the truth of the matter is that remote
workplaces are usually less social than co-located ones. People on remote teams need to be ok with that. And
the best remote workers will thrive in this type of environment.
References
Wade Foster: https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-
working/how-manage-remote-team/

How to Setup: Processes
 Standardized Project Delivery
The approach to deliver projects should be standardized and
harmonized. This will allow for an easy ramp up of experienced
resources who will then in turn guide any new joiners. A lot of
time is lost if everyone starts from scratch.
 Clear Structure & Formats
It helps a lot if you know what is stored where in which format.
It might sound over engineered but once you start working it is
more confusing if each functional spec, user story, strategy
paper, code documentation looks different.

How to Setup: Processes
 All team members should be clear about
• Why it is done (why do we have a certain process in place)
• How it is done (methodology – same approach)
• What and when it is done (standardized project plans & task lists)
• Where it is done (This includes supporting tools like Asana and
folder structures, ...)
• What to communicate to whom, when and where
 Sign-off / Handshake
It helps to have a sort of handshake for each task / deliverable.
After explaining it the recipient explains it back and then both
agree that they are fine.
Sometimes it is better to agree a follow up. Tasks need to sink
in and while working on it new points come up that no one
thought of.

How to Setup: Tools
 Tools Support Processes
Tools should not drive processes. That is why in the previous
listing tools are only listed as supporting tools.
There is large variety of great tools and each organization
should test out what works best for them.
We have listed here a few that is worth looking into.

How to Setup: Tools
 Slack, Hipchat, Yammer and similar. Serve as an easy
communication tool for chats or discussions in channels. The
big advantage is the asynchronous communication allowing
each participant to answer when is fits.
 Basecamp, Asana , Jira and similar. This makes it absurdly
easy to keep schedules in check, offering ways for your entire
team to view and update projects and plan out what needs to
get accomplished next.
 Trello. Used in conjunction with Basecamp, a team working
from anywhere can see what’s already been done and what is
“on deck” to get tackled next.
 P2 or iDoneThis. For regular updates, you can use P2, or if
you prefer a simple daily email, set up iDoneThis to get a daily
digest of what your team did that day.

How to Setup: Tools
 Dropbox, Google Drive or other file sharing services in the
cloud. A no-brainer at this point, they eliminate the worry of not
having access to a particular file because it’s only on one
person’s hard drive.
 Google Docs, Draft. It’s likely that your team will need to have
quite a few written pieces of content viewed by others. Draft
offers a great solution in that is a great substitute for Google
Docs to make written collaboration easy.
 Join.me. For those “must show” and can’t tell scenarios,
Join.me offers easy screen sharing so that everyone on your
team can view a presentation, workflow, or any other event that
happens on your screen.

How to Setup: Tools
 Skype. Make sure your team has some sort of software that is
regularly used for video chats. Many alternatives are out there,
such as GoToMeeting, or Google+ hangouts.

Common Gaps and
How to Overcome Them

Common Culture Gaps
 Gap: Culture is not ready
The concept of remote or virtual collaboration is not embraced
by the whole organization or all members of a team.
 What to do:
This will require clear and continuous communication strategy
to promote remote / virtual teams and collaboration practices.
Senior management needs to buy into it first and then cascade
through the organization.
Personal talks and convincing people one by one might be
required.

Common Team Gaps
 Gap: Resource Hiring / Selection Without Right Focus
Team selection becomes even more important. All successful
companies have a rigorous hiring process and usually put
applicants on a probation period with a high degree of
responsibility and autonomy.
 What to do:
Current processes need to be adjusted for this. A lot of this can
be done outside standard HR processes. Especially the
probation period should be used to assess how well someone
is suited to work remotely and still delivers consistently.

Common Tool & Process Gaps
 Gap: Standardized Ways of Documentation Handling
Everyone hates it when they cannot find the latest Excel with
those numbers or the paper on the next steps for that product
launch.
 What to do:
Ensure easy and standardized ways of documentation
handling. That includes templates and storage.

