Remote management, LDP SoftServe

1. Remote Management
Petro Porchuk, SoftServe
February 2015

2. What is
Management?

3. TraditionalTeam
A group of co-located
people brought together for
a unified purpose or project

4. RemoteTeam
A group of people brought
together for a unified
purpose or project.While
they all report to the same
organization and usually
the same boss, they may
physically be in different
offices, cities, or even
countries

5. VirtualTeam
A group of people
brought together for a
project or purpose but
report to different
managers

6. What is
Remote Management?

7. Why this is Important?

8. Teams Comparison
Team Co-
located
#
Bosses
Team
Costs
Communic
ation
Control Flexibility Time Zone
& Culture
Team
Maturity
Team Forming
Traditional ? One ? ? ? Low One ? Fast
Remote No ? Low ? ? ? ? ? ?
Virtual ? ? ? Technology Low ? ? Super ?
Exercise – Fill the Gaps

9. Teams Comparison
Team Co-
located
Boss Team
Costs
Communic
ation
Control Flexibility Time Zone
& Culture
Team
Maturity
Team Forming
Traditional Yes One High Face-Face High Low One Medium Fast
Remote No One Low Technology Low Medium Multiple High Delayed
Virtual Both Multiple Low Technology Low High Multiple Super Slow or not possible
Business Business
Remote Management is critical for Business Success
Challenges –This is your Job

10. Starting Point
Manager Remote Manager
Magic

11. The Goal for today
Learn tools and techniques
to apply in daily work and develop
Remote Management Skill

12. Is NOT the Goal for today
I know “Remote Management”

13. Get back to the Challenges ofVirtual & RemoteTeams
 Complicated Communication, limited non-verbal
 Different time zones and Culture
 Hard to Control
 Long way from Forming to PerformingTeam phase
 You need MatureTeam to effectively collaborate by Remote

14. Situational Questions

15. You are managing a project with fixed budget and schedule. 1/3 of time passed - you’re behind
with your scope.
Your 8 people RemoteTeam is distributed between 3 locations, you haveTL, Sr. Dev and 2 Jr. Devs
in one of them, different from yours.
YourTL reports, that she has a feeling Sr. Dev is underperforming.
You have no visibility, as Sr. Dev refuses reporting his working time in tasks, saying that he
continuously helps Juniors, their code is poor, and he would rather avoid bureaucracy and do
useful stuff instead.
He also said that he should have gone onVacation 2 weeks ago, but he’s still doing work.You did
not get anyVacation request from him before.
The Juniors do report their work hours fine.
What you should do FIRST?
#1
a) Ask Sr. Dev to start reporting hrs., so you can
have visibility on his work. Explain it is part of
project conventions
b) Run ESAT survey, so you can have more details
about Sr. Dev motivation
c) Plan your visit the location asap
d) Rotate Sr. Dev, since you trust yourTL
e) Rotate Juniors, since you want your Sr. Staff to
catch up the scope, not being distracted

16. You have been assigned a DT project, which has been in progress 2 months already with no
Manager.The team is distributed between 2 locations: RM and 1 Dev are the only remote
members.
You have a hard time understanding current performance status of the project, and observe that
team is over-timing every day.
Your manager informed you, that customer satisfaction on the project is extremely low, but the
customer likes how RM communicates.
The project is about to fail, so your Manager assigned two hidden resources to survive.
You accidently heard a conversation in the kitchen between 2 QC, that they are not on the same
page regarding a USAcceptance Criteria, and will need to ask you for judgment.
What is the MOST LIKELY root cause of the project issue?
#2
a) Team has got unrealistic Scope
b) Project Objectives are not clear to the team
c) RM is underperforming
d) Team is not motivated, as there’re no Manager
e) Customer sucks

17. #3
a) Escalate to IT, as the line is not reliable
b) Organize another meeting, to explain how to
run meetings
c) Forbid working from home, so dogs won’t
interrupt the communication
d) Request “Effective Meetings” training
What the Manager
should do FIRST?
 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYu_bGbZiiQ

18. You are managing a critical Healthcare project to fulfill government regulations, and got a need to
involve external expert from another company department in different city for a part time
activity.
On your request, the expert says, you need first to coordinate with his boss, as he’s fully allocated
on another critical project.
What type of a team you’re about to create?
#4
a) Traditional withTM model
b) RemoteTeam, as you’re about to involve
remote team member
c) RnDTeam
d) VirtualTeam

19. You are managing a project with good collaborative Remote team of 9 people. People spend at
least 2 hours on audio communication daily, to discuss pending tasks.The relationships in the
team is excellent, you measure ESAT, which is high.
The team tends to push some Sprint scope further, as often developers are waiting other check-
ins, being blocked. Also QC usually are not able to run all the testing due to late delivery to QA in
the Sprint.
You run your Planning sessions well.
However Daily Scrum meetings usually take 40 min, and people making lots of paper notes each
meeting.
What is the MOST LIKELY missing thing on your Project?
#5
a) Communication Plan
b) SCRUM Master doesn’t remove impediments
c) Team Dashboard withTasks, Assignments and
Progress
d) Requirement Manager

20. PracticalTips

21. Remote
Management
People Tools
Processes

22. PEOPLE tips, 90/10 rule
 Get the Right People
 Set Clear Goals (90/10 rule of failing tasks, because of not understanding the goal)
 Communicate a lot (90/10 rule turns into 99/1 for Remote Mgmt.)
 SmallTalk is must and SMILE while talking (you get 90/10 loyaltyVS effort)
 Make people believe their boss actually EXISTS
 Not “resource” but “colleague”, better “friend”
 Be aware, behave with Respect to Culture
 Delegate
 Be committed and deal with issues immediately.Top folks.
 Run 1:1
 Know, Congratulate and Celebrate Birthdays!

23. PROCESSES tips
 Measure ESAT, mitigate HR Risks
 Establish RegularVisits,Travel andTeam Building
 Clear HRCommunication Plan and Decision-Making framework
 Orchestrate with minor Changes, avoid Routine
 Run Effective Meetings, Ineffective ones can kill your Project!

24. TOOLS tips
 Use Clouds forTeam Space
 JIRA Dashboards, Confluence, Google docs
 RunVideo Calls (90/10 rule of non-verbal communication)
 Lync, Skype
 Run Surveys
 Surveymonkey, Confluence, Google Forms

25. Get back to the Challenges ofVirtual & RemoteTeams
 Complicated Communication, limited non-verbal
 Different time zones and Culture
 Hard to Control
 Long way from Forming to PerformingTeam phase
 You need MatureTeam to effectively collaborate by Remote

26. Did you get there?
Remote Manager

27. Appendix
 A Conference Call in Real Life  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_team
 http://root5systemics.com/wp-
content/uploads/2012/12/Virtual-Teams-Survey-13.pdf
 http://rw-3.com/2012VirtualTeamsSurveyReport.pdf
 http://www.management-
issues.com/connected/6262/remote-team-or-virtual-team-
whats-the-difference/