Using digital tools for team working

Many of us work as part of distributed teams which has the potential to create logistical and cultural issues.  For example it may make managers feel they have less control, or it can make communicating effectively within the team more difficult.

In my team we’re using digital tools to help us deliver our work.  These tools not only address the issues of remote working but also offer a way of working that increases productivity while benefiting team members’ work life balance.

Taking the ‘post it’ out of Agile

My team exists to deliver projects and it’s critical that we can deliver these effectively.  Although my background is in Prince2 we’ve increasingly moved toward Agile methodologies and 2 of us are now DSDM Agile practitioners.  Kanban is one of our key tools but we’re rarely all together so needed an equivalent that allows us to move tasks through the delivery process.

Trello has proved to be invaluable here.  When we have our stand ups (by telephone conference) we can all see the board and make changes in real time that everyone can see.

But it goes further than that, by using @username on a card you can draw the attention of another member of the team to a card.  This allows team members to obtain sign off of products or just ask questions.  We can also colour code the cards to indicate their MoSCoW status and link between boards if we need to.

Because we don't need to react to everything in real time we also don't have to come together as a team as regularly as we might with a physical board.

Bringing team members on board

Team membership inevitably changes and bringing a remote team member up to speed can be difficult.  Of course there are times when you need face to face contact but we’ve found a board that describes how to do the repeatable tasks really helps colleagues gain confidence in their new role. The previously mentioned @ function and regular telephone contact helps too.  As a manager I can also see how the speed with which these tasks are completed improves over time.

Working together

The Trello cards are great for tracking projects and for short notes between team members but what about working on documents, spreadsheets and presentations?  This is where Google apps comes in.  We use Sheets to track project finances, Docs when we want to work collaboratively on a document and Slides when putting together presentations. Compared to traditional office tools where only 1 person can work on a document at once it's a revelation.  Even better we can then link to the document from Trello so everyone can find it easily.

Working with suppliers

Because the tools are web based we can also extend access to selected boards to our suppliers.  This proved invaluable when delivering a SaaS product into live service, within 3 weeks, for the commuter hubs project.  Without this we’d undoubtedly have had to have more time physically together and have non productive travel time as a result. Using Trello the supplier could let us know they had deployed changes overnight and then I could test early in the morning before the normal workday commences.

Handover to business as usual

When projects complete the products move into business as usual.  The risk here is that knowledge is lost and the customer experience drops. We’ve found a board that provides a FAQ and other material for the BAU team is really helpful to ensure the Helpdesk comes up to speed quickly.

What have I learned?

The key thing for me is that the way you work assumes the team are dispersed.  This allows you to break many of the old practices, especially the reliance on paper.  If you keep to traditional ways of working and only offer dial in for those working remotely you’ll inevitably retain a culture that requires presence in order to be effective.  

As someone who has spent more than a decade working remotely there are few things more demotivating than a meeting where you can only hear bits of what is going on or where everyone has the handout except you!

Humans are social creatures though and most of us value human contact during the work day.  Remember though that this contact doesn't just have to be with the immediate team.  We’ve found that operational and HQ staff value the opportunity of working in the same office in our commuter hubs for example.

Finally don't be afraid to experiment, if something doesn't work you can always change to a different approach that does.  As I said at the start, this way of working seems to have had a positive effect on my team with them really repaying the trust put in them by delivering above and beyond my expectations.