Common Tool & Process Gaps
 Gap: No clear guidelines on communications and
meetings
People do not know how to communicate what using which
channel.
 What to do:
Define clear communication and meeting guidelines. The most
typical are:
• Project wide communications / all hands meetings
• Daily, Weekly Progress / Status Meetings
• Meetings (incl. Rules when to plan)
• And many more
References
Gregory Ciotti:
Chat apps = shoulder taps. While the in-person distractions of an office are gone, company-wide messaging apps
are the replacement. They’re useful for keeping emails to a minimum, but many people will have pings and alerts
enabled, so messaging is still an interruption. That’s okay. Interruptions are necessary from time to time, but choose
wisely. A messaging hierarchy that the whole team follows is helpful. Start with defining which messages are
appropriate for which channels of communication.
A whole set of guidelines can be found later in this document.

New Ways of Working

New Ways of Working: Culture
 Most critical steps in setting up a project are:
• Forming the team
• Initial set up of the project
• Growth until critical mass (sounds like a Startup but is the same for a project)
This will all happen during a few very intense weeks.
It might seem obvious but it is critical to create from the
beginning a sense of ownership in the project team. The earlier
the first members are brought on board and help creating the
setup of the project the more they will own the approach and
drive it throughout the duration of the project.
References
A great example is Facebook’s strategy to maintain its culture by pushing each employee to own it.
http://www.fastcompany.com/3053776/behind-the-brand/how-facebook-keeps-scaling-its-culture
http://www.fastcompany.com/3029448/bottom-line/the-woman-who-helped-defined-facebooks-culture-explains-how-
startups-can-explain

New WoW: Regular Meetings
 Project Kickoff
 Town Hall / All hands meetings
 Team Meetings
 Daily Progress / Status Meetings
 Weekly Progress / Status Meetings
 Personal development

Project Kickoff
 Onsite Kick-off
• One of the most critical initial activities in the project. It should be onsite. If
not possible then remote but your team will miss out on building the initial
personal relationship.
• Bring everyone together in one site and ensure that classical team building is
done.
• Special focus to be given to remote and virtual working practices and
exercises that will highlight this. Work from their rooms on something
compared to working physically collocated.
• Further focus to be given to getting to know key remote counterparts. Doing
some exercises to get first tasks done and deliverables started will help to
form the team.

Town Halls / All Hands Meetings
 Purpose: Keep all aligned on overall goals & developments
 Content: Leadership Team should give regular updates about:
• What was achieved,
• What is planned,
• What went well,
• What went wrong and
• What is planned next.
 Participants: NVS Test Factory Lead (Owner), the whole team
 Frequency & Duration: Depending on the changes during the
initial phase of the project the frequency of this meeting can be
from every day to every week or every month. Should not
exceed 1 hour.
 Preferred Format: Video call or video presentation

Daily Team ‘Standup’ Meetings
 Purpose: Keep everyone aligned on today’s tasks & priorities
• This has proven to work well for any project and is borrowed from the standup meetings promoted by
startups and agile methodologies.
Given the remote nature of the project this meeting will be longer than the 15 minutes usually assigned.
Half an hour seems to work well.
 Content:
• Lead summarizes progress, delays, what went well etc.
• Each member gives a brief update on what was done since yesterday and
focus of the day.
• Lead then touches upon open and overdue items on task plan and issue log.
Regular and correct updates are paramount when working remotely.
• Any other business can be addressed.
 Please note: Usually meetings should not go too much into
detail. If a follow up is required then this should be done later
with the right group of people.

Daily Team ‘Standup’ Meetings
 Participants: Team Lead (Owner), direct reports plus
additional participants as required
 Frequency & Duration: daily between 15 to 30 min
 Format: Video call with screen sharing
 Daily Meetings – further considerations
• Daily meetings should be cascaded down to other teams. From Leadership
Team to the team level below so that everyone is on the same page.
• Depending on the distribution of the team across time zones it might be
necessary to run two meetings to ensure everyone is up-to-date.
• Another reason to have two meetings is that the team that gets up earlier is
aligned on the focus for the next day and clear on handover points. In this
case the individual meetings can be shorter.
• Nominate a time keeper to remind people to stick to their allocated time.
• Mondays throw in something about private life, e.g. what you did the week-
end. It helps the team to feel more connected.

