I constantly get the same question, “How do you manage a virtual team and actually get stuff done.” At Wildbit, each of the 10 team members work from home or a coworking environment. We’re spread out across four countries and many timezones. With such separation, we still manage to get a lot done and enjoy our work.
Before writing this article, I had not given much thought to exactly how we work in a virtual environment. My first answer was simply practice and many mistakes. Although, the knowledge gained from those mistakes can be narrowed down to three main ingredients: The people on the team, the process that drives the team, and clear communication.
The people
Skip the resumes
You can have a good process and great tools, but it all starts with a team who can work well together. I have been running Wildbit for almost eight years. In that time, I learned to not hire just based on need or skill set, but to hire based on interests, personality, and a motivation to constantly improve. Hiring virtually makes this much harder. You can’t sit down and feel out a person or get to know them, you need to base their personality and passion other factors. For instance, we usually ask people what books they read, blogs they follow, or people they look up to in the industry. This helps us learn about their interests, but can also demonstrate their passion and dedication to their work. If people take time to write a blog, it tells me they are confident in their ideas and willing to work on their own. The key is to find people who love what they do, then provide the environment for them to express it.
Plan for mistakes
If you’re planning to hire someone remotely, be prepared for mistakes. Most people would love to work from home, but most people are also not cut out for it. We’ve had situations where very talented team members did not work out. Not due to their skills or interest, but their inability to work from home without supervision. Once this is realized, the process of trying to supervise and recover can be toxic. The manager tries to improve the situation while the employee has a constant feeling of failure. In these scenarios it’s very important to trust your gut and move on. In a virtual team, always make sure to plan for these mistakes and accept delays and cost.
Listen and learn
There is a psychological element to running virtual teams that is much different from the physical environment. Instead of reading body language, we have to pay close attention to habits and read between the lines. I can quickly notice from an IM conversation when someone is not motivated or is losing interest. Even the smallest things like emoticons, punctuation, and frequency of participation can reveal a lot. The trick is to know each person, their usual habits, and when they start changing those habits. It’s pretty easy for someone to hide mistakes or poor productivity. By encouraging open and honest communication, the issues are most likely to surface sooner.
The process
If you hire the right people who enjoy what they do, most of the painful management issues go away. At the same time, a solid process is still necessary to improve productivity. A specific process should always be tailored to the needs of your company, but I can give some insight on what works for Wildbit.
Focus on results, not time
We’re a software company, so our process is specific. We work strictly in weekly iterations. Each week, each person is dedicated to one project. This clarifies communication across the team, sets expectations, and maintains focus. Everyone on the team always know what each person is working on, as well as our clients.
Weekly iterations also help us avoid hour tracking and baby sitting. Each week is planned based on a desired outcome, not the number of hours worked. This avoids tracking and posting hours and enables us to deliver results. At the end of the week, it is clear to everyone on the team if the expected results were delivered.
Schedules matter
A primary advantage to working remotely is a flexible schedule. While we don’t have rigid daily working hours, it is still important that each person has a consistent schedule. We try to have a range of time when each person will be available, with a plus or minus flexibility. This sets clear expectations across the team with some leniency to start work when the person is ready. In regards to leadership, a schedule also makes it clear when someone is slacking off. While we don’t use IM for constant conversation, it still provides a clear status of when someone arrives or leaves each day.
Coworking: Working alone, together
Unless you have the right office space at home, it can get really distracting. The question always comes up on whether an office away from home makes sense. My usual answer is that it depends on the person. Over the years, we have tried it all. The important thing is that each person has the flexibility to work where they are most productive and comfortable. With so many people working remotely these days, the concept of coworking has really caught on. I work at Independents Hall in Philadelphia, which provides a great balance between working at home and working in an office. As more of these spaces open, the rest of our team will be sure to jump on board.
Clear communication
With the right people and the right process, a solid communication process brings it all together. While there are plenty of tools to assist in communication, the real value is in setting communication guidelines. Nothing is more distracting than the Internet (I hate you Twitter). By focusing on communication tools first, it just feeds the fire. Here are some of our guidelines.
Daily meetings
The biggest disadvantage to a virtual team is not having the time to hang out. In the usual workplace, a lot of great ideas happen through daily chatter or over lunch. To emulate this environment, we setup very short meetings each morning in Campfire. It helps start the day, mess around, and catch up before we focus on work.
