Some of the tips were basic things that, if you read lists like this you’ve come to expect.  For example, an old favorite, create small attainable tasks for yourself instead of a great big complex one.  I, personally, enjoy the satisfaction of checking things off my To-Do list and have been known to add a task to my list simply to experience the momentary feeling of satisfaction that comes with checking them complete. Shower, Check!

However, there were some new and interesting tidbits on this list.  Specifically, how detrimental multitasking can be to your productivity.  As a project manager, multitasking is almost written into my job description.  Or is it? I have to wonder if the expectation that we need to multitask is hurting us – both as a profession and as a society?  Is the expectation self-imposed (or self-inflicted)?  The article recommends turning off your email for an hour – or (gasp!) three.  Could you do that?  As a company we are making a concerted effort to update the status message within our IM or sending out an email to staff (heads down – trying to concentrate – emergencies only) when we can’t have interruptions.  Doesn’t the fact that we have to tell people we are concentrating indicate that most of the time we don’t have the luxury of being able to do so?

The article states that when you multitask, your IQ drops by an average of 10 points, 15 for men, 5 for women. Besides explaining a lot about my husband, I found this kind of shocking.  It feels like a catch-22: I don’t want to shut off communication avenues in case I am needed, however, I could be a more productive employee if I did.

Is the pendulum of multitasking creeping toward its edge? How far will the propensity to multitask have to go before the pendulum swings back?  Personally, I am going  to be better about using the offline mode with email.  Checking email hourly is reasonable and a solid first step in inching my pendulum back toward center.  I’m curious what the expectation is in your work environment – and does it differ from what you feel comfortable doing?

It may not be news to most of you that Beaconfire really values the people who work here ☺ … However, some of our really talented colleagues have had to leave the DC area, but we didn’t want to lose them.  So remote working was born!

How has it worked out?  And what do you watch out for?  Keep reading…

Long standing tradition and practice has dictated that the most productive methods of output and collaboration revolve around teams being physically located together.  A recent global trend, however, is driving that understanding in another direction.  The Internet, highly advanced collaborative worker tools, improved communications, and a new working culture are allowing people to come together on teams that are no longer co-located.

Here’s what we have learned in the process and consequently look to establish for remote teams:

#1: A sense of being a Team
Team members can feel isolated and independent even if they are working in the cubicle ten feet away. However, if team members know they are part of a team working on common goals and common deliverables, they tend to be more actively involved.  So let those remote workers know they are part of the team, and ensure they are invited (even if they have to webcam or call in) to team meetings and discussions.

#2: Establishing ground rules
It is probably more important for remote teams to exhibit a common and acceptable set of functioning behaviors.  Ground rules may include expected hours for working, lunch times, determining which meetings are mandatory (in-person, web-based, or via telephone), and establishing expectations for communication turnaround times.

#3: Leverage technology
Technology is available and improving all the time to support virtual team members.  This includes fast access to the Internet, audio conferencing, videocams, collaborative software, and shared directories.  At Beaconfire, the inclusion of video chat has been a major success.  Some remote staff even like to have video chat on during the day while they work to keep the conversation going and limit the barriers to communication.

#4: Give people shorter assignments, and check in often
Instead of assigning a six-week activity to a remote team member, assign the work in three two-week activities.  And you’ll want to check in, ideally, on a daily basis on ensure progress.  If the remote worker is working closely with other team members on smaller or more modular tasks, it reduces risk of timeline expectations not being met.  Check-in often, and especially point out deliverables that on the critical path.

#5: Communicate, as much as possible
Be extra proactive to ensure all team members understand what is expected. Remote team workers can start to feel isolated if they do not receive regular communications. The communication lines on a virtual team must be opened up especially wide.  And keep in mind the following best practices:

• Pick up the phone.  Typically, our instinct is to try and have conversations over IM/email, but very often things move much faster and people feel more engaged on both sides when we actually pick up the phone (and/or webcam) and have a conversation with someone.
• Keep it interesting – Use a variety of communication techniques.  Pick up the phone , Video chat, etc.

#6: Tips for the Remote Worker:
And what the remote worker can do to himself/herself to help -

• Be uber responsive and available.
• Use Instant Messenger to make yourself available at all times during the work day. Even if you are busy, take a second and say “in a meeting” or “on a call” or “crunching on something, how important is it?” It makes people feel less like you are remote and no one can complain that you are hard to reach.
• Communicate to your team members about your availability/status/whatever you’re working on – it really helps put people at ease when they can’t actually see you.

It’s worked well for Beaconfire so far, and we are witnessing some of the dynamics of ‘team work from afar’ and how it has reshaped our working relationships within the company.