Weekly Team Meetings
 Purpose: Keep everyone aligned on long term plan and tasks
• The purpose is for each team member to reflect upon the week and understand the big picture. Collate
status and use prep time to ensure all bases are covered.
Aim to keep meetings to an hour. Each team member can post their status update in a dedicated
discussion thread or similar which can be pre-read so the meeting can focus on question and
discussion. Everyone gets 5 minutes to ask questions not to report.
 Content:
• Lead summarizes key points of the week and gives outlook.
• Either each team member gives a brief update on their area or each member
gets a certain amount of time to ask questions about other areas.
• In a second round the whole team should review how execution can or needs
to be improved. All should prepare their views beforehand.
 Participants: Team Lead (Owner), direct reports plus
additional participants as required
 Frequency & Duration: weekly for about 1 hour

Resource Development
 Purpose: Ensure proper management and development of all
resources
• In a remote team more than in any other setting it is important to have regular
meetings with each team member to understand how they feel, how they are,
and how to best develop them.
• Aim to keep meeting to an hour. It is suggested to go through the below
questions to see how happy and fulfilled the employee is. The answers
should be prepared and honest. It was proven scientifically that happy
employees can answer yes to all 12 of them.
• Last but not least, ensure some private topics are also covered to get to
know each other. This can be hobbies, family, vacation anything the team
member is interested in.
 Questions:
1. Do I know what is expected of me at work?
2. Do I have the materials and equipment I need to do my work right?
3. At work, do I have the opportunity to do what I do best every day?

 Questions:
4. In the last seven days, have I received recognition or praise for doing good
work?
5. Does my supervisor or someone at work seem to care about me as a
person?
6. Is there someone at work who encourages my development?
7. At work, do my opinions seem to count?
8. Does the mission / purpose of my company make me feel my job is
important?
9. Are my co-workers committed to doing quality work?
10. Do I have a best friend at work?
11. In the last six months, has someone at work talked to me about my
progress?
12. In this last year, have I had the opportunity at work to learn and grow?

 Open Question:
• Any other concerns / worries / comments? This is for both the team member
and the team lead.
 Participants: Manager / Team Lead and Direct Reports
following project structure
 Frequency & Duration: monthly for about 1 hour
Reference
Gallup Q12
https://strengths.gallup.com/private/resources/q12meta-analysis_flyer_gen_08%2008_bp.pdf

New WoW: Communications –
Ad-hoc and Informal
 Informal
• Project related of general interest or for a specific group
• Project related regarding one person
• Chit / Chat Banter
• Buddy System
 Ad-hoc Meetings (incl. Rules when to plan)
 Lightning Talks

Project Related of General
Interest
 Purpose: Keep everyone informed on topics of general
interest
• This can be any information, announcements, links, important developments that should be
communicated to the whole team or a subset of the whole team.
Please note: These are communications that do not require immediate response and should be available
longer time.
 Content:
• Any information of general interest to avoid mails going back and forth.
 Participants Lead (Owner), the whole team
 Frequency: ad-hoc as required
 Format: Slack Channel, Yammer Group or similar

Project Related for a Specific
Group
 Purpose: Keep a specific group informed on a topic
• This can be information, announcements, links, important developments that should be communicated
to a specific group or team.
• An example of a dedicated group is KT Transition or a specific regression test cycle team.
Why: The advantage of this is to have all related communication in one channel that can be revisited at
any time. Plus the communication can be asynchronous. So people can pick it up at any time.
Please note: These are communications that do not require immediate response and should be available
longer time.
 Content:
• Any information of general interest to this group.
 Participants: Anyone can create in alignment with Team
Lead, team members to be added as required.

