Companies all over the world are making their operations work remotely for the first time. If you work in an industry where teamwork is crucial, a sudden request to work from home doesn't have to be a strain on you or your team. There are unique opportunities and challenges that come with working outside of a traditional office.

Here we define what remote teams are, explore advantages and disadvantages and how to successfully work from home.

 

First, what are remote teams?

The best way to understand remote teams is to think of them as small groups of people who are committed to achieving specific company objectives. They often work for the same company and answer to the same boss but live in different cities or even countries. You can also think of remote teams as being similar to virtual ones. The reason for this is because both deal with very similar opportunities and challenges. However the difference is that virtual team members answer to different managers while working together on the same project.

 

Advantages to working from home

Many people are discovering that working from home is a great advantage, and companies are inclined to agree. Hiring a contractor over an employee, and using that employee to build a virtual team for projects, is advantageous in a number of ways:

    • Improvements in employee work/life balance
    • Little to no travel time
    • Flexible work hours
    • Project collaboration and file sharing is easy now
    • Overall increase in employee productivity
    • Employee satisfaction
    • Easier to attain and retain top talent

While it is apparent that pulling in virtual workers for a team project is a great idea, it’s also important to make sure the business avoids the following possible overall pitfalls. If these issues are successfully deterred, then working from home in a team project works well.

 

Embracing the “disadvantages”

Most companies worry a remote team could take a lot of time and effort to get started because all team members must learn to effectively communicate and get to know one another. However, this shouldn’t be seen as “lost time”. In fact, this is far more beneficial to the company than anything else.

Since communication amongst remote teams is often dispersed across longer periods of time, team members learn to communicate deliberately. The result is employees with better communication skills and stronger unity. Remote teams are also capable of developing stronger bonds with one another because they learn to connect with one another on deeper levels.

Another common fear managers have when using remote teams is that team members aren’t synchronized due to their different time zones and work schedules. What many don’t realize is that this is actually a positive factor. Since consistent communication is difficult to maintain, it puts pressure on workers to complete work on time in order for the next to begin. This will prevent future delays or confusion.

 

Making remote work a success

Setting up a remote team is the first step but once you have it up-and-running you’ve got to know how to make it successful. There are a few things you need to keep in mind during the start-up phase and all throughout the rest of its development:

1. On-boarding
Home cannot be forced upon member of your team: whoever prefers a detached, professional collaboration with no soft commitment will eventually have their way; but on the corporate side it should encouraged and tied closely to corporate culture and values, to a strong branding and to on-boarding. Based on how this process pans out, both employees and consultants can either feel important contributors to the organizations or just another fly on the wall.

Supportive communication has an enormous importance. How well you welcome and integrate members into the team, make requests for feedback or encourage spontaneous interactions are fundamental elements leadership should consider. It’s important to advocate autonomous work while keeping track of progress.

For that reason, the integration of collaboration tools and project management technology is particularly relevant in the project leader portfolio. A potential tool to help facilate this process is ITM Platform Teambot. This is an app for Slack that enables our user base to review their current projects and tasks, report hours, track progress and interact within the platform without ever leaving Slack’s IRC-type chat interface.

Combining the collaborative power of Slack with the PPM capabilities of ITM Platform is a great example of keeping all project members on the same page, multiplying team interactions and ensuring that project planning and execution are strictly aligned.

ITM Platform Teambot with Slack

2. Stay Focused
When you work from home, losing focus is more of an issue than in an office. No matter how dedicated a worker is to a project, staying on task might become challenging. Avoid this situation by remaining highly professional when it comes to work. Becoming exceptionally organized, and understanding your role on the team. This will help you maintain focus and stay on task with the project, because you will avoid being frustrated with lack of understanding.

3. Be Flexible
Today’s virtual world runs on a global scale. Be mindful of the cultural differences and communication barriers that you may encounter. Anyone who has been on a virtual team understands this issue. While the project is in the planning stages, remain professional. Speak on a professional level, and use textbook English in all written communication. It is important to do this to avoid as many misunderstandings as possible. As the project moves forward, make sure communication barriers are broken down by asking for clarification when necessary. Most businesses will appreciate a question over having to redo a portion of a project due to a misunderstanding.

4. Make sure you have the right tools
All project team members must have access to the right technology to do the job, such as survey tools or company passwords. Remote projects depend on this access almost exclusively to get projects finished. Often, businesses will set up secure passwords for each team member. This way, if a team member becomes dishonest and acts in an unethical manner, the company will know where the breach happened. Be sure to keep your security information secret, only use it to work on projects, and never act in a way that would cause anyone to question your integrity. Make remote team projects work by acting as you would if you were sitting in an office with a boss breathing over your shoulder.

