Remote can be on-off site, off-site or
offshore. The most important decision prior to any remote work is to identify
what can be accomplished remotely and what needs on-site participation. The baseline
to working remotely is having a strong remote leadership and keeping all
communication channels as if the team is sitting in the same room.
For our example
we shall use a BW-on-HANA (BoH) Migration project as it contains all the
ingredients of the IT project that we are trying to accomplish. Over the last
10 years or so as I have moved from 100% on-site to a mix of remote here is my
KnowledgeShare© on what makes remote work successful
1. Manage Remote
attributes: The most critical part of running any project is to be able to clearly
define what needs on-site and/or remote participation. As a fundamental rule
any rule based technical work can very efficiently be accomplished remotely.
And all work dealing with business or customer interaction must be done
on-site.
Business Case 1: For example if there is a need to build a custom Business solution,
which is becoming more and more critical as the basic BoH migrations mature or
as an early stage of building a business case for decision enhancement, where
there is a critical need for business interaction are all on-site tasks. The Business
Case, Functional Specs, Analytics UI and end deliverable look-and-feel are all
on-site tasks. The design, build, test are tasks that can be done remotely. The UAT is on-site followed
by release to production and support which can be accomplished remotely.
Business case 2: For a BoH migration from an existing BW. All strategic planning, i.e.
HANA business and IT Solution including building the business case by
tasks should be planned as on-site activities. Tasks like selection of System mergers (where more than 1 BW is
involved), TCO reduction, automated cube cleanup, basic housekeeping cleanup,
hot/cold deployment decisions and POC task planning must all be accomplished
on-site. Once the basic plan is in place then the actual HANA technical aspects
like Cloud installation/access, DR setup, appliance testing, project
management, cleanup, automated cube
cleanup, db migration, hot/cold deployments and core team tests can all be done
remotely. UAT can be done on with a skeleton staff on-site and real-time issue
resolution remotely. Final approval and move to production, security setup,
switching users and other pre-production tasks can be mostly accomplished
remotely.
At an
executive level all rule based technical tasks are ideal for remote work. All
business interaction tasks are best done on-site. At the end a 85/15 team of
remote and on-site has proven to be the most efficient model in any BI project
other than a net-new installation.
At an individual level ensure
that your role is aligned to your skills and that tasks assigned to you are
things you will be able to accomplish.
2. Project
Management: One of the most critical aspects to stellar remote success is the role,
responsibility and experience of the PM in managing disparate project members
and teams. The PM needs to manage roles vs. skills, daily task management,
communications / meeting with key stakeholders, issue resolutions and most
importantly resource loads and balancing. The PM is a critical component in any
mixed project and he would be the SPOC for managing all the balance five
aspects of a creating a stellar remote managed operation. Before on-boarding
the full team the PM must have a role map loaded with a project owner, steering
committee members, project plan, business individual skill profiles, individual
acceptance of tasks allocated to resources, daily tasks tracker, business case with deliverable benchmarks,
Technical case with Infrastructure- architecture- and other technical details, project
charter, project communications, risk mitigation plan, regional SPOC for remote
teams, resource utilization and an issue folder in a shared drive
At an individual level ensure
you sit with your PM initially and through the project and segregate tasks
assigned to you, time allocated, and your personal commitment that both are
professionally correct and deliverable. Delay good news, raise the red flag as
you see an issue.
3. Daily
communications: One of the most critical success factors
for remote management is communications. The PM must reach out to each resource
individually for a 10 minute call to check what they plan to accomplish that
day with a follow through of what was accomplished by the end-of-day. This
ensures that each resource is loaded appropriately and ownership and
accountability is managed professionally. It also allows for resource
re-allocation when certain tasks get accomplished faster than planned and other
delayed for any reason- requiring resource reallocation. The PM must track
daily activities, raise any issues to the Steering committee members as they
become apparent and prepare the weekly status update on a daily
At an individual level make
sure your agenda is loaded with daily meeting, daily communications with team
stakeholders for dependencies and joint activities. Make it mandatory to check
in daily and talk to your PM early – even if they sometimes forget to call you.
Talk daily to your task-partners daily. Share your wins and document your
issues daily. Be generous with your solutions and other will share theirs with
you. Do not sit in isolation hoping things will fall into place somehow.
4.
Schedule a semi-weekly meeting: Mandatory meetings
with the core team members preferably on a Tue and Thursday when all team
members must participate. As a rule Monday and Friday meeting do not work as
there is no gap between Friday and Monday, and also if tasks are missed on Friday
there is no time to ramp up by Monday. Once a week meeting is too few as there
is no reaction/ catch-up time by week.
At an individual level ensure you send your task and
accomplishment details to your PM the morning of the meeting so there are no embarrassing
gaps in the full-team members. Stay ahead of the curve with your tasks and
commitments. Be prepared for all questions on your tasks as you do not want to
get into a situation that you do not have the answer in front of you. Do not
guess or shoot from the hips - if details are not available state that you will
send in the next ‘N’ hours and follow through.
Make success a personal Goal: Any project
is a team and individual success. If one member fails then the whole team fails and if
each member succeeds then the team succeeds. Do not leave anything to change
and make success your personal and only option. If your success requires
assistance from other members ask for it. If the role /task assigned to you is
outside your skill comfort zone then point it out early. Make success a
personal goal as this will help you enjoy your co-workers, your management, and
most importantly your project.