Have a best practice that has really worked for your remote team? Feel free to share.

1) We set up the client account on Jira so that the client user only see their projects – that makes their experience more streamlined. We have created a Jira client training doc which we send along with the introduction to Jira email.  Beaconfire sets up a default dashboard for each client, so they don’t need to learn the process of how to set up dashboards. Some clients, though, get very comfortable with setting up dashboards and have access to all the tools to add new gadgets, etc.

2) We currently are not using Jira during the Discovery/Design phase, though we may eventually. The tool really best is used during the Development/QA phases.   We are starting to use Jira for Ongoing projects and are refining the best approach on how to differentiate between tickets in requirements/estimates stage and those which are approved for work.

3) Ideally all enhancements, bugs and task requests are entered in Jira instead of sent via email.  If an email does come in with a new request, the Beaconfire PM still enters  it in Jira and then sends back an email with the reference URL.  That way we don’t lose track of any of the requests.

4) Sometimes, if a question goes back and forth on Jira, it makes sense to just get on a call to discuss. A quick conversation can add a lot more clarity sometimes – just make sure to update the Jira ticket with comments and decisions.

5) If  the change/bug was issued by the client, once Beaconfire’s QA is complete, the ticket should be assigned back to the client for review. The status in our process for that is called “Pending Approval”. Once the client has reviewed, if they approve the change, they should assign the ticket to the PM with “Completed” status. If there are additional changes, they should assign back to the PM with “Rejected” or “In Process” status.  Once the change has been deployed, the ticket will be closed out.

6) We have also had the experience of co-management of tickets – either between Beaconfire and the client or amongst multiple client stakeholders. In that scenario, we have set up special dashboards to allow for a view of all tickets assigned to the other managers and then, separately, a list of tickets assigned to you.  The watcher function can also help to keep appraised of ticket status.

As we are refining this process, we may have some additional helpful hints that come up. Also, if you have used Jira, or other similar bug tracking tools, for client access, we’d love to hear what’s worked for you!

So what can we do? Here are a few tips that I use to keep my projects on track:

RESERVE THE TIME – At Beaconfire, we don’t have the luxury of having folks staffed full (or even half) time on a project. Each week it’s a delicate dance of giving and taking a few hours here and there to make sure someone has enough work, but not too much. Thus, it’s critical that resource requests are up to date (we happen to use a tool called Open Air), and team members have a general view of how much time they’re supposed to be spending on a project each week.

UNDERSTAND COMPETING PRIORITIES – You’ll be one step ahead if you have a sense of what else is on someone’s plate. When conflicts pop up, this context will help you triage and come up with next steps.

CHECK-IN REGULARLY – While some people think meetings are a waste of time, they really can be a useful tool for getting everyone on the same page and moving things forward.  Even when I don’t think there’s much to cover, there have been times where I’ve held the meeting and found there were issues and questions that I wasn’t aware of. Better to air those during a meeting than wait a few weeks and let them go unchecked.

I schedule recurring check-in meetings for my projects (usually weekly), but the most important thing is to have a clear agenda for each meeting and communicate that agenda in advance (and that doesn’t mean 5 minutes before). One tactic I use to build my agenda is to jot down notes and questions that arise over the week in a calendar appointment adjacent to my actual meeting. That way when it’s time for me to think about what we’re going to cover, I’ve already done a good portion of the work.

ASSIGN TASKS – It goes without saying that check-ins should always wrap up with next steps, and everyone should be clear about the priority and due date of tasks.  If all tasks are the same priority with no sense of deadline, the people assigned won’t know where to start and what to tackle first. Help your team and take the time to sort and prioritize.

COMMUNICATE PROACTIVELY – I’ve found it helpful to send summary emails to the team at critical points in the project. Either at the beginning with an overview and key links/info, or at the end when it’s essential everyone is working together. But, don’t assume people are reading half of the documentation you create. During critical periods like intense QA or deployment having a 15 or 30 minute team meeting every day really can be time well spent.

In addition to sending communications, you should be gathering feedback from your team about their progress. Ask for updates, but make a point to be specific in your questions. It’s amazing what people fail to tell you until you ask them directly.

At the end of the day, it really is true that the “squeaky wheel gets the grease.” Team members need to be reminded of priorities each week by someone with an eye on the big picture –the beloved Project Manager.

Beaconfire used Mobify to create the Zoo’s mobile site.  The free Mobify service allows us to pull live content from the site, present it in a way that is specifically optimized and designed for mobile users, and create HTML templates that are only served to those users.