Avoid messy digital communications. Emails, though important, is becoming a thing of the past when it comes to organizing and communicating with your team. With different time zones and locations, continuous email chains become difficult to manage. Maintain productivity by taking advantage of amazing project management softwares such as ITM Platform. This way, you can prioritize what’s best for your business, control project tasks and financials, and use real-time information to report how projects are performing.

5. Connect with your team
Lastly, you should think about ways to reach out and strengthen staff relationships. Oftentimes, remote teams organize staff retreats or even meetups for those who live nearby. If these aren’t possibilities then think about creating fun social media groups via twitter or facebook. This allows co-workers to share funny memes, gifs or videos; all simple ideas to help strengthen the bond amongst remote teams. Why not a virtual happy hour?

If you’re interested in creating your own remote team or successfully managing the one you currently have, sign up for a free trial with ITM Platform. Our team is here to support you every step of the way.

Numbers are rising. A study done by Intuit found that by the year of 2020, 43% of the American workforce will consist of remote workers.

intuit_qb_social_charts_0815

What are remote teams?

The best way to understand remote teams is to think of them as small groups of people who are committed to achieving specific company objectives. They often work for the same company and answer to the same boss but live in different cities or even countries. You can also think of remote teams as being similar to virtual ones. The reason for this is because both deal with very similar opportunities and challenges. However the difference is that virtual team members answer to different managers while working together on the same project.

Why they are the future?

The increased interest of implementing remote teams to new and old businesses comes from the numerous advantages they provide. Companies are particularly drawn by the following benefits:

  • It is much easier to attract and retain top talent worldwide
  • There is increased productivity and satisfied employees
  • The flexible working hours appeal to employees
  • Project collaboration and file sharing is made easy
  • Improves quality of life for staff overall

Along with this, remote teams provide companies with financial benefits as well. In fact, a study done by Forbes in 2013 found that large companies save millions of dollars on office spaces and supplies by allowing people to do remote work.

42623299 - freelance online work at home and remote jobs flat color banner set isolated vector illustration

Embracing the disadvantages

There are two sides to every story and just like everything else, remote teams too have their disadvantages. However, with a good perspective and an optimistic attitude they can quickly become advantages in disguise.

The big concern companies have with remote teams is that they take a lot of time and effort to get started because all team members must learn to effectively communicate and get to know one another. Although, this shouldn’t be seen as “lost time”. In fact, this is far more beneficial to the company than it is anything else. Remote teams are capable of forming much stronger bonds with one another because they learn to connect with one another on deeper levels. There don’t exist mandatory staff meetings or board rooms to superficially unite everyone. Instead people communicate and develop relationships based on shared values and interests.

Another common fear managers have when using remote teams is that team members aren’t synchronized due to their different time zones and work schedules. What many don’t realize is that this is actually a positive factor. Since consistent communication is difficult to maintain, it puts pressure on workers to complete work on time in order for the next to begin. This will prevent future delays or confusion.

Furthermore, since communication amongst remote teams is often dispersed across longer periods of time, team members learn to communicate deliberately. The result is employees with better communication skills and stronger unity.

Making remote work a success

 Setting up a remote team is the first step but once you have it up-and-running you’ve got to know how to make it successful. There are a few things you need to keep in mind during the start-up phase and all throughout the rest of its development:

  1. You need to make sure that all co-workers get to know one another

Since the majority of employees will be scattered geographically and incapable of coming into physical contact with one another you must ensure everyone becomes familiar with their teammates. For instance, video-calling to talk about non-work related topics.

  1. Work hard to show interest in team members

Don’t make distance a problem; take the time to mail over a birthday card or contact a bakery to have a desert delivered to their home. Keep things personal, show you care.

  1. Avoid messy digital communication

E-mailing is becoming a thing of the past. With different time zones and locations, continuous e-mail chains become difficult to manage. Maintain productivity by taking advantage of amazing project management softwares such as ITM Platform.

  1. Supply your employees

As mentioned, time zones have an enormous impact on the way you’ll run your business. For this reason you must provide each team member with all of the information and supplies they will need, conveniently and constantly. Once again, ITM Platform makes this possible because they operate on a cloud-based solution, making it accessible wherever and whenever.

Strengthen the bond

Lastly, you should think about ways to reach out and strengthen staff relationships without the use of work. Remote teams can often use a get-away trip or even a meet up location between those who live nearby. If these aren’t possibilities then think about creating fun social media groups via twitter or tumblr. This allows co-workers to share funny jokes or videos; all simple ideas to help strengthen the bond amongst remote teams.

If you’re interested in creating your own remote team or successfully managing the one you currently have, sign up for a free trial with ITM Platform. Our team is here to support you every step of the way.

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Isidora Roskic-Blogger ITM Platform

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The success of projects is key to any company, but even more so to those where the outturn account depends on projects. Programming, design, construction and consultancy companies and, generally-speaking, any company that undertakes projects for its clients must pay significant attention to the profitability of each project.

