In April we celebrated the tenth anniversary and decided to share our experience on remote work in interviews with our team. Here are our tips.
Because of the novel coronavirus, most of the companies, especially these outsides of IT Industry, found it challenging to organise a remote work, but not our team. Even though some lockdown restrictions are being removed, organisations are still trying to decide on what to do next. Whether to stay at home and continue the remote work or come back to the offices.
For those of you still working at home, we’re going to share our experiences and tips on organising the optimal process of remote work. But before we dive into the article, let us shine a light on our team structure and established work process.
The RedmineUP Cloud team is a remote team from the start. If you serve clients from around the world, you better get a globally spread team as well. And on top of that, you’d need a sharp project management tool that would help your team to stay connected and engaged.
Without further ado, here we go.
Dimitar from Sofia, Bulgaria — Customer Support Manager
What is the main challenge to work remotely for you and why?
Technically, the most significant challenges are with decreased Internet bandwidth, or with an unexpected situation, such as blackout. However, glad to say, it happens very rarely and gets solved quickly. When the internet is getting really slow, I switch to the hotspot.
In terms of organisation, it’s answering the clients on time, in multiple channels — tickets, chat, Skype, Facebook and messengers.
How do you plan your day/week/month? Any specific tools?
I rely on the Helpdesk plugin and sew custom queries I created. They are lists of tickets or tasks with specific filters applied. I have few automation rules set in place, to organize the flow in an easy way.
How do you prioritize a few tasks? How to find out what to do in a particular moment?
Firstly, I focus my attention on all “urgent” tickets. And then I follow to answer the tickets based on their priority and importance.
What are the metrics that help you understand that your job is done? What are the RedmineUP features that allow you to find that out?
There are mainly performance metrics, that shows how many tickets came to our Redmine, and how efficiently I’m resolving them. I keep an eye on the time to first response, and an average number of replies until the ticket is closed. And I like the voting feature. Indeed, when I get the “awesome” voting, I smile like the emoticon that expresses it 🙂. Also, some clients express their feedback — sometimes with simple “thanks”, “it was helpful”, and sometimes with more gratitude. It makes me feel helpful, and my work appreciated.
How can you improve your work results? Do you have any retrospective meetings with the team? Any other way to do it?
I take notes for myself about specific situations that may occur in the future again and their solutions. To keep them organised, I tag them a set of keywords or tags. I also tag the tickets with a set of tags to easier came back to a specific item, or category of tasks.
Furthermore, whenever I receive a piece of advice on how we can improve our plugins or feature requests from our clients, I forward them to our manager. AI reach out to the clients I talked with after some time, too verify if they have any feedback. For specific categories of tickets, such as trials, testing bug fixes, sending files or patches, I reach out back to our clients after a while.
At the end of every week, I write a report to my manager, summarising the most common problems or questions reported during the week. If any situation or ticket category is above our standards, we discuss them on the call.
Could you please name a few life hacks to improve your daily remote work?
Well, for me, the key to productive and efficient work is the good sleep in the night before:) It has to be about 8 hours so that I could feel well the next day. Another thing is that I need to be quiet around me so that I could do my job well.
I try to keep these two points checked every day, so the work goes smoothly. I consider the remote work a big advantage because I am much more focused and relaxed at work.
Does RedmineUP provide you with a feeling of teamwork? In what moment can you say that you are not alone? Like you are a part of a team.
We use a Redmine (RedmineUP Cloud) for the communication with the developers and the manager. It’s smooth and instant. Whenever we need to discuss something quickly, we jump to the Telegram messenger.
There is no difference if you work in a business building and receive mails or have online chats with the manager and colleagues from the other floor or a colleague from the other side of the world :)
Greg from Warsaw, Poland — Marketing Manager
What is the main challenge to work remotely for you and why?
Keeping the focus on meaningful work and avoiding “being busy”. It leads to burnout and decreases morale.
