WebWorkerDaily spoke to Chan to find out what’s worked for him and what hasn’t, so other companies can crib from his answers and avoid the school of hard knocks.

Talent

Chan’s first move into web work was to hire a virtual assistant, Marina. She is from the Philippines and eventually came to work directly for ADP, becoming a baseline for the company in the country and helping them hire more people. Having such a linchpin is key, according to Chan.

“If you have one really solid person who you trust in country, whether you know them personally or they come through a reference, that can make or break your whole virtual team,” he says. “I think it’s really been because of Marina that we’ve been able to succeed in working in the Philippines. The same is true now in India. We have one lead person and it’s because of our relationship with him that we can manage the India team without us falling apart.”

An adequate hiring process is also essential. “We hire based on the resume, the portfolio they show us online, and an interview process where my lead person in the Philippines interviews them first and my partner and I do subsequent interviews. Finally we give them a test at the end of the whole process to make sure they can do what they say they can do.” But it wasn’t always that way. Previously, the company simply hired off a resume and a single interview, “but then we found these people were not performing, leaving, slacking off, so that’s when we put in the other procedures.” Problem solved.

Tools

At first, “it was hard for us to figure out how to manage virtual workers properly,” Chan confesses, “but now we’ve put a number of tools in place so we can monitor their hours and then match the hours with the productivity.”

To do so the company uses a range of off-the-shelf, paid-for cloud services. Chan explains: “Basecamp manages all our projects. We use Yammer, a corporate Twitter-like product. As soon as a team member finishes a particular task in Basecamp they have to ‘Yammer’ it. Then we use Skype for one-on-one discussions. We use GoToMeeting for training purposes. We also use SlimTimer to track how much time is actually spent on a particular task. One last tool people might consider using is called RingCentral. Here in the U.S. I have an 800 number for our company and I can parcel out extensions to anyone I want, including people in the Philippines and soon in India.”

Tips

Leave little up to interpretation is Chan’s first tip. He suggests having “a very discreet process for  the tasks you want workers to complete. You can’t be ‘loosey goosey’ on your requirements – it doesn’t work. If it’s left up to interpretation, most of the time it will fail.”

Close collaboration is also important. Chan and his partner meet the entire team virtually every day at one o’clock. “The team we have in the Philippines works California time. That’s a requirement, which is the graveyard shift for them. So we meet every day come rain or come shine and we go through all our projects and everyone gives updates.” This is part of a concerted effort to keep the team cohesive, which also involves giving the team leader in the Philippines resources for team-building meals and drinks on a regular basis. And Chan has also invested in a few face-to-face meetings: “we have visited the Philippines once to get the team all together and we recently flew to Singapore and flew one of the team members there to meet us.”

Finally, Chan advises close attention to avoiding cultural miscues, at least at first. “When I started working with these teams, I was very cautious about what I said, how I said it, being polite. I’m less worried about what I say now because we have built a relationship up. But I think it’s very important that you understand the cultures that you’re dealing with and cultivate that. Then over time you can loosen up,” he says.

Image courtesy Flickr user VanDammeMaarten.be

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1. Square pegs in round holes. Let’s face it: Not everyone is cut out to be a virtual worker. Not everyone has the personality to work completely alone, apart from the team, nor has the ability to be focused and motivated to do work without the looming presence of a manager over one’s shoulder. Beyond personality types, not everyone has the ability to set up an environment away from the office that is conducive to work. It takes a special type of person and set of skills to navigate sketchy work environments (from distracting households to noisy coffee shops) and still be a consistent contributor to a virtual team.

What to do? Look for self-starters and team members who either have had virtual work experience and done well in that format or are flexible, focused and organized.

2. Lack of a clear process. A successful virtual team relies on a defined vision for desired outcomes and a careful breakdown of how it can accomplish those goals. In some ways, virtual work processes may need to be more rigid than those for co-located teams, with specific systems in place to cover time tracking, milestones, check-ins and knowledge sharing. But at the same time, the process must be flexible enough to accommodate the varied work styles of virtual workers. Ask yourself: Is it more important that work be done on a very specific schedule at a certain time of day or just that it is done on time? Because virtual teams can be dispersed across time zones, there can be distinct advantages to making use  of the asynchronous workflow rather than forcing someone overseas to be up in the wee hours of the morning just to be “at work” at the same time as the rest of the team.

What to do? Map out your workflow and communications processes and be specific about what is set in stone versus what is flexible. Make sure you have the systems in place to capture important data and that let you track workflow, deadlines and output.