The result?  We create a fully dynamic site using content from the CMS-managed desktop version and deliver it in a highly usable format for mobile devices.

The Mobify version of the site has been streamlined to provide the most useful information for people on-the-go but still includes a link to the full site for those who want a deeper dive into the information.

So, who’s up for watching the penguin feeding at 3:30?

But the members who counted on ULI’s website weren’t always able to find what they were looking for.  ULI’s approximate 60 websites had different implementations (many not on Sitecore) and the current search did not effectively allow the user to search across all ULI related sites. Beaconfire implemented the Google GSA search application, giving ULI the robust functionality of Google Search. Part of this implementation included giving the user an option to search on the specific site or across all ULI and created a common advanced search and search results page across all ULI sites.  Beaconfire also implemented a number of Sitecore updates which allowed the search results to display certain data, such as secured pages and the update date.   You can try out the new search functionality at  http://www.uli.org/ or http://urbanland.uli.org/.

Now, the ULI websites offer a consistent and reliable search experience and results for ULI members and site users.

I recently surveyed Beaconfire staff to find out how they stay motivated and on task while they’re out of the office.  Here’s what they had to say:

Rob – Client Manager

Cell phone tethering is great. I also review a lot of work email from my smartphone.

Amy – Functional Analyst

I typically try to download files locally to my computer so I can work on them even if there isn’t wifi access to the internet.

Kristin and Kesah– Project Managers

Echoing Rob’s comment – If you have a smartphone, it’s critical to set up your work email on your phone. It saves a ton of time, even just going through and reading/deleting non-critical emails.

Another consideration is to identify a backup contact for your clients while you are out of the office; they can help keep things moving and keep your other clients happy.

Jeff – Principal Consultant

Be aggressive about prioritizing your task list and focus your time on key tasks. If you spend time checking and responding to email, you’ll not find time for the tasks you targeted for travel. Although being available on email and being responsive are valuable too, just recognize that can take up time you might have planned for other offline tasks.

Also, recognize that you probably won’t get to all that you thought you would. As a good Project Manager, set reasonable expectations so folks know what to expect of you and that you don’t disappoint.

As usual at Beaconfire, we like to first start with the goals and outcomes. Based on the primary goal of the meeting, it should be easy to pick a profile for the attendees. Let’s explore a few of the possible meeting goals and outcomes.

1. To transfer knowledge from the project team to the consultant. If we need to understand client thinking, around which there is some consensus, then the meeting should be the small group, best positioned to convey this information.
2. To facilitate a session for brainstorming or idea generation that is strategic, visionary and exploratory. These folks should be creative, outgoing, informed and able to work well with others. Usually includes a broad mix of folks for perspective but no decisions are typically expected.
3. To explore and brainstorm desired features or creative directions or technical options with purpose of reaching directional agreement (if not consensus). These subject matter focused meetings make it straightforward to identify those staff, volunteers or constituents that can best speak to the subject matter plus those with enough perspective to provide some boundaries for the discussion. Some decision makers may be present but ideally it is best  if they also have subject matter information to bring to the discussion. This usually limits leadership to the direct project sponsor and not other decision makers.
4. To educate, inform or otherwise brief a group of stakeholders and decision makers. This meeting is characterized by mostly presentation and summary information with opportunities for clarification and refinement of ideas and concepts that are pretty well formed. The goal here is confirmation, positive reinforcement if not outright approval.
5. To provide a forum for stakeholders to be heard, to share their perspective and ultimately to be engaged authentically for the purposes of building ‘buy-in’. In this case, the workshop may be more about appearances and the effort of engaging this audience than the actual information discussed.

Sometimes a stakeholder workshop is defined first by WHO is attending and what the impact of their needs is on how the meeting will be framed and the outcomes expected. If the audience for the workshop is one of the following, see how the meeting’s outcome might be anticipated.

• Consultants / Project Team – Sometimes, the client project team mostly knows what they need to convey to the consultant. This type of meeting will cover specific information with background context, or a pretty firm hypotheses that may need validation and refinement with the consultant experts. It is very likely that this meeting will result in directional agreement if not decisions. These meetings should be very focused, include only those needed for the topic. These meetings can be characterized by “what the consultants need to move the project ahead”.
• Client Project team extended – In other cases, the client team members may need a workshop or meeting to discuss, review and brainstorm ideas and want/need the consultants to facilitate. Surely the consultant will get much of the background and factual information it needs through this facilitation and exploration, but these meetings are less likely have decisions as an outcome. It will be a pleasant surprise if there appears to be directional agreement if not outright consensus as a result of the meeting.
• Internal or external stakeholders outside of project team – More often than not, these stakeholders are engaged for one of a few purposes:
  1. to be informed and educated about some topic, process, approach or concept, such that they’ve been ‘briefed’
  2. to give these stakeholders a chance to be engaged for the purposes of getting their ‘buy-in’ to the process, if not the outcome.
  3. to be engaged in validating concepts, ideas and approaches where there are unique perspectives that they can provide.
• Constituents are whole different set of needs/expectations around which we have numerous engagement techniques and where a “meeting or workshop” is less likely to be the proper medium.