How do you plan your day/week/month? Any specific tools?
For now, I’m keeping a paper list of “hot items” to take them off my head. And I track my main tasks in the ticketing system and a scrum board. Regarding the tools for task and project management, I tried plenty of them, from a single sheet of paper and a pen, past todoist, through using Redmine or Jira as a marketing ticketing system, towards Asana, Trello and ending on the physical whiteboard with projects, plans and priorities.
The success lies in the system and keeping an overview level of tasks to stay on track for and not spend more time on reporting than actual work. And when collaborating, keeping as many details as necessary to collaborate effectively and keep the coworkers committed to the plans.
How do you prioritise a few tasks? How to find out what to do in a particular moment?
I look at the projects and select a single point of focus that would help to move the needle or would contribute the most towards the set target. For example, in marketing tasks, my single focus, the one field on which I should prioritise on would be content. That means most of the day I’m spending on writing, or associated tasks, such as polishing texts for SEO or researching a new topic.
What are the metrics that help you understand that your job is done? What are the RedmineUP features that allow you to find that out?
In RedmineUP, I use Agile board, which along task lists displays progress bars and due date on the cards.
In my work, I use a set of metrics. They’re all connected with engagement (email open rate/ click-through rate, % of page visitors who called or asked or quote) and sales (marketing qualified leads or conversions). I don’t follow “vanity” metrics, such as posts likes.
How can you improve your work results? Do you have any retrospective meetings with the team? Any other way to do it?
Depending on the project — supporting core of the business, launching a new initiative, I do a review every week, or every other week. In addition to that, we do a monthly review and planning.
A good practice is starting a week with a short stand-up, where we discuss priorities, progress and answer any questions that arose since the last meeting.
Could you please name a few life hacks to improve your daily remote work?
One most recent and helpful — is breaking the work routine with few exercises. And on top of that mounting a pull-up bar in the door frame. Every hour or so I take a break to hang for a minute. That does great work to ease back pain.
Does RedmineUP provide you with a feeling of teamwork? In what moment can you say that you are not alone? Like you are a part of a team.
We’re in touch all the time, either by IM, Skype, Whereby and using RedmineUP. The best moments are when we connect virtually and when I see how other team members contribute to their work. On a daily basis, it’s seeing progress on the tasks and sharing successes with the rest of the team.
Irina from Berlin, Germany — Custom Development Manager
What is the main challenge to work remotely for you and why?
For me, it’s coordinating multiple projects and tasks with the team that doesn’t sit in one room. This gives me a chance to practise my communication skills every day. Luckily, our Redmine (RedmineUP Cloud) is set up in such a way, that I see who’s working on what even on my smartphone when I’m not at home at the moment.
How do you plan your day/week/month? Any specific tools?
Even though I like digital tools, I carry out planning on a traditional, paper calendar of A3 size :) I mark there the main milestones such as meetings, calls, release days, demo days and other significant events. The good thing about such a view is that when you cross the elements of them, it gives you an additional boost of confirmation that you’re doing a good job.
How do you prioritise a few tasks? How to find out what to do in a particular moment?
For each Custom Development project, I set up a dedicated Scrum board. The Agile plugin let me also to have a one “mother-board”, where I can see the status of all the projects and all the tasks. In addition to Resource Manager, this helps me to keep the team workload on the optimal level.
I like to keep the thing simple, so I on the boards I mark my tasks with the traffic light colours. The red colour is reserved for urgent jobs, green colour for tasks awaiting customer feedback, and the yellow one is for the one the team is currently working on.
What are the metrics that help you understand that your job is done? What are the RedmineUP features that allow you to find that out?
For progress on projects, I use Agile charts and Scrum metrics. Mainly, I like the burn-down chart for story points. For the project completion, I keep the initial planning and quoting with the CRM plugin, and then switch to Agile, for the development milestones. As soon as we share the demo with the client, I tune in in Helpdesk for their feedback. And once they receive the final code, I’m waiting for the acceptance of work and payment of the invoice in Invoices plugin.