Kill the IM distration
Instant Messages do a great job of killing focus. Nothing is worse than tasks assigned over IM or someone distracting you in the middle of a thought. Over time, we learned how to minimize IM discussion. By not using IM, we are forced to use tools that encourage structured team discussion. We use Basecamp to post ideas or questions to the team, which can be answered at any time. We use Campfire to chat as a group, which keeps a record for future use. And we use FogBugz to assign and organize tasks and iterations. We’ve also used Twitter to notify each other about the status of a task or situation.
Get to know each other
It’s not always about business. Nothing helps a team gel more than learning about each others personal lives. It’s easier when you work in the same office, but in a virtual team you need to make time for it. We’ve celebrate with shots of vodka in Campfire. We send each other pictures of our home offices. We remember birthdays or occasions and announce them to the team. The personal discussions are always overlooked, so be sure to make the time.
It’s not all virtual. No matter what, you always need some face time. There’s nothing better than a team retreat to hang out with the team, celebrate success, and focus on strategy. Our last retreat was in Cyprus, and it was well worth it. When planning a retreat make sure that most of the time is casual. It’s a time to relax and get to know each other, rather than pushing business needs. The strategic conversations will happen naturally.
People, Process, Communication
Our experience working remotely is just one example. It’s important to adjust based on the needs and structure of your team. As I said, it all starts with the right people. With a great team that really strives for quality, the rest just happens. The concepts and process that Wildbit has created over the years has come from each person on the team, instead of a single manager or leader.
I’m very interested in hearing ideas or strategies that have worked for other teams. If you have any thoughts or questions, post a comment and I will reply.
Thanks for this Chris. I’ve managed IT projects for 15+ years and for the last year I’ve been managing a team spread across a 10 hour time zone difference. None of us are at the same location.
I’ve always preferred to bring candidates in for a small task (less than a week), grab a beer after work etc, and just see how it goes. I wasn’t expecting “results” but I was confirming team fit, personality, basic skills etc; none of which show their true colors during an interview. This approach works really well in the “virtual” environment as most working this way like to start as freelancers anyway.
What surprised me was many of the “quirks” that you normally need to put up with having office teams become non-issues working virtually. I mean many of the personal issues that irritate fellow team workers simply don’t show up when people are connecting basically just to coordinate tasks. You become professional colleges and friends but not “coworkers” – if that makes any sense.
I disagree with your point on IM however. We use it extensively to keep a rapport going, temperature check etc. Everyone here seems to just have good head about when to leave people to their work and when some “human” exchange is needed. Looking back it might seem odd that I’ve never actually spoken with more than half of the people on my team. But I feel closer to them than many of the people I shared an office with for years.
Collaboration is tough, but non more so then with creative types or IT folk. It’s so hard to keep everyone focused on the same thing and working of the same sheet sometimes!
Great article, thanks :)
Great article. A very enjoyable read. I work with other people across th globe and find many similarities with what you have written.
One last note – a really great shame I started using Git. Beanstalk looks wonderful.
Thanks for the article.
Nice post. I generally agree. But I disagree with your IM point just like Steve.
All our communication is based on IM. We really don’t need Basecamp or Twitter or whatever. This would be distracting much more than just using IM. But I agree that using group chat can be helpful (we don’t use Campfire though).
Thanks for the comments!
Each team should have their own guidelines. For us, IM just got in the way. IM is a communication method that demands immediate attention and response, which can easily be abused over time. I still find myself sending simple IM’s like “How are things going?” which is wasteful and distracting.
We prefer communication mediums where the response can have a short delay. This way we reduce the risk of multi-tasking and breaking focus.
At the same time, we definitely still use IM a lot for one to one conversations, we just try to minimize it as much as possible.
Great Article! You are absolutely right. It takes a certain kind of person to work at home. I have been telecommuting for a little over a year now. It is so easy to get distracted when left unsupervised. Fortunately I have a ridiculously long attention span and can stay on track. I like the concept of coworking, and I just so happen to live in Philly. Perhaps I will see you sometime soon at Independence Hall.
Furley
Furleydelphia
I am going to need to find an offsite job due to some personal circumstances.
How would I go about researching offsite jobs?
I am a Frontend css standards based web designer/developer.
Thanks
How do you go about ‘letting go’ of people who are not suitable for working from home or who are not delivering results?
In instances where person A has been constantly delivering results for half a year and then start to slack off, what do you do? I’d like to hear some views on this as I’ve encountered some staff who are like that.
Thanks.
Good article Chris.
I have an office which is close to home, but I actually prefer to work from home because I am more productive there, probably because my desk at the office is always such as mess :)
We use IM and it is distracting, because as you say it requires an instant response, and people expect an instant response! I don’t mind if it’s a quick question which is relatively important, in fact I would almost prefer that people IM me about something important so they’re not waiting on a response to an email, but I hate it when people start using IM to have a conversation that can wait until we’re in the office.
