I’ve been in a role requiring extensive travel the past few years. I also consider the entire team I work on to be distributed. A lot of companies are now asking employees to work from home given #covid19. With that, my unsolicited advice is to establish the following guardrails if you’re not used to being in a distributed and remote team:
Frequency:
1. Set up team and project groups that do daily scrum-style standups (15 minutes)
2. Set up weekly reoccurring check-ins for the team
3. Set up a monthly summit
Techstack:
1. Collaboration: Asana
2. Communication: Skype or Teams (text and mobile as much as possible)
3. Video: Zoom (all the cool kids are using Zoom now). Require video – phone is not an option.
4. Document repository: SharePoint or Dropbox
5. PM Skills: live Gantt charts out of excel, Pipedrive, Salesforce or anything that can be shared.
Measuring with remote work:
1. OKRs. I was introduced to them in 2018 and have become a fanatic. Establish strict OKRs.
Sanity check:
1. It’s very easy to find yourself always working when you’re out of a hotel or home. Put down the phone for blocks of time. Respect that time. Your mental fatigue will set in.
A Blog 