This article offers an analysis of the main factors influencing project profitability. This is a complicated topic and no sweeping generalizations should be made. Hence, these factors must be adapted to the specific circumstances surrounding each organization, sector and client.

Zoom into your projects while maintaining a global vision of your entire project portfolio with ITM Platform, try now for free!

1.- Define the scope

The first and major issue affecting project profitability is linked to discrepancies between what should be included or excluded from the scope of a project. Clients tend to consider a broader scope than project leaders and this difference in perception often leads to problems and conflicts that eventually affect project profitability.

Spending the necessary time to define and share the scope of a project is a key factor in project profitability.

General information, ITM Platform

2.- Estimate the effort

There can occasionally be little time to provide a client with a commercial offer for the project. This can lead to hasty estimations based on similarities between the project in question and others carried out in the past. As a result, the risk of mistakes is very high and should be reduced by breaking down the tasks involved and producing a bottom-up estimation to confirm that the overall estimation is in line with the work that needs to be done.

This estimate should include as much detail as possible on the profiles needed for each activity.

A good estimate will avoid project cost deviations.

Estimated effort

3.- Plan slowly

The break-down of tasks and their estimation should be undertaken as part of careful planning of the work to be done. The organization of activities and their inter-relationships may result in the need for additional tasks or certain tasks being completed after others, which can lead to additional project costs.

Optimistic planning will mean the client has hard-to-meet expectations about the delivery date and this will eventually affect the cost.

Gantt, ITM Platform

4.- Choose the right team

The project team is a key piece of the puzzle in transforming project estimates and planning into reality, thereby meeting client expectations and maintaining the appropriate level of quality. Scrimping on resources may be more expensive in the long run. Using under-qualified personnel with no experience or little motivation may be cheaper to begin with but this can very easily become a negative factor for profitability when having to do the same work more than once, wasting time on ensuring people are clear on what needs to be done or learning how they need to do it.

High-productivity teams are capable of significantly increasing project profitability.

Assign role

5.- Identify risks

All projects have some sort of risk that must be analyzed and assessed. Some risks may be unlikely while others may have a minimal impact on the project, meaning that highly significant corrective actions to counteract such risks would be unnecessary.
Those risks with the greatest exposure, i.e. those whose impact and likelihood are average or high, should be managed and may require specific actions to guarantee project profitability.

It might even be necessary to establish a safety margin in the cost to be paid by the client depending on the degree of uncertainty and the risk posed by the project.

Risk Matrix

6. Analyze profitability at the start

While considering all the aforementioned factors, project profitability should be analyzed before the project begins. It is possible that, for commercial reasons, projects with little initial profitability will sometimes need to be undertaken in the hope that the client will contract other services in the future. At any event, this fact and the level of profitability to be expected from the project should be ascertained.

Only by ascertaining the expected profitability will we be able to manage it.

Costs and revenues

7.- Foster communication by the team and with the client

Communication within the team and communication with the client are key to project profitability.

If the team communicates quickly and smoothly, it will be possible to identify any problems in time and any confusion or misunderstanding that could ruin a project will be avoided.

Communication with the client will enable expectations to be properly managed and the client to understand and collaborate on any stumbling block that may arise.

platform to communicate, comment

8.- Record data and manage them

Data are key to project management. Feelings and anecdotes in management may provide a comfortable or negative sensation of progress and advancement, but only objective and recorded data will be able to provide the information needed for efficient management. Recording data may lead to conflict with the project team, the members of which tend to focus on activities they consider to be productive.

It is essential for the team to understand the importance of tracking information and undertaking data entry on a regular basis and without unnecessary effort.

Time sheet, ITM Platform

9.- Track profitability at all times

Tracking project profitability is not an issue that should be left until the end, once the project has finished: it should be undertaken constantly, regularly checking project status to date and taking any necessary steps when unforeseen deviations or circumstances are identified.

If they are identified quickly and a timely response is given, we will be able to correct any problems and return to maximum profitability.

Real and budgeted costs

10.- Project deviations

Small deviations at the start of a project tend not to be considered seriously in the hope that the project will get back on track as time goes by. However, recovery from such initial deviations is usually a very complex task that is hard to achieve.

Furthermore, these deviations are often the symptom of a larger problem, meaning it is important to project them into the future and gain a clear picture of the situation.

The Earned Value technique is a very useful tool for making project status projections.

Added value

11.- Learn from mistakes and successes

If we properly record the most relevant data from our projects, we will be able to analyze what really happened and what the specific factors were that meant certain projects achieved greater profitability than others.

We should learn from both our mistakes and our successes, being able to identify those we should correct and improve upon as well as those we can repeat and encourage.

Project portfolio

12.- Use the right tools

For all these reasons, it is important to use the right tools (without generating a high cost for the project) that will enable swift and efficient project management, help estimate and plan, record and analyze data, and allow the team to work comfortably from anywhere.

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