After reading your article I think it’s time to set some guidelines for IM use!
@Chua - If someone has proven to be reliable for six months I certainly wouldn’t just let them go without exploring what the problem is. Find out what’s going on first.
@Chua - I agree with Kevin. We’ve had people in the past with the exact issue. They work steady for months, then suddenly start missing tasks and disappearing. It’s much harder to see this happen and know it is a problem, so first, identity that it is real. This is the point where I usually have to trust my instincts. The team member may not admit the flaws, so you might need to pry for the reasons.
In this case, try to figure out the problem. You might need to set a schedule, place the person on a more challenging task (are they bored?), or give them some time off to deal with personal issues. Either way, set some goals and see if things improve. If it does not improve, it is best for both of you to move on. As I said in the article, the back and forth becomes toxic. Things change and it is important that the relationship is a good fit for both of you.
[…] Chris Nagele’s run Wildbit, creators of hosted Subversion app Beanstalk, for 8 years virtually. He lives in Philadelphia and his team is all over the world. So, he knows a few things about virtual teams and shares them in this article.read more | digg story […]
Fantastic article!
I’ve just hired another ‘colleague’ for my first web project, as for the resume - to be honest I don’t know if he sent me one, but I wouldn’t have read it anyway.
Thanks for writing this it’s good stuff.
@Nancy
“How would I go about researching offsite jobs?”
If you haven’t tried already
1. Ask anyone you know who’s freelance how they found their gig.
2. Blog.
3. Help others online for free - that’s how I found my copywriter.
4. Podcast if you feel inclined/are amusing.
5. Tell everyone you know in the web-sphere that you’re available.
6. Scour LinkedIn
[…] Building and managing virtual teams C’est une certitude, le travail collaboratif à distance est amené à se démocratiser. Mais comment recruter des personnes sans pouvoir les rencontrer physiquement ? Et quels sont les autres pièges à éviter ? […]
For Nancy: Try CraigsList.org and jobs.37signals.com/jobs for job postings.
I am interested in offsite jobs due to special situations in my life.
How can i do research on finding some offsite jobs?
I am basically new to designing websites and have alot to learn. If there’s any help you can offer, please let me know.
Thanks ever so much.
[…] Category: Team ManagementRead more […]
Wondering why there is no mention of IRC? Seems like that would be more beneficial than IM considering the distracting nature of IM.
[…] The majority of our projects start at $50,000 and go up depending on the feature set. We always recommend starting small with the core system, then expanding as we react to the customers or community. Make sure to check out examples of our work on our homepage. To learn more about our process, read our latest article about managing virtual teams on Vitamin. […]
Superb article. Thanks dude.
[…] Building and managing virtual teams […]
[…] Before writing this article, I had not given much thought to exactly how we work in a virtual environment. My first answer was simply practice and many mistakes. Although, the knowledge gained from those mistakes can be narrowed down to three main ingredients: The people on the team, the process that drives the team, and clear communication. Visit Vitamin Bookmark to: Hide Sites […]
Category: Team ManagementRead more
thanks
Nice concepts, building teams is always a challenge
Just followed a link to this article from Ades Blog. This takes the concept of telecommuting to the next level! Broadband costs are becoming increasingly cheaper, with a corresponding rise in the price of energy. Hence it makes sense to work remotely. Thanks for sharing your experience, it paves the way for others to emulate the same formula.
Great article, Chris.
I’m a consulting developer who’s about to have an overflow of projects so I’m looking to put together a virtual team. I’ve managed a past client’s virtual team (India) and it was workable.
Couple of routes I can go with this:
1) Find independents who work from wherever as it appears you have done
2) Find a firm to help me pull together a team in one place as my previous client had done
I’m curious if you looked into option 2? If you did, what challenges did you face? Why did you not choose it or move away from it?
I’m also curious how you have found your team members?
Thanks again for the article!
-Scott
Great article, Chris. Thanks.
I’m currently working on the 2nd edition of my book “What To Do When You Become The Boss” http://www.whenyoubecometheboss.com/ (it’s a “How to” for new managers). I’m adding a chapter on virtual teams and would very much appreciate a discussion about your experiences and / or permission to use some of the points raised in your article.
If you have the time, please contact me via my email address or through the website http://www.whenyoubecometheboss.com/
Kind regards
Bob Selden
PS. If anyone else reading this post would like to contribute, please contact me. Thanks.
hi
very good article which should be read by people involved in virtual team work. Useful for research students too!!!