What are your greatest challenges working on a remote team? What techniques did the project manager use to make sure everyone on the team was engaged? Saving Changes...
Senior Projects Manager | Field & Marten AssociatesNew Westminster, British Columbia, Canada
Feb 22, 2017 6:54 PM
Replying to Naomi Caietti
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Rami:
Actually, I was thinking of the best solution required and that is leadership tools, techniques and tips. I'll share more here on the solutions at ITPMXPO in April on this topic.
I am not sure I am aware of this Expo ? Where is it taking place ? Online or In-Person ? Thanks Naomi. Saving Changes...
Deepesh RammoorthyICT Project Manager ( PMP®AgilePM®Certified ScrumMaster® (CSM®))| Australian Red Cross Blood ServiceTarneit, Vic, Australia
Some Pros from Outsourcing :-
This is a slightly different flavor of outsourcing an outcome.
1) You are buying outcomes. (Note:- internal staff are not losing their jobs here) Sometimes your internal teams are too busy working on other priority projects that you need an external body shop to help execute a critical project and provide staff like developers and testers. So you just keep the bare minimum governance staff like a PM and outsource the project execution to a vendor.
2) Flexible Operating Model (Purely based on management point of view, not the poor staff who may be affected) - Offers companies the ability to be flexible in terms of demand. They can buy "resources" when required and if there is a "quiet time" they can continue with existing staff or even consider downsizing as may be the case
3) Quality of Work - Often companies that specialize in a particular offering - application or service will have skilled workers who are well trained and experienced in those tools, products or services and so the quality of work expected can be high, provided that the hiring organization has performed due diligence during hiring . Saving Changes...
Gail KaufmanRetired (former project manager)CT, United States
I am a project manager on a global implementation services team, and my counterparts are spread across three continents. I work remotely from the project teams I lead as well. I find the biggest challenge is time zone differences. This is best managed by email, but turnaround time is critical. In some cases, a delayed response means losing a day in the workflow. The best way to overcome this is leading by example. Don't be a bottleneck. Keep your inbox organized so you can respond to important emails quickly and in detail to keep the work moving.
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1 reply by Naomi Caietti
Feb 22, 2017 8:29 PM
Naomi Caietti
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Gail: You are modeling one of the key tenets of success for Virtual Teams; providing effective communication in a timely manner. Your level of EQ was high for self awareness on this Gail; great work!
I am a project manager on a global implementation services team, and my counterparts are spread across three continents. I work remotely from the project teams I lead as well. I find the biggest challenge is time zone differences. This is best managed by email, but turnaround time is critical. In some cases, a delayed response means losing a day in the workflow. The best way to overcome this is leading by example. Don't be a bottleneck. Keep your inbox organized so you can respond to important emails quickly and in detail to keep the work moving.
Gail: You are modeling one of the key tenets of success for Virtual Teams; providing effective communication in a timely manner. Your level of EQ was high for self awareness on this Gail; great work!
I was in a project with people in Europe, America and Asia. When trying to schedule a phone meeting (video was too costly at the time) you can figure that some where late at night other at lunch and some early at the office. The state of mind, the language English for all but not native for most, make it difficult.
We remember the negative side more easily, I think.
In an other project we had a Architect holding, most people local and a few in various city across North America. Time zone was not an issue, but each had local project, priority was not my project in all case. Understanding of contraints and urgency was not always clear. In this case communication with a sub contractor, then sub contractor with his partner, in communication chain the message get diluted. We all shared a commun CAD system that was necessary.
In both case just locally was just not possible. Saving Changes...
Gail KaufmanRetired (former project manager)CT, United States
Feb 22, 2017 8:29 PM
Replying to Naomi Caietti
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Gail: You are modeling one of the key tenets of success for Virtual Teams; providing effective communication in a timely manner. Your level of EQ was high for self awareness on this Gail; great work!
- As leaders you also need to have sensitivity to local dynamics for your remote team - like Bangalore (which has bad traffic - so the team time has to be planned properly), sociopolitical environment of your remote team, festivals etc
- Visit your team at a regular interval and utilize that time to connect with the people on ground and understand their concerns
- Align the remote time to the overall project objective - as Rami said - communication is the key. You can chose daily stand ups, leads meetings, full team meetings etc,
@Mayte - Appreciate your energy! Hope your stay and experience in India was good.
"Budgets" - a killer as always ! Saving Changes...
Well one great challenge working with remote team is sometimes the communication. Communicating to them is very important because updates must be relayed as soon as possible and if there is any problem that they will encounter they can update it as fast as they can to fix it. Another is the language barrier and this is a part of communication, talking to them is hard if you can't clearly understand each other because of the language barrier. Regards, Yazmin Barajas, Marketing OBP Remote Staff Australia
Surely, communication is the biggest challenge in Virtual meetings. Even though we make face to face communications through video conference applications, the team members felt difficult in making notes of the important points and decisions made during the meetings.
In our team, we came up with a solution of using an AI-enabled meeting assistant- Marsview notes, which automatically captured the meeting notes, with a summary, highlights, and actions taken in the meetings.
This helped us to avoid communication errors and be more involved and productive in meetings. Saving Changes...
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