3. Weak training techniques. If you’re running a team, you know the importance of “on-boarding” new team members. If you’re embarking on a virtual work process, getting everyone on the same page about how you want the team to work together and how to use the systems you’ve deployed is key. Without a clear explanation and properly conducted training, team output is guaranteed to be inconsistent at best. Because virtual team members don’t have the kind of contact one gets  in an office environment, making sure they have access to effective training materials and have the opportunity to ask questions as needed is important to the success of the team. One weak link can spoil the whole bunch.

What to do? After carefully thinking through your process, develop strong training materials and utilize one of the many tools that work well for knowledge sharing amongst virtual teams such as Mindflash, Knoodle and GoToMeeting. Make these materials available even after the training for reference. Keep lines of communication open for subsequent queries.

4. Failure to capture knowledge. In an office space, you can more readily ferret out the data you need, but in a virtual team environment, the bread crumb trail to data may be more convoluted or harder to track. And even in an office space, knowledge can be dispersed and kept in silos. Multiply that potential ten-fold in a virtual work space. The tools you use to capture information from the team can be helpful, but knowledge sharing starts with having the right attitude.

What to do? Emphasize the importance of knowledge sharing to team members and make sure you provide specific tools and steps to properly capture information from individuals. Everyone on your team must understand the critical nature of documenting and archiving in a shared space, and some helpful virtual work spaces include Glasscubes or Basecamp.

5. No glue to keep it all together. A good virtual team starts with a good leader. Whomever is managing the team needs to have a good grip on the dynamics of virtual work. Whether creating or communicating the vision, the team leader must be able to do so effectively, using tools such as Cohuman and Mavenlink to further a more cohesive team and work process. The team leader must be vigilant, organized and nimble, ready to address issues and fill in gaps to ensure consistent output with an emphasis on documentation and shared knowledge. Without a good leader acting as the glue to holding disparate parts together, communications meltdowns will be the norm, not the exception.

What to do? Find — or be — a smart virtual leader. Know when to be firm and when to be flexible, and be comfortable with being flexible. Keep both the big picture and the detail in mind and use the best technology and tools at your disposal to enhance your ability to do both.

Overall, a successful virtual team includes well-equipped, prepared team members who possess the right personalities and skill sets to understand the process, are on-boarded thoughtfully, and have tools to track work and share knowledge. And someone at the helm who can properly engineer and oil the machine.

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The Costs of Operating Software

Obviously, your team members have to have computers that run the software you plan on using. But those needs differ dramatically. In order to use web-based software, your team members need to have machines capable of running a web browser; not really out of the question for most people’s home machines. More complex software packages can require more powerful computers.

Depending on the type of software you choose, you may also need some additional hardware for your enterprise. Server costs are not insignificant and must be factored in. You may also find that with more hardware, or even software that must be installed on each team member’s computer, your organization will need a more extensive IT team.

The Costs of Team Size

While some web-based applications allow you to add unlimited users, it’s generally the case that the more team members you’re working with, the more you wind up paying. Even with “unlimited” users, the odds are good that as you add more team members, you’re adding projects, files or whatever items the app charges for.

On the other hand, you’ll need to have more software licenses available if you are installing project management software on your team members’ computers. However, certain solutions — such as a self-hosted web application — can help to avoid those costs. A larger team size, in turn, can get you reduced rates for the software that you use, but can also add to the costs in other ways: training, maintenance and upgrades can all make for pricey considerations.

Running the Numbers

Without running the numbers carefully, there’s no way to tell whether one collaboration solution or another will be better for a particular organization. Whatever you do, don’t assume that software based in the cloud is automatically cheaper to use: a monthly subscription fee can be incredibly deceptive and your business can wind up spending a lot more than you might expect. Dig deeper into those numbers before making your decision one way or the other.

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37signals’ tools are very popular choices, but I also received several responses from startups that started out using Basecamp, but made the decision to switch to something else. I think that indicates that a lot of people are pretty familiar with Basecamp already, so in this list I’ll share three less-commonly used tools that different startups have chosen to use to collaborate, and the reasons why they use them:

1. Redmine. Startup Gloto uses Redmine. VP Technology Tony Jacobs says, “The basic requirement is to make sure that each product, customer project, and internal project is tracked separately. The wiki (despite being a fairly weak implementation) is good enough to hold the stuff we need to see, and it will track documents and files in addition to wiki-formatted input. The related bug tracker is essentially a wiki for each bug as well, allowing richer links. We added [G]it as [an] SCM tool (in addition to our subversion repository), and Redmine integrates with both nicely. The key things that we looked for during the review is that the tool is actively maintained, reasonably stable, supports easy backup/restore operations (MySQL dump is the preferred method) and is easy to use. Having the tool look good was important too, because we expose this interface to our customers on occasion, and we always want to present a good face.”
2. Producteev. SubMate co-founder Jonathan Benoudiz says, “At SubMate, we love Producteev because it’s really easy to master and provides a seamless workflow integration with the “Email-to-task” and the instant messenger integration (we use Gtalk  a lot). We all have iPhones and it’s pretty cool to be able to check how everything is going on at the office with the iPhone app when on the go. Sometimes when I commute, I have 15 minutes to spare and just have to launch the app and identify a quick task that I can complete from my iPhone. We are a young startup that grew from two to five in two months. With Producteev, we can just add new team members and told them to browse completed tasks to be more familiar with how the product evolved.”
3. ScrumWorks. Unicast Director of Product Michael Tuminello says, “We use [ScrumWorks] with in-house and remote teams and have found it to be very effective. A web-based drag-and-drop UI lets individual team members take on daily tasks and track hours against them. On the product management/design side (where I am), a desktop client lets you enter, estimate and prioritize individual backlog items (work items). You can pull reports to see how the team is progressing against the project timeline, and it all ends up in a database. Our VP of engineering has been able to write custom code to pull the data and look at it in Excel pivot tables for additional information outside the scope of ScrumWorks itself, like helping to determine the relative ROI of individual features.The Java client can be a bit kludgy, but overall it’s a very effective program, and Danube is very responsive to feedback.”

What collaboration tools do you use in your startup?
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Getting Your Information Out Again

One question that’ss easy to forget about when shopping around for software is how easily you can pull your information out of a given application. Whether you may want to move to a new tool, your existing tool’s developers stop supporting it or you simply want to be able to back up your data, being able to export data is a crucial consideration.

The presence of an API in a tool is not a guarantee that there is an easy export option, but it tends to be a good indicator. Furthermore, an API means that if you need to hack together an export tool of your own, it’s typically doable — you won’t find your business or organization in a problematic situation. It may require bringing in some expert help to create the tool, but that’s still going to be less expensive than having someone retype an entire database in another application.

Robust and Growing Tools

APIs create opportunities for development beyond what an application’s creators may be able — or willing — to do on their own. For example, Basecamp is a good project management tool, but 37signals has very carefully considered what features to add; it hasn’t chosen to add every suggested feature. But there is an API for the web-based application that lets anyone create the features that they need. If you browse through just the add-ons Basecamp links to, you’ll be there for a while.

You can find a wide variety of tools that add on to Basecamp right now. On a less well-known application, you may not have immediate access to add-ons, but you will still have the option of creating your own (or hiring a programmer to build a tool that makes use of the API) fairly quickly.

This sort of robust development is a good sign for the long-term support of a tool, as well. When users have invested in a tool to the point that they’ve created a plugin or a helper tool, they’re far less likely to switch away, which in turn means that the creators have more incentive to continue supporting the tool and even to integrate plugins in the future.

Looking for an API when choosing tools simply makes sense for a growing enterprise. It should be just as important a consideration as the price or features of the tools you are considering.

Is an API on your shopping list?

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Flowr’s home screen looks very Twitter-like. But in addition to status updates, users can create several other types of posts, including ideas, questions, events, to-do list items, and polls. Flowr also allows posting of larger documents (complete with links and images) that can be edited, wiki-style, by anyone who the original poster gives access to. One can mention others using the Twitter-style @ syntax, and files and tags can be attached to each type of post.

Each of the above post types can be shown in one main screen, called “My Flow,” or can be viewed by category, so that, for example, all of the to-dos can be viewed together.

Flowr also includes groups, which are rather like a cross between a private BBS and LinkedIn’s Groups. Users can create and join groups related to specific topics. Group discussions can be public or private (invitation-only).

Flowr’s people directory links to user-editable profiles that show contact information. The directory is searchable by such fields as expertise and language skills, which I can see will be very useful in larger organizations. As in Twitter, one can follow the posts of selected users.

Flowr has several tools that allow it to integrate with your workflow, including an iPhone app, a bookmarklet for saving and sharing web content, and a system for posting via email (like Posterous). Updates from Flowr can be shown on the desktop via the Yip extension for Firefox. Interestingly, though, Flowr doesn’t include an instant messaging function.

In addition, Flowr is planning integration with Google Apps, which is scheduled to become available next week. And Flowr has an API so that developers can create custom applications using the app.

