2020-03-09 Remote Team Management Discussion Meeting notes

Telecommute / alternative work options

Kal

• http://thecurrent.ucsd.edu/ 

  • Operations → Administrative Support

    • Flexible Work Arrangements

• Though there is no dept-wide recommendation, I believe most managers will be considering any requests for flexible work arrangements individually and for us to see more 

• Other universities in California (Washington, Stanford, and USC) have required mandatory full telecommute schedules - will we? Unknown, but lets be prepared in case we do.

Managing a remote project team discussion - what do we need to be successful? 

All

• Do we have the collaborative tools to be successful? Yes. 

  • ITS-PRO for tracking project management deliverables, tasks etc. Also used for communication on specific tasks. 

  • Confluence for publishing finalized project documentation, also for collaborating on documents. Not great for tabular data but integrates with Onedrive and Google spreadsheets well. 

  • Onedrive / Google Drive for collaborative documents - works great for collaborative PPT, spreadsheets. Does not integrate with ITSPRO so it lacks the ability to link requirements to ITSPRO tasks. This is needed sans requirements / testing solution. 

  • Slack/Skype

    • Not everyone uses slack on campus, it would help to have a single messaging platform. Most people have Skype + Slack open. We could standardize this at ITS and for ITS projects. 

    • Nha: Moved to a slack standup. That way people do not need to be at the same place at the same time. 

      • If the team had not met before, they did the standup in person first to build a rapport then moved it to slack.  

      • If there are blockers, there is a 30 min breakout session after. 

      • Downside: you know everyone's update if you don't read the update. Team norms need to be set that include everyone reading the standup updates. 

      • They need to feel connected. Every Thursday, in person. 

    • Status on skype or slack - it sets a status any status. It would be nice for it to be displayed over emoji. 

  • email/calendar

    • Risk: Too much email

      • Mitigation: Formal task related communication in ITSPRO comments in tasks, escalations via @manager and @Kal with email as needed 

      • Mitigation: Informal communications over slack

    • Risk: Too many meetings

      • Mitigation: Make sure meeting you schedule are productive. Decline all meetings which lack an agenda.

      • !!Plan the meetings before going to them!!

    • Nha: Need available hours. Susan: makes sure the calendars are up to date. If remote, put the contact info on your own calendar.  More team norms needed. 

  • phone

    • Best informal communication method. Remote teams would request everyone's cell phone numbers. 

    • Need to be able to connect via cell phones. Complaints, escalations, etc. this is like a face to face. Lots of people just called on the cell. 

  • Project Activity Hub

  • Zoom

    • Risk:  People need to pay attention when on Zoom calls. People multitasks and do not pay attention. Need ground-rules here.  

• Is this an opportunity for us to see if there is a better way to work? 

  • Like: Asynchronous workflows

    • Asynchronous mindset is to ask this question: "How would I deliver this message, present this work, or move this project forward right now if no one else on my team (or in my company) were awake?"

    • Communicating asynchronously has a prerequisite: documentation. At its core, asynchronous communication is documentation. It is delivering a message or series of messages in a way that does not require the recipient(s) to be available — or even awake — at the same time.

  • What might work today, may not work tomorrow. Can everyone do their jobs remotely? Unsure. 

    • Team would like to reach out to all of the owners of each workload, is there anything they can't do remotely. 

  • Sonia: Test drive being remote with her application remediation team - will document any hardships
    
    

    • DEVS were all for this

  • Nha: Problems to hand-off from DEV to QA. 

    • Risk; In person handoff's unavailable. Team will need to develop a process that is enabled by our tools to do handoffs. 

  • Team: Need training. Agile/Scrum. Training on other tools. Braintrust / Chris R. providing scrum training. 

• Optimal home work-space

  • Risk: Some people do not have access to an optimal work-space

  • Risk: Decent internet: Some people find that Zoom connections sometime cut out at home when video is on, so they may not be able to Zoom w/ video. This may impact a "video on" culture.

  • Risk: Family interruptions (kids/animals)

  • All: Those with kids, the determination of school - as it related to child care. This may impact their request to work from home. 

Followup

All

• Kal: Bi-weekly/one a month - with the PPMO. 

• Requesting volunteers to work on a recommendation / guide to project managing / working remotely. 

Followup from Brian S.

Brian S.

The following guidelines are meant to help us continue to work well together in a remote work environment:

• Log on to Slack when you start your day, and update your status when you are in a meeting or away from your desk for an extended period, to let your team know when you will return.

• For questions and brief conversations with your team that would spawn too long of an email chain but don't require a Zoom meeting, use a Slack channel dedicated to your project.

• When holding Zoom meetings, use the webcam feature whenever possible.  Human communication has a huge non-verbal component (body language, etc.) that can be lost when audio-only.

• For the core team on your projects, create a Collab page only accessible to the core team with each person's cell phone numbers and their preferred method of contact (phone call, email, Slack, or other).  <-- IBM let you specify "preferred contact method" in the corporate directory, although other than me I'm not sure many people actually looked it up for folks when reaching out to them

• For project team members who are not able/willing to be on Slack, discuss with them what the best way would be for you to "ping" them if you need something more urgently than waiting for a reply to email - that might be Skype for Business, text message, or a phone call.

• Be sure to update your Outlook calendar with times you will not be available (ex: if you have child care or other responsibilities that require you to be unavailable during set hours).

• Don't be afraid to just pick up the phone and talk to your team - sometimes a two minute phone conversation can be far more effective than a half hour of going back and forth in Slack,  When you're remote making occasional 1:1 phone calls to your team are an important replacement for those "hallway conversations" we'd otherwise be having in the office.

• Use your fellow PMs as a resource, if you're having a problem with remote work the odds good your teammates have seen it and will have some advice, either in #its_ppmo_int or reaching out informally.