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Does your project rely on virtual teams? If yes, then it means that working remotely is the norm for your project team members.
Are they doing their work effectively and efficiently? And even if you answered yes, there is always room for improvement, right? Good, because how to make remote work productive is our topic today.
Our interview guest is Bruce Harpham (https://ca.linkedin.com/in/bruceharpham andhttp://projectmanagementhacks.com) who has written about remote workers and how to increase all our effectiveness. He argues that working virtually is simply the reality on many projects and project teams these days.
And so in order to help us improve remote work he recommends the following four steps:
Evaluate your current tools
Review communication preferences and strengths
Analyze the project’s requirements
Adjust your communication practices
We’ll go through each of these in detail with lots of examples from his own experience.
Daniel KrompholzPrincipal Maintenance Systems Specialist, Asset Management| The Port Authority of New York & New JerseyJamaica, Ny, United States
On another note, how can we make the case that working from home can be MORE productive for organizations that are still resistant to allowing work-from-home?
Bruce HarphamEditor & Author| ProjectManagementHacks.comToronto, Ontario, Canada
@Daniel - this is a great question.
There are several ways to approach the issue.
1) Trust. The underlying problem is sometimes trust (i.e. if I can't see you, then I assume you're not doing anything productive). Start by exploring this issue.
2) Plan. Create a simple one page plan for a trial run (e.g. 1 day/week for a month) to demonstrate what you're achieving.
3) Tactics. Consider using a 5:15 report to explain what you've accomplished each week. (http://www.co2partners.com/515-report-increasing-effectiveness-200-percent/)
4) Clarify "Productive" For Your Boss. Does productive mean 'answer my emails within 5 minutes"? Does it mean "complete all the deliverables on schedule?" "Productive" is a BIG concept and it needs to be broken down into specifics.
Mansoor MustafaSenior PM| Government DepartmentRawalpindi Punjab, Pakistan