The free version of Flowr supports up to 10 users and two groups. Flowr is currently rolling out a premium version with unlimited groups, custom themes and analytics, that will be priced on a per-user basis.

Flowr isn’t Basecamp-style project management, but it may be just the thing for organizations whose members like to interact via social networks.

Have you tried Flowr?

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If you’re moving to a web-based project management tool from MS Project, which one of the many available do you choose? Here are some considerations to take into account:

• Microsoft Project compatibility. The first thing is to ensure that you choose a web tool that is compatible with Microsoft Project so that you can use your existing project data.
• Multiple views into project data. In my experience, the Gantt chart can seem intimidating to some team members. As such, I recommend looking for a web-based project management tool that has a wide selection of views into project status (like calendar-, task- and timeline-based views), besides the venerable Gantt chart.
• Flexible subscriptions. One of the limitations of Microsoft Project can be the expense of the licenses. Many web-based project management tools like LiquidPlanner and Zoho Projects work on a subscription model, which offer a level of flexibility you just can’t find with traditional desktop software licensing. Project teams can scale up and scale down their subscription as members join and leave the team. If you rely on contractors and freelancers, you can set them up with a subscription and close it out when their project work is complete.
• Social media component. With social media becoming a growing element of project team communications, it should be an integral feature in web-based project management tools. I recommend looking for a web-based tool that has social media components to augment team communication about project status and scheduling matters. Developing an internal dialog about project scheduling and status is one of the best ways to keep the project on track.
• Online document storage and collaboration. Today’s projects generate a lot of project artifacts and documents. While it can be easy to let your project team stash documents in their email inboxes and local hard drives, choosing a web-based project management tool with its own document storage and collaboration features means that project artifacts can be accessed easily and won’t get lost.
• Mobile client/accessibility. Considering a web-based project management tool that has mobile accessibility or even its own mobile client means you and your team can stay in touch with the project at all times.

What are your requirements for a web-based project management tool?

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This could place even organizations with well developed telecommuting programs in a challenging position, because a major virus outbreak may mean that their remote worker needs exceed their current capacity.

On the flip side, there are organizations that are far from telecommuting-friendly, which face even more challenges because they aren’t set up for remote working. In order to keep their business running in such a crisis they are going to need to buy or build an infrastructure to meet a new model of working.

At WebWorkerDaily, we get a chance to review some of the best office productivity, social media, online collaboration, project management, and Web 2.0 tools that in a worst case scenario — like a pandemic outbreak — can help an organization maintain some semblance of operations and communications, even though its employees and contractors are working from home during the crisis.

Perhaps your organization already has a well-honed telecommuting policy, however it is prudent to look for chinks in your telecommuting plans before the worst case scenario happens. Here is a look at some tools and services you can use to keep business operations running.

Office Suites
While Microsoft Office is probably your corporate standard, an extreme scenario like a pandemic outbreak could place your newly minted web workers on their home PCs or on a limited number of organization owned notebook PCs — there might not be enough Office licenses to cope with this scenario. This means you may need to consider web office solutions to make up the shortfall. Good choices include:

• Google Apps is a good choice for augmenting your corporate standard Office suite, even though it is not as feature-rich. There are fee-based and free versions available.

• Zoho Business is another ready solution, with a wider variety of applications that Google Apps.

• Simon and I recently covered the impending rollout of  Office Web Apps. While it isn’t available yet, the model it promises is ideal for a scenario like this, because it can offer users remote access to their important Microsoft Office files with a familiar interface.

Web office suites can help you keep your work accessible online, which is especially handy if all your workers don’t have remote access to your corporate network.

Social Media
Whether or not your organization has embraced social media behind the firewall, suddenly becoming a home-based organization means that employees are largely cut off from each other. Social networking tools can help them stay in touch with each other and the organization as a whole.

Some corporate-grade social media tools that might fit the bill include:

• Socialtext, a corporate social networking and collaboration tool that we’ve covered previously.
• Yammer, a Twitter clone, is another option for injecting social media into your organizational communications (see our previous coverage).

Each solution has fee-based and free versions.

Project Management

Putting your project management tools online is a prudent move, even before a crisis — but it could become a necessity in light of maintaining corporate operations in the midst of an H1N1 outbreak. However, Microsoft Project maintains its crown as the most popular — albeit mostly desktop-bound — corporate project management solution. Here are some good online project management tools:

• Basecamp is a the most well-known of all of the online PM tools  — we’ve written about it many times previously.
• Zoho Projects is an economical and innovative project management solution that Doriano previously covered for WWD.
• Charles reviewed Team Effect which garnered some mixed comments but is worthy a trial.
• PBWorks (formerly PBWiki) is another online project management option and according to Simon’s review it is definitely worth considering

Each of these solutions have fee-based and free versions.