How can you improve your work results? Do you have any retrospective meetings with the team? Any other way to do it?
We keep the tasks on the Scrum board and have regular stand-up calls, where we discuss the progress. For an ongoing daily communication with the team and clients, I use various messengers and then put the important things into the tickets. Our Redmine helps to lock the requirements and arrangements.
Could you please name a few life hacks to improve your daily remote work?
I work following the Pomodoro Method — so I work for 25 minutes and take a break in-between the time-blocks. Whenever there’s good weather, I go outside for a short walk. Thanks to these breaks, I’m much more focused. And by taking the time to go out I feel more relaxed.
Does RedmineUP provide you with a feeling of teamwork? In what moment can you say that you are not alone? Like you are a part of a team.
Seeing the progress on tickets, and keeping in touch via instant messengers makes me feel a part of the team. Apart from that, the Redmine alerts and selected notifications give me a feeling the work is progressing.
Marti from Moscow, Russia — RedmineUP Cloud Product Owner
What is the main challenge to work remotely for you and why?
Typically, I work from #TCEH coworking located in the centre of Moscow. It is a cool place with tasty coffee and well-designed space for work. It’s a hub for IT startups, where I meet the like-minded people who share the same goals and face similar challenges. Daily discussion in the kitchen or relax zone gives a great chance to exchange ideas and discuss solutions.
In the pandemic time, I stayed at home, and the main challenge was to balance to time between work and my son. If you have a kid at home you can relate with my experience ;-) If not, just imagine that every time when you try to concentrate on a task, you expect getting hit from behind or hearing a cry or a fight between the mom and my little boy. That’s why I decided to separate a work-sphere from the private space and focus my defense there.
How do you plan your day/week/month? Any specific tools?
For me, it’s essential to see the key objective and results of the whole product. The “big-picture-view” helps me to stay focused on the bottleneck. A weekly meeting helps me to keep on defined track and do not do any dive into other incoming issues, such as instant ideas of improvements.
How do you prioritise a few tasks? How to find out what to do in a particular moment?
As a customers success manager, I work with a few Enterprise Tier clients. They require a prompt reaction to any issues, due to our SLA. To set the status accordingly, I lean on the customised Helpdesk plugin, where I see the status of the client, their SLA level, and LTV.
The world recently changed upside down, and we have to change our daily activity too, to adjust to the situation. That’s why during the pandemic, we offered a free plan for all health-related organisations to support the global fight against the COVID-19.
Another example was a close collaboration with a new client from South Korea supporting hospitals, to help them implement more features of RedmineUP, and establish work standards. As a result, they were able to deliver more masks in April, even though it was not part of my goals. I did it because it was more important than a new integration.
What are the metrics that help you understand that your job is done? What are the RedmineUP features that allow you to find that out?
I like the Unit economy because it shows you the real value of your efforts in numbers.
Going into details, it depends on the character of the tasks, but I am trying to keep in mind the SMART system to set the goals first. OKR is also a useful tool for every initiative you have. Once you set up a goal with the right metric, it is easy to stay on that course if you have it right in front of you. Honestly, I feel pressure before each weekly meeting, because the numbers should be as we expected and planed before.
Let me tell you a few real examples: For example, I just helped one of the leading Australian IT companies automate their weekly report for the customer support department. Their process used to be a nightmare — copy-pasting data from Redmine to Excel, then putting that in a keynote presentation and presenting to the boss. Now it just takes a click on the button, and the PDF report from a beautiful template is downloaded. When you are able to automate part of the work routine and improve the client’s work, you immediately see the value delivered and feel that you are doing a great job. You feel you make someone else’s life easier.
How can you improve your work results? Do you have any retrospective meetings with the team? Any other way to do it?
Daily I use Telegram messenger because we have a few team chats there, such as Support, or Marketing. I think it is a fast, simple, and fun way to get feedback from colleagues.
