
Ask HN: How to Manage Remote Teams - p3rry
There are around 7-10 developers working under me. I am thinking to give my devs working remote option . What are the best practises that i should follow or better question how do I plan &quot;working remotely&quot;.
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davismwfl
This is a big topic. I am assuming you are all centralized today given how you
worded it.

Assuming the team has worked together in a central office so far, it is best
to do this slowly and expect some headaches and maybe a false start or two.
Start with going to a remote friendly environment where you allow remote work
2 days a week and work through the communication changes. Then open it to more
days as you work through the process.

The biggest change is communications, no matter how small all communication
has to be done in a remote friendly way. Even impromptu meetings can't have a
final resolution until you include the remote participants. So essentially
decisions will slow down, especially at first but it gets normalized after
sometime. Also, recognize that not everyone can work remote because it
requires a different mindset, for example, some people trying to work from
home are totally distracted and aren't productive.

I have led remote teams for a long time, I am happy to answer specific
questions or help anyway I can. The biggest thing is communications and making
sure people always feel included and no one is left out. This is a hard thing
to do, so do not underestimate the amount of effort it takes, especially if
you already have an existing team since it is changing the way people work
today versus starting that way.

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p3rry
Right now we sit in one open office where our maximum communication happens
verbally which is the reason i am not very confident. Our slack/skype uses are
very minimum. I think we should practise first with work from home twice or
thrice in a week to see if we can actually go with working remotely kinda job.

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justdebb
If your team is using both Slack and Skype, I think it'd be better to choose a
tool and stick to it. Face-to-face communications can still happen via video
for both tools, so you can still have that but it may just require more
coordination and isn't as instant as in the office.

As your team slowly gets a hang of things, another thing I'd keep in mind is
to make sure you keep the team motivated and maintain a good remote team
culture, as remote work may feel lonely at times or team members may feel
detached from one another.

There are some well-known remote teams that you can try to learn from, like
Buffer and Zapier.

~~~
p3rry
I think i'll need to add more informal and causal conversations in our chat
rooms to multiply fun element.

