Co-location of teams is always an important part of executing IT projects. Being Agile, this is one of the adopted principles as well.
It does help to have all team members located at a common place. It makes discussions easier, enables quicker decision making and executing projects smoothly. This also helps in developing team atmosphere.
However, the world that we live in today, is more scattered, and it requires connecting various locations across geographies which go beyond oceans. Managers and leaders get to manage teams spread across. That presents a challenge in itself.
The reasons for such a diverse presence are different. Cost obviously is the reason, but getting the right talent pool is important too. Most of the IT service organizations have teams split between Onshore, and multiple offshore development centers. The most complex set-ups specifically are product development shops, who do niche development work. They set-up offices across the globe to attract best talents. They will have multiple offices across the world, and each team will have team members spanning across different set-ups. E.g. it may consists of few developers from New York, Nashville and Mumbai. Testers could be from Chennai. Business Analysts could be from Japan. This is not always a forced choice, but many a times by design.
In such a set-up, a manager appointed for such a group will be based out of one location, so how does he manage such a scattered team. He will have different challenges to deal with, scarce choices to make but with the same set of goals/ objectives as that of any collocated teams i.e. to execute the project successfully.
Any such leader needs to be always aware of what are they missing because their teams are not co-located:
- Unable to have adhoc connect and meetings with individuals and teams
- Ability to empathize with people in person
- Unable to quickly understand sensitivities, not sure of likes and dislikes of team members
- Team Celebrations, Off hour connects between team members
Always Plan Ahead for Discussions
Set expectations upfront for project meetings. Define a clear-cut guidance on how to set-up, conduct and follow-up on these meetings.
Plan for your discussions much ahead. Think through what requires to be communicated, how it needs to be communicated.
Particularly for remote teams, it is important that the core message is re-iterated so that it is understood uniformly across all of the teams. It may be a good idea to have at least one member at each location to repeat the message.
Frequent Feedback Discussions
This is an extremely important item in today's world. Setting clear expectations for each role and each individual in the team; tracking it more often and then providing periodic feedback to the team to allow them to course-correct.
In a connected world, this becomes extremely important. It is easier for the team to mis-understand the ask, and get non-aligned to the core goals.
One needs to prepare well on what feedback to share, and how it needs to be shared. Understand the nuances of language that you will use, and what aspects will be interpreted in what way.
While practicing, I always suggest anyone to play a dual role - one himself, and the other one who will receive the feedback.
Video Connectivity
This is a must item in today's connected world. This helps add personal touch in absence of in person meetings.
Educate your teams to leverage vidoe calls and video meetings more often.
While the teams are set to get more and more scattered as the organizations continue to grow; it is important to improve the infrastructure, frequent coordination, etc.