Instant Messaging
Keeping your team in touch with each other even if they are all stuck at home is vital. If your organization isn’t already using instant messaging, then you need to consider it as part of your contingency plan.

Some instant messaging solutions you should consider include:

• Open source clients like Pidgin and Adium which let you encrypt chat sessions over commercial IM networks including AIM, GTalk, Windows Live, and Yahoo.
• Microsoft Office Communications Server also offers web-based access to its IM client. If your organization is running it, take steps to ensure your staff has access to it from home.

Web Conferencing & Collaboration
Today’s web conferencing and collaboration tools are ideal for keeping your team working together even though they’re not all working from the same office. Here are some options for web conferencing:

• Acrobat.com includes ConnectNow. Thursday covered Acrobat.com coming out of beta. It has free and fee-based versions and includes online collaboration features.
• Dimdim, which we’ve covered before, is an excellent low-cost teleconferencing tool
• Simon covered the beta launch of Team Apart, a free online collaboration tool that offers white board, video conferencing, and file sharing. Depending on the progress of the beta, it might be worth considering.

Crises and Web Working
Whether you are building out or just augmenting your communications infrastructure in light of the H1N1 threat, I recommend checking out these  applications now and not on the eve of a crisis. You should also make sure that employees know how to use these applications and how to access them well in advance of having to actually implement your crisis plan..

How is your organization preparing to continue operations during an H1N1 virus outbreak?

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Like many similar products, upon login, users are taken to a dashboard where they can see an overview of activity for projects with which they are associated. The “Comments and Messages” area is laid out in a Twitter-like fashion, and users can see more detail, or respond, by clicking an existing message. Oddly, it appears that one needs to go to a different screen to compose a new message.

Other features, such as schedules and tasks, should be appealing to those who prefer visual representations of project plans. Schedules can be changed by dragging the bars in the Gantt-style calendars (which Team Effect has implemented without Flash, thankfully). Team Effect includes some sophisticated reports that web workers should find useful, such as project status and schedules.

The documentation is OK, as far as it goes, but appears to be incomplete. I wasn’t able to find information on whether the product notifies users of changes by email, or whether it has any tools such as RSS feeds that would keep people up-to-date without logging into the web site constantly. Additionally, the web site times out after a fairly short period of inactivity. The system does allow you to export some data to Excel, and this ability is apparently being expanded.

Team Effect is priced depending on the number of users you need. It offers a 30-day free trial, after which the basic package is $15 per month for five users. Other packages are available, all at the same rate of $3 per login per month. For most packages, the fee is only charged if a user actually logs in. All packages include unlimited projects and storage. Team Effect also offers discounts or free service to nonprofit organizations.

Team Effect will appeal to those who like visual representations of their workflow. But people working on projects that change frequently may find logging into the Team Effect web site several times a day to be a hassle.

Have you used Team Effect? How do you manage projects?

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The dashboard has details of all your current projects. Every project consists of messages (discussion forum), lists (tasks), pages (wiki), people (contacts on the project) and chat. In less than 10 minutes, I created two projects and added content for each.

Teambox feels easier and more intuitive than Basecamp. Not once did I need to peek at the help file or the Textile (text formatting) reference; the tips on the page were enough. Even after using Basecamp for a while, I still needed to look up its Textile reference.

Basecamp’s interface is nicer than Teambox’s, though; it’s sleeker and more eye-pleasing, with a dash of color. By contrast, Teambox’s interface contains little color and it doesn’t look the same in all browsers. For example, it uses a serif font in Google Chrome, making it a harder read than the sans-serif font displayed in Firefox. The project dashboard formatting could stand some improvement, too.

Web workers, especially those working solo, might prefer Teambox just because it’s free. You can freely create a project for every client and add those clients to the projects. However, if you need to build a complete extranet, complete with branding (which you have to pay for with Teambox), Basecamp is still the collaboration tool of choice. Furthermore, Basecamp has been around longer and has third party apps that work it. I’m sure Teambox will add new features as it develops a following and continues to grow.

You need to determine your own needs and chose the applications that best meets those needs. For a freelancer like me, Teambox fits my bill if I need to collaborate and manage projects with clients.

What team collaboration app do you use?

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