The main metrics for me are business metrics used also by Enterprises and SaaS companies such as MRR, New customers, Churn, and so on. Once a month, I prepare a report for the stakeholders on the key changes. During this cadence meeting, we can fix any issues and share instant feedback.
Could you please name a few life hacks to improve your daily remote work?
It was a tough task for me to arrange a workspace at my small apartment. I had to negotiate a work schedule with my wife and son so that I can work normally. The advantage of working from home is that I don’t need to schedule any conference rooms and adjust my schedule to fit the room’s availability. I can have a call when it’s suitable for me a client/colleague.
Well, I prefer to take a small break to play sports with my little son. It’s great fun for both of us, and it allows me to leave the stress and break the routine.
Does RedmineUP provide you with a feeling of teamwork? In what moment can you say that you are not alone? Like you are a part of a team.
Redmine itself doesn’t have any messengers or push notifications. But I am using Telegram, Whatsapp, Skype, Whereby and other collaboration tools.
My favourite parts are the demo calls with trial users, because I am trying to help to solve a unique problem. In that case, the client has a list of different requirements, and our goal as a team is to provide solutions.
So I am acting as a bridge or a glue for the whole team — Development, Marketing, Sales, Support, and then Development again. Sometimes I need to work closely together with Andrew to add a new integration. Other times, we spent all time with Greg to launch a new campaign.
Another example is then you have a workflow of incoming requests — we can assign each other to tickets without any additional signals.
Andrew — traveling around Europe and Russia, Software Developer
What is the main challenge to work remotely for you and why?
The most challenging thing is to tune in to work at home and stop being distracted by a thousand little things.
How do you plan your day/week/month? Any specific tools?
Depending on the size of the task or a project, I usually use a Trello board or Agile board in Redmine. For small assignments, there is a piece of paper and a pen waiting to jump into the hand.
How do you prioritise a few tasks? How to find out what to do in a particular moment?
I use the RedmineUP Agile Board as well as Trello to arrange the task in the right order.
Usually, I set a block of tasks to work on connected assignments. The more time I spend on one type of job, the faster it gets. Additionally, I try to do certain tasks on a certain day. For example, I devote Wednesday as a day of fixing bugs.
What are the metrics that help you understand that your job is done? What are the RedmineUP features that allow you to find that out?
Typically, it is the status of the task in the Agile board, and new feedback posted on it. For keeping track of the tasks I like using RedmineUP Agile charts and Reporter reports that let you conveniently see the data.
How can you improve your work results? Do you have any retrospective meetings with the team? Any other way to do it?
We connect with the team after the completion of a large task. Since they could only participate in part of the task, it allows people in the team to get the complete picture of the implemented functionality. Additionally, it allows sharing new life hacks or tools and technologies that may be useful to others in their work.
Could you please name a few life hacks to improve your daily remote work?
Firstly: if you sat down to work, the work is the priority. Even if your home pet comes by and requires immediate stroking or play, it must wait for my work to be completed.
Secondly: Music — it should be calm. I work better when I listen to music either without words or sung in a language that I don’t know. Then it doesn’t distract me, and there’s no desire to sing along with the singer.
Thirdly: If it’s time to finish your work, you need to finish it, even if “this report needs to be completed by tomorrow morning, it will only take another hour”. Otherwise, such as “let me just finish this one little thing” delay the working day what quickly leads to burnout.
Does RedmineUP provide you with a feeling of teamwork? In what moment can you say that you are not alone? Like you are a part of a team.
RedmineUP provides many benefits for the software development teams. When I see that cards are moving on the board as well as new comments and user reviews appear — I understand that I’m not alone, and outside the window there are no zombies eating other zombies :)
Share your remote work tips, and best practices with us! We’d love to hear your story. In the meanwhile, if you want to test how RedmineUP can help your team, give it a go during a free 15-day trial.