Project Related for Audience
Outside of the Project
 Purpose: Keep people outside of the project informed
• This can be any information, announcements, links, important developments that should be
communicated to a wider audience.
 Content:
• Any information of general interest and for easy reference.
 Participants Lead (Owner), the whole team

Project Related Ad-hoc with One
or More Persons
 Purpose: Ad-hoc alignment on a specific topic
 Content:
• Classic case when you need an information, want to discuss a topic or need
a specific input.
 Participants: Anyone can start such a conversation but try to
keep participants to a minimum
 Frequency: Ad-hoc as required
 Format: Any chat and/or P2P call software will do. Switch to
call if the discussion is getting to long
• This also applies when there is an urgent topics and few people come into a
«virtual meeting». Use the video call to make it more personal. It is the
responsibility of the Leads to «encourage» this. And to make sure there is no
difference between local and virtual team.
• If the person is not reachable or cannot respond then log a task in the action
list in SharePoint.

Chit Chat and Banter at a Virtual
Water Cooler
 Purpose: Build better personal relationships
 Content:
• Anything unrelated to work. Kids, weather, vacation, hobbies.
• Topics might need to be facilitated by the team lead, e.g. everyone writes
down their favorite out of office activities that might help to identify topics to
talk about.
 Participants: One on one or with help of the team lead. Can
be just 5 minutes. Everyone gets a coffee and has a chat.
 Frequency: ad-hoc, try at least once a week
 Format: Video call.

Buddy System
 Purpose: Facilitate onboarding of new team members and
building team spirit
 Content:
• It proves helpful to assign buddies after the kick-off and whenever a new
team member starts.
• They should have a daily call that can also be related to a specific topic or
just about questions related to the project.
• Buddy assignments should change every few months to ensure the whole
team gets to know each other.
 Participants: Two project members one acting as mentor and
one as mentee

Buddy System
 Frequency: Daily call
 Format: Video
References
Gregory Ciotti: The first few days are incredibly awkward. I had it easy since I joined early on and had previous remote
experience. For many, working remotely is a seismic shift, so onboarding new people becomes especially important.
One of my favorite practices that we’ve put into place is the “new work best friend.”
Someone from the team always steps up to be your pal right when you’re hired—perfect for getting answers to “dumb”
questions, learning about unwritten rules, and feeling at ease when adjusting to a new company, new practices, and
new faces, all while being hundreds/thousands of miles away.

Lightning Talks
 Purpose: Provide visibility, open up dialogue, provide new
perspectives
 Content:
• In regular intervals, e.g. every 2 weeks one team members presents a topic
of interest.
• It does not have to be connected to the project but should be inspiring and
interesting to help look at things from a new perspective.
 Participants: Each project member taking turns. Presentation
to the full team
 Frequency: Every 2 weeks for about 15 to 20 min
 Format: Video call

To know where to store and find documents
Documentation

Documentation
 Clear Guidelines
In a team that works across several continents and different
time zones you do not want to call someone up in the middle of
the night to find out where they put that excel sheet.
Therefore it helps a lot for a virtual team to be clear which
documentations using clear filenames can be found where, e.g.:
 Project Information
• Latest project plan
• Detailed task list
• Risks / Issues / Tasks
• Change and communication Documentation
 Deliverables
• Functional Specs, Concepts, Implementation Plans
• Other supporting documents like the above mentioned spreadsheet

General Project Documentation
 General Project Information
This refers to more static information that should be easily
accessible. It is also important to be clear where updates can
be found, i.e. when the project plan has changed.
• Usually an easily accessible folder is used for this.
• It will contain documents like:
- Latest project plan
- Detailed task lists (if task/action list and project plan are not sufficient)
- General project information
Project Plan, Detailed Task Lists

Actions, Risks, Issues
 Risks / Issues / Actions / Tasks
It is often underestimated not having a simple task management
tool. Some of the key benefits.
• Easy to track
• They help to stay aligned and to know who has what on his plate.
• People tend to forget things and this helps keeping them in mind.
• Facilitates future release / scope planning. People might have plenty of new
ideas or come up with great add-ons. Most task list program allow to capture
these and then to prioritize them. If items do not fit into current scope you
want to keep them in mind and plan for future scope.
Usually a specific user or category or tag help you with that. It does not
replace tools like JIRA but initially does the job.

