The Ultimate Guide to Remote Work for Startups
With the outbreak of the COVID-19 virus and subsequent quarantine period, companies working from the office were forced to adopt remote work overnight.
Even though some startups won’t feel any difference as they had adopted a remote-first culture prior to the quarantine, for a predominant majority of companies adopting a remote work will be a bitter pill to swallow for the upcoming months.
Remote work is way more than just leaving the office and working from home! For managers, the remote environment will require different skills and better communication – both spoken and written.
While making over 200 remote software development projects happen on 5 continents we have discovered approaches and strategies to help remote work succeed. In this article, we want to share with you the strategies that have worked in our team and the teams of our partners – a network of over 80 tech agencies.
In this article we are focusing on these key domains of every tech company – software development, customer support, sales & marketing, team & project management. Ready to discover how to implement remote work there? Let’s get started!
Remote work & Software Development
We communicate over Slack 90% of the time. Every now and then we have a call if there is something more complicated to discuss. Every 3 months we meet in person and discuss new features, more complicated topics and we do some team building.Mirko Schneider Product Owner, Intermate
We have also brought remote work and team management to universities – helping the Humboldt University of Berlin (Germany) make progress with digitalization and creating 3 successful academic and projects with a team of developers located in Eastern Europe.
The core point was communication. We used Slack for our informal quick communication, we tracked issues with Gitlab & Jira, and had calls to go through open questions. Responsiveness was great.Christian Stein Project Leader, Humboldt University
So how can you effectively manage your remote team of developers to have a feeling as if they are working from the same room as you?
When matching companies with the best tech agencies in Eastern Europe, they often tell us about their failed outsourcing experiments from the past. One of the most frequent reasons for an outsourcing project to fail is poor communication with a tech partner.
You can have a good communication flow with a selected team in the beginning (before the contract is signed), but later their responsiveness might not be that good.
We often make jokes by calling such a team ‘submarines’ – they arise only for a short time to get down deep into water for the next months. You don’t want to work with such teams, right?
So what is the key to effective communication with a remote tech team?
What is the Definition of “Done”?
According to the Agile methodology, the definition of “Done” or DoD means meeting all criteria or requirements of the task to be accepted by a user, team or customer. As a product owner (or manager) you should make sure that your remote team delivers all “done” according to how you see it.
What is Asynchronous and Synchronous work?
Asynchronous communication is when you don’t require an immediate response when sending someone a message. Synchronous work, in turn, requires immediate processing of a delivered message by a recipient.
Remote work & Customer Success
What is Pomodoro Technique?
Developed by Francesco Cirillo in 80s, this time management technique is used to boost productivity by setting up 25 minute work intervals. You can use various tools such as TomatoTimer to apply this technique.
Use video calling over phone calling and always turn on your video, even if just for the beginning of the conversation (internet connections can be bad). It sets a warmer tone for the conversation. If you end up calling without video anyway, use sounds that clearly communicate what you’re doing, like a laugh when you’re smiling, a “hmm” sound when you’re thinking, etc. to make a stronger connection. Use your tone of voice abundantly. Be yourself and a bit more informal than you’d be in a face-to-face meeting. Make a bit of time for small talk. It’s good to compensate a bit for the difficulties with creating a personal connection remotely.Jeroen Corthout Co-Founder, Salesflare.com