The short-hand I use to understand which type of meeting we need to have is based on these questions:

• What does my consultant team need to know and who can best give us this information? Or who can give us the decision or validation to keep moving forward?
• What does the client team need the meeting to achieve (for themselves or for others)?

In reality most meetings have multiple goals and may involve a cross section of client stakeholders. Ideally however, the meetings can either be separated out to account for the needs of different stakeholder groups. If not, then the meeting agenda requires careful planning and savvy facilitation and a dose of good meeting karma.

Meeting facilitation that achieves a variety of goals with a mix of stakeholders whose needs don’t always align is often the primary reason a firm like Beaconfire is engaged. After all these years, it isn’t quite old hat, but we’ve seen most every combination possible and have tips and tricks for each. But that’s another blog post!

We’re looking for someone who can leverage their Internet project management experience to build great web sites and help solve our client’s technology challenges. If you know your way around content management systems and other Web solutions, get excited thinking about helping non-profit clients save the world, and want to work with smart, fun people in a collaborative team environment, then we’d like to talk to you!

And, if that’s not enough to motivate you to apply (or pass this along to someone who you think would be a great fit), here are some excerpts from our PM’s about why they like working here:

• Everyone here is very motivated and takes pride in doing good work
• There is a focus on delivering great work for our clients
• Staff are guided by process, but still have room for flexibility and new ideas
• The company is focused on work/life balance
• Beaconfire brings together some really great, smart, friendly and fun people!

You can see the full job description on our web site .  To apply, send a cover letter describing why you believe you would be a good fit for this position and for Beaconfire along with your resume and salary requirements to pm@beaconfire.com.

Kristin Niemi-Gillig
I’ve found the following tips do help keep a project moving.

• Ask for holiday schedules in November, and then ask again in December since some people are usually still finalizing their plans.
• Identify work that can be done by the people “holding down the fort” and then determine what inputs are necessary for them to get started. Be sure to hold necessary calls or meetings so that decisions can be made and they have what they need to work while others are out.
• Schedule a “welcome back/let’s get started again meeting” right after the holiday.

Ashleigh Lambert:
Something that has helped me since I’ve started is recording schedules, key dates where people won’t be available, vacations, etc on my client weekly agenda in Central Desktop. I suppose this only works if both you and the client regularly use a collaborative tool. But it has worked well for me, as both our internal team and the client can reference it in a central location and update it regularly.

I also concur with Kristin about checking in regularly (weekly even) to confirm priorities, assess anything new that’s coming up, consider who will be staffed during the key holiday days for troubleshooting, etc.

Andy Dimock:
From the onset of a project I try to plan on avoiding any client dependent interactions or approvals during the week of Thanksgiving and the 1.5 weeks around Christmas and New Year. I make sure that the actual holidays are set as non-working times in my initial (and subsequent) Microsoft Project plans and I assume 25-50% more time will be required for any tasks during those time periods. Now, that is not to say that the project is planned to halt during those periods. Rather it is planned such that work along the critical path will continue while concomitantly accepting the reality of the situation – that things will move slower during those holiday periods.

Jeff Herron:
Holidays must actively be planned around otherwise the delays are greater than just the time out of office. Weekly reminders and actively planning tasks with the client are key to keeping things moving ahead of the holidays and to avoid inevitable slow starts upon returning from holidays.

Amanda O’Malley:
Generally, if a project is going to happen through a holiday period, in the initial plan I will try to avoid scheduling deadlines/deliverables that the client has to be involved in too close to the holidays and allow a bit more time for internal schedules to avoid an unexpected delay later.  Once we get a few weeks out from holidays I will typically make that part of the weekly check in discussions, first to find out everyone’s vacation schedules and then check in for any changes for the next few weeks up to the holiday.  I usually try to shift tasks/staffing around as soon as outages are identified and I will also keep the client notified on how we plan to keep things moving through the holiday period (even if it is a limited effort).  Also, I will try to make sure that any immediate decisions or feedback needed from the client are in a bit before they become unavailable so that there is time to communicate any questions.