General Communications
 Communications Outside the Project Team
Any communication destined for a wider audience without any
restrictions can be posted via:
• Email
• Slack Channel, Yammer Group or similar
• Specific web page
 To preserve older communications it is good to save them in a
specific folder so everyone can easily access them.

Deliverables
 Deliverables and Supporting Documentation
All other project documentation should be stored in the
appropriate project phase in line with the applied project
management methodology.
 Have clear naming conventions and differentiate between draft
and final versions.
 Example Structure:
• Scoping & Set-up
• Design
• Implementation
• Sustain
Functional Specs, Concepts, Implementation Plans

Like Going on a Diet
 Do not stop
Same ways of working apply for the full duration of the project.
There might be a tendency to try to reduce meetings or video
calls. I strongly advise against this. You will quickly observe that
the positive effects will start fading off and it will be a lot of effort
to rebuild.
 No one size fits all
Depending on how well the team works together the approach
might have to be adjusted and fine-tuned. Team dynamics need
to be taken into consideration.
 Only people that are disciplined, good team workers and
willing to adopt to new ways will manage.

Being aware of and
using the right way of
communication is
essential when working
remotely!

Great Links and References
Appendix

References
Sequence of references is no indicator of importance. These are all worth reading.
 Wade Foster from zapier.com
Everything you need to know in one nice guide
The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work
https://zapier.com/learn/the-ultimate-guide-to-remote-
working/how-manage-remote-team/
 Gregory Ciotti from helpscout.net
Some great articles and lots of personal experience on working
remotely.
http://www.helpscout.net/blog/virtual-teams/
 Joel Gascoigne from bufferapp.com
Explains his decision to run Buffer with a remote team and
some of his thoughts and experiences around it
http://joel.is/questions-i-ask-myself-about-working-as-
distributed/

References
 Sean Graber from Virtuali in Harvard Business Review
Great article on why remote work works for some companies
and why others fail.
https://hbr.org/2015/03/why-remote-work-thrives-in-some-
companies-and-fails-in-others
 Nicholas Bloom, James Liang, John Roberts, Zhichun
Jenny Ying in Stanford University Publications
Great study on how people working remotely work longer and
more efficiently.
https://web.stanford.edu/~nbloom/WFH.pdf
 Zach Holman from GitHub
Wrote a series on how GitHub used to work remotely. They
have changed since but very good reading.
http://zachholman.com/posts/how-github-works/

References
 Jeff Atwood from Stack Exchange and Discourse
Great article on how he made remote work work with his team.
http://blog.codinghorror.com/on-working-remotely/
 Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals
They have plenty of experience on working remotely and also
written a best selling on it called “Remote”. Lots of great
guidelines and personal experience.
http://37signals.com/remote/
 David Fullerton from Stackoverflow
“Why We (Still) Believe in Working Remotely”
https://blog.stackoverflow.com/2013/02/why-we-still-believe-in-
working-remotely/

References
 Walter Chen from iDoneThis
Short but to the point – pushing the essentials.
http://blog.idonethis.com/remote-team-communication/
 CloudPeeps Blog
Top 10 companies winning at remote work culture and their
secrets. Great read and interesting to see which companies
work fully remotely.
http://blog.cloudpeeps.com/top-10-companies-winning-at-
remote-work-culture/?utm_campaign=Remotive%2B-
%2BProductive%2BRemote%2BWorkers&utm_medium=email
&utm_source=Remotive_-_Productive_Remote_Workers_43

References
 Great Sites focusing on Remote Working
https://remote.co/ created by Sara Sutton Fell
http://remotive.io/ created by Rodolphe Dutel and Jeremy
Benaim
 The less sunny side
Remote does not always work for everyone. Here a few posts
that show a different side and highlight the challenges.
Sometimes it is not easy to overcome these.
• http://blog.statuspage.io/we-tried-building-a-remote-team-and-it-sucked
• http://www.hanselman.com/blog/BeingARemoteWorkerSucksLongLiveTheRe
moteWorker.aspx
• http://blog.learningbyshipping.com/2014/12/30/why-remote-engineering-is-so-
difficult/

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