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More results, less management – leverage the collective potential.
The business world is starting to understand that hybrid working models are the future of workplace and collaboration. Adapting towards these trends can generate a competitive edge. So, what should you consider?
Distributed teams face challenges in several dimensions compared with a traditional office environment. Significant elements include:
Less small talk and personal discussions
Distance to ask questions/ availability for calls
Missing transparency across multiple teams about where and how to store information
Delayed transparency on activities performed and completed by other team members
Longer cycle times to complete activities, especially those with dependencies
Standardize Structures – Enable – Automate
Managing distributed teams is a mindset change, moving from a potential “command & control” management style in shared office spaces to an approach where the team actively takes on responsibilities. Fostering collective ownership may include decision making, communication, and managing tasks in a shared collaboration or workflow tool.
Graphic 1: high velocity organization principles
Establish a Standardized Collaboration Platform
Make effective use of your application toolbox by introducing supporting standards, then enable all teams to establish own approaches to use the standards and improve their collaboration.
1. Foster personal exchange/ small talk (1)
Enable your teams to talk, chat, and discuss topics that are both business and non-business related. These exchanges will bring teams closer together and improve their spirit to deliver on goals.
How: use a communication tool like MS Teams or Slack, which allows to create permanent group conversations and include all team members.
2. Structure information exchange (2)
For significant, long-term topics or repetitive activities, create chat channels so all messages can be searched in the channel history.
How: use a collaboration tool like MS Teams or Slack and create channels for specific, focused information exchange. Invite all involved team members to ensure transparency on information.
3. Standardized information storage
Create a central space where all your critical documentation is accessible to everybody involved. Also, implement a structured governance process for all product increments (documentation, testing, business sign-off, etc.). Two critical artifacts are:
Clean and prioritized product backlog (3).
Central product documentation (wiki) (4).
How: use a wiki tool like Confluence and create a common structure for every project, so team members can find information across all initiatives in the same way. Separate product documentation (4) from project execution related documentation (5). The former is important for the rest of the application’s lifetime, the latter is usually only relevant during project execution.
4. Transparency of work progress
Effective teams own the outcome of their team activities cohesively. This means all team members are responsible for every task and can help and support each other. Therefore, they need to understand transparently what others are doing, how they are progressing, and what impediments they are facing.
How: use a workflow tool like Jira, create appropriate Scrum/Kanban boards (6) (consider adding meaningful status, swimlanes and quick filters), and perform daily stand-ups with these boards at the center of the team’s discussion:
What have I completed since yesterday?
What am I doing today?
Do I face impediments?
Additionally, create dynamic reports (7) based on the objective status of tasks, stories, epics, and features directly out of the workflow tool.
Your benefits
Leverage the full potential of your workforce by optimizing the use of available communication, collaboration, and documentation tools. Embrace asynchronous interactions and make transparency a critical goal on your leadership agenda. Near real-time information exchange allows your teams to benefit from both worlds, namely working without disruption during times when chat messages are ignored and interacting with others during other times. Moreover, many meetings will become obsolete as soon as asynchronous communication starts to accelerate and solve many classic meeting purposes much faster than waiting for the «free time slot that fits everybody».
All these factors allow your teams to self-manage their work. Furthermore, reporting on effective progress becomes much simpler and can be automated based on collective daily contributions. Therefore, always remember tools are only as good as how you use them.
Graphic: The critical success factors for effective distributed collaboration
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