Your Complete Guide to Remote Project Management
Tags: Remote, Remote Working, Remote Learning, Remote Work, Remote Team

Remote Project Management is gaining popularity. One of the reasons for this is the want for greater flexibility to have control over one’s schedule.

In this year, alone, the COVID-19 pandemic catapulted many organizations to undertake remote project management.

As with any such change, remote project management comes with its own set of challenges and benefits.

Therefore, we have put together this guide to help you navigate the wonder that is remote project management.

Let’s get to it!

What is Remote Project Management?

When a project’s deliverables are managed and coordinated by a distributed team, that project is being remotely managed. This is often done without any in-person interactions.

While the aim of such project management is the same as one conducted in the more traditional sense, namely to deliver the project outcomes within the specified time. However, the implications and complications are different between the two.

Types of Remote Teams

The way project management is conducted for teams that are working remotely depends on the type of remote teams you are working with.

Simply saying that a team that does not work in the same location is not going to help with your project management. Therefore, it is important to understand what type of remote team you are working with.

You can divide remote teams into three main types. These types include fully remote teams, flex teams, and hybrid teams.

Let’s go over each of them briefly.

1. Fully Remote Teams

A fully remote team has each of the members of the team working from different locations. This could be different offices, or geographical locations, or even just working from home.

In such teams, each member is separated, as is the leader. If as a leader you share an office or location with any member of your team is not a fully remote team.

2. Flex Teams

Ina flex team members are co-located part of the time while also working remotely some of the time.

This type of team would include those that telecommute but also come to the office on some days during the week.

3. Hybrid Teams

Hybrid teams are a mix of members some of whom are working remotely while others are in a centralized location, such as an office.

Commonly, such a team includes the project leader and some members of the team being co-located while others are separated.

While a hybrid team has some characteristics of a remote team and certain considerations should be followed as if the team were remote, even though the entire team is not working remotely.

This indicates that not all teams are created equally. The question is, as a leader what are you supposed to do?

We will go over everything you need to know to manage your project with a remote team.

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What Makes Project Management with Remote Team Different?

As a project manager, you are probably aware that managing teams remotely is different than managing teams that work together physically.

There are different challenges that you need to be aware of as a remote project manager to ensure your project is still a success.

Some of the common challenges of projects run remotely, that make such project management different include the following.

Challenge 1: Low Productivity

Without the right environment, there is a risk of low productivity. This is often the case with employees who work from home and do not have frequent oversight.

Therefore, it is important to keep frequent checks and balances and ensure that tasks are completed within deadlines. However, you need to make sure that you do so without questioning an employee’s work ethic.

We will discuss ways to do this below.

Challenge 2: Collaboration

A major challenge of working from different locations is the ability to collaborate effectively.

Compare to a team working in the same place, with the ability to interact conveniently, people working in different locations is bound to be a challenge.

However, it is important to stress communication and collaboration so that your team can deliver outcomes effectively and within deadlines.

Challenge 3: Building and Maintaining Trust

Trust is a common concern for new team members as well as clients and stakeholders when teams are working remotely.

Although great advancements have been made that allow for remote teams to work seamlessly even with the distance separating them, there is still often fear that work will not live up to what is promised or will be delivered late.

Therefore, as a project manager, you need to ensure you are responsive and dependable.

Moreover, ensure you create transparency, you can do this with project management tools that we will discuss in detail below.

Most importantly, for teams working remotely avoid micromanagement and give team members autonomy and empower them to do their work how it should be done without too much interference.

Challenge 4: Availability

Virtual work of any nature often deals with availability as a key pitfall.

Issues with availability can be because of multiple reasons, some of which may include:

Different time zones

Connectivity problems and internet issues

Loss of communication device

Members falling sick

As remote teams often work outside of office environments availability problems are bound to arise.

Keep all these issues in mind when selecting team members or when forming the project plan, making sure to account for such availability issues.

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Use the Right Project Management Tool

There are many project management tools in the market available to help with managing remote teams.

Having such a tool helps with organization, accountability, collaboration and communication, and much more.

With a great project management tool, you can benefit from:

Task management : You can create and assign tasks to team members, and then track the progress of the tasks assigned. This helps create transparency and ensures everyone is aware of their responsibilities.

: You can create and assign tasks to team members, and then track the progress of the tasks assigned. This helps create transparency and ensures everyone is aware of their responsibilities. Meeting management : With the need to stay connected and communicate effectively, project management tools provide meeting management where you can create meetings, note down meeting agendas, write key decisions and minutes of the meetings. You can also identify follow-up actions that need to be taken.

: With the need to stay connected and communicate effectively, project management tools provide meeting management where you can create meetings, note down meeting agendas, write key decisions and minutes of the meetings. You can also identify follow-up actions that need to be taken. Gantt Charts : Visual aids such as Gantt charts and other views allow you an overview of the progress of your project so that you can know exactly where your project stands in terms of its schedule.

: Visual aids such as Gantt charts and other views allow you an overview of the progress of your project so that you can know exactly where your project stands in terms of its schedule. risk management: With issue and risk management you can highlight any potential problems that may hinder the delivery of your project. Being aware of what could go wrong lets you plan and be prepared. You can create mitigation strategies so that you do not lose out if an identified risk does arise.

Benefits of Remote Project Management

With so many challenges and things to look out for, why would you even want to manage a project with a remote team?

Remote project management has its benefits. Here are some of the advantages of managing a project with a remote team.

1. Access to a Global Talent Pool

When you look past those available to work in the same location you open possibilities to pick from a comprehensive global talent pool.

Moreover, this allows organizations access to required skills from a boundary-less talent pool.

Furthermore, since remote workers often work on a contractual or part-time basis, the associated costs of hiring such resources are low as compared to full-time in-house employees.

2. Improved Work-life Balance

When a team is working remotely, they gain all the benefits of telecommuting. This includes improving work-life balance.

Remote teams often have the option to set their own work hours. This allows them to strike the right work-life balance.

This improved work-life balance leads to greater focus at work, happier employees, and reduced stress. This in turn improves the quality of deliverables and productivity.

Such teams are often driven by a sense of responsibility. Thus, they focus on delivering quality work without delays.

Furthermore, team members are often more willing to contribute towards project success, thus improving collaboration so that everyone gets the tasks done on time.

3. Higher Employee Retention

More employees are demanding a balance of work and life.

This improved work-life balance that remote working allows is a way to increase employee satisfaction thus resulting in higher employee retention.

Being part of a remote team allows flexibility to take care of children or other dependents such as elderly parents or sick partners.

Such employees can set their hours while also benefiting from other perks that result in loyalty towards your organization.

Thus, employees are less likely to get restless and thus will not start seeking employment elsewhere.

Conclusion

There you have it! everything you need to know to manage projects remotely.

We hope this post helped to answer any questions you may have about managing projects like a pro. If you have any questions, feel free to use the comments section below.