¿Cuáles son los principales desafíos y beneficios de la gestión remota de proyectos de software?

Crafting a team working agreement is a helpful practice to establish expectations and agreements for remote teams. It can reduce misunderstandings and improve communication by ensuring that everyone is on the same page regarding how they are expected to work. Additionally, it fosters a sense of community and belonging among team members, which can increase their productivity and efficiency. When team members are aware of the expectations set forth in the agreement, they feel more connected to the team and their work.

Given that remote workers could be based anywhere, the connectivity infrastructure plays a vital yet less evident role to deliver effectively on the job The fewer the disruptions in connectivity the better is the productivity and the better it is for the program or project manager to build rapport and trust within the team at large. Better connectivity ensures better availability and in a critical phase of the project the project team availability is crucial to making their work count and being in time for critical deliveries.

The bias in a distributed workforce is a bias to documentation. Remote workers should be skilled, and comfortable, with writing. Think documentation for everything from policies to procedures. A bias to documentation enables your team, and organization, to scale, train, reskill, and upskill others easily. It fosters a culture of asynchronous communication, which minimizes awkward scheduling across time zones for remote members. It supports inclusion (more people can participate) and engagement (more people can contribute) in conversation. There's an abundance of AI tools to improve writing. Check out Rytr. I recommend reading "Remote" from Basecamp and Gitlab's "Guide to All Remote."

The key concern for collaboration is engagement. Gallup defines engagement as "The involvement and enthusiasm of employees in their work and workplace." Employee engagement can be impacted by anything from policy to tools to people. Get a sense of employee happiness with an anonymous poll or survey. Try to address the addressable issues. Check in with people who seem disengaged. Focus on building a culture that increases flexibility for when employees work as well as where they work. Employees that can choose when and where they work are happier. One way to support flexible when is a bias to documentation (async communication). Read Dan Pink's "When." Gallup has a lot of resources on increasing engagement.

A lack of control and visibility leading to risky flexibility is micromanagement speak. The beauty of remote work is employees can choose where (ideally when) they work. Want to travel for a year? Sounds good. With an internet connection, trust, and asynchronous communication, flexibility is not risky. Default to trust. Give autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Treat people like adults. If you can't, it's a bad hire. Empower employees to make decisions about their work. Define goals and give power to choose how work gets done. Define done ahead of time. Give opportunity to present progress in various media, like a prerecorded video. Google "Basecamp heartbeats" for an example of how progress can be reported. Check out their blog too.

In my experience, I have seen wider access to a pool for talented project managers as one of the benefits. By using remote project management, organizations can employ talented individuals from around the globe who may not otherwise be available locally. This gives access to a bigger talent pool, which is advantageous for a software project's success.

We need to stop focusing on productivity (doing stuff) and start focusing on effectiveness (outcomes or results). I don't care about developer key strokes or looking busy. I care about the quality of output. Is it an elegant solution? Efficient? Buggy? Meets our definition of done? For software projects, I want developers to be effective. That is valuable to our customers. More stability, less tech debt, faster feature development, etc. Remote work enables engineers to be effective. No costly open office interruption or distraction. Minimal context switching. Plentiful mental breaks. Checkout "Hammock Driven Development" by Rich Hickey on YouTube. Read Vannevar Bush's "As we may think." Read "Peopleware."

In my experience, I have found that creating non-work meetings like a recurring coffee chat or office hours meeting on the calendar can help break down this challenge. It gives a consistent place where you can meet with the team, if they have the time, to get to know who they are. The only rule is we do not speak about work in the coffee chats - strictly personal chat. This can help build a bond with the team which assists in open honest conversations when you do get to work conversations.

The friction mentioned above comes from attempting to run a distributed team as if it were in an office. You can remove friction easily. Here are some mechanisms I use regularly to build highly effective, happy, and engaged remote teams: 1. Write stuff down, all the stuff (not in a conveyor belt like Slack, go with a wiki) 2. Weekly/biweekly check-ins with individuals 3. Retrospectives on work process/projects 4. Virtual coffee, lunch, etc. for team building during *work hours* - don't talk shop, play games 5. Give autonomy, mastery, and purpose. 6. Office hours for impromptu chats 7. Empower people to block time for deep work 8. No meeting days/weeks 9. Mental health days 10. Rare onsites - quarterly or annually, tops, pay for meals

Maintaining Team Cohesion: Remote work can hinder team bonding and shared goals due to distance and cultural differences. Monitoring and Accountability: Ensuring remote team productivity and meeting deadlines is challenging without direct supervision. Knowledge Sharing and Learning: Informal knowledge exchange and skill development can suffer in remote setups. Data Security and Privacy: Safeguarding project data becomes complex with dispersed team members and varying internet connections. Technical Infrastructure: Uneven access to tools and connectivity can impact collaboration and efficiency. Project Scope Creep: Miscommunication in remote environments can lead to misunderstandings of project requirements and scope changes