The Best Part of Remote Working – Project Communication Done Better
Collaboration: Artur Henriques
Hello fellow Leader!
I am Artur and I want to thank Nicole for this wonderful collaboration opportunity. I write a newsletter called The Long Missing SoW and it’s about Leadership and Project Management with a dedicated focus on IT.
This article will cover some Project Communication strategies, that are done better than the old-fashioned 100% working in an Office setting. Can you believe it? Let’s start.
Nothing in our lifetimes has revolutionized the workplace like the COVID-19 pandemic. This is very true for “laptop-driven” jobs with a big impact on technological or finance organizations. Remote working was not a novelty back in 2020. However, it was a work setting exclusively enjoyed by freelancers, solopreneurs, highly technological startups, and some other lucky professionals. There were tools for the remote setting back then, but they weren’t widely known or available to big corporations, which was my reality back in 2020.
I remember when we were doing daily stand-ups in a corner room on a Friday morning, and the next Monday the lockdown directive hit the streets. All of a sudden, we needed to work from home and some tools that we were using daily weren’t ready for the new reality. We needed to search for alternatives overnight that better fit our needs.
For example, Discord. It was the first time we had, as a team, the notion of a digital room and screen-sharing sessions about the Kanban board. Also, the first time we had dedicated chats for specific topics. The best part, all of this was more efficient and cleaner than working in a physical office.
So let me share with you some really easy tips and experiences, that I am certain mostly all of you will be aware of. Also, I want to provide some good new tips to improve your existing setting.
Dedicated Chats Rooms
One of the big advantages of remote working is the chat rooms. They existed before when we needed to work with people from other locations or countries. Before 2020, it was weird to open a chat room when colleagues were a few meters apart in the same physical space. And honestly, those chat rooms were mostly used for gossip.
Today we can set up a chat room by project, context, or initiative and have a centralized communication channel with many resources. Whenever someone wants to share an idea or show a piece of work, a simple request on a chat room and 3 or 5 people can jump into a quick call. There is no need anymore to physically change floors to ask Arnauld from Infrastructure why the server was down.
Some tools do this very well. For example, Teams and Slack. (And still, Discord to be honest!).
My first suggestion is to craft these group chats very well with people from different departments. Mostly with champions of a given subject. Because good professionals enjoy working with other people who know what they are doing. Avoid creating chat groups with Interns and Architects. Try to have these group chats small and tactical. Because you are a Manager, some people will feel valued if you have added them to a dedicated work group. I have some pinpointed groups on my Teams bar, where I even share some insight strategy information and ask their opinions. My strong recommendation is to learn to craft and nurture these groups. They will be gold when a challenging situation arises.
Whiteboards Done Digitally
While in an office the whiteboards were a glorified token of team collaboration. It was a way an organization showed that was investing in teamwork, innovation, and agile methods. In practice, the pen markers were always dry, and was a headache to ask Susana from Facilities to replace them. The boards were always on the way because the office wasn’t designed with enough space to have them in the first place. Plus, the office had other rules like the boards couldn’t be in front of corporate posters. A nightmare.
The budget for paper, post-its, and other office supplies was a headache to control. I am happy to see that corporations all around the world can now save money on wasted office space and supplies. I had meetings about how expensive a printer toner was. With remote working, companies don’t need to waste their money on those supplies anymore and save time by avoiding conversations about where a piece of furniture should be in the first place.
OneNote has become my favorite tool because is very practical to take notes at the same time I run a meeting. However, the champions are the collaborative tools that allow a team to write on a digital whiteboard. These tools typically have available a wide selection of schemas and other templates to choose from and work much better than a physical whiteboard.
Some ideas and tools that work well and some are even free:
· https://www.canva.com/online-whiteboard/
· https://miro.com/online-whiteboard/
Wikis and Knowledge Sharing
In traditional project management, knowledge management is written on a procedure and put into practice when the audit team arrives or when an important team member leaves the team. The wonderful part of remote and hybrid work is that knowledge management needs to exist and be put in place. It’s a wonder to see the team proactively writing wiki pages about a subject. I deal with Software Developers all day, and having them take the initiative on writing documentation, is a dream that only happens with Wiki platforms.
The trick is: What is the easiest and fastest way to write pieces of knowledge about the project? Lightweight solutions tend to be the favorite ones.
Another very good strategy that beats any other old-school knowledge-sharing strategy is video recording. No worries, this trick doesn’t require anyone to become a YouTuber.
There is great value in recording a call with a screen-sharing presentation, going through a particular subject, and demonstrating how stuff works. Any project has a degree of turnover, and especially impactful when an expert decides to move between projects. Imagine having a recorded session of that expert explaining parts of the project. It’s pure gold for newcomer onboarding processes, or even for a more senior member to revisit a topic that needs some preparation. I have videos today that are still seen after 4 years.
These tools are used and made possible on remote and hybrid settings only.
Team Gatherings and Games
These might be the most awkward suggestions. However, it holds the power of bringing team members who typically run away from any form of social team gatherings. A way to implement team-building events with people scattered across multiple locations is to organize workshops about hobbies or interests, or even play an online game together. Whenever fits your team best.
Some might find doing workshops about hobbies cringe, but the ones we have made were very successful. One colleague showed how he piloted drones at high speed and shared footage about his tricks. I made a session about Space X and the Starship project back in 2023, and one day in 2024 everyone was watching a livestream of the IFT-3 flight.
But there were some failed ones. The online Cards Against Humanity game didn’t work as expected. The team was very informal and easygoing, but for some reason, this party game didn’t achieve the epic level of unforgettable. So be prepared to experiment to see what works best for your team.
Cheers,
Artur
That’s it. If you find this post useful please share it with your friends or colleagues who might be interested in this topic.
Artur & Nicole
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