I shared my experience and tips for making projects work smoothly with a distributed team at the #1 Digital Nomad Meetup in Moldova, on the 13th of August 2017. You can watch the presentation (in Romanian) here (at 1:42): https://www.privesc.eu/Arhiva/77485/Prima-intalnire-a-Nomazilor-Digitali-din-Moldova

1. REMOTE
Project Management
Nicoleta Domnicu

2. The specifics of remote PM
• time-bond
• quiet place and reliable internet for calls all the time
(devs and designers can work offline, you can’t)
• the hardware doesn’t matter

3. The challenges of remote PM
• communication barriers (time, culture, availability)
• productivity and quality tracking
• proper planning and prioritisation
• document and task organisation

4. Humanize the name
behind the screen
• use video conferencing
• have monthly 1-on-1 meetings for feedback
• make the first month / training in-person
• have regular (e.g. once a year) face-to-face team-
building
• celebrate stuff together: birthdays, team success
etc.

5. Project planning
• have the right project management tool for your
needs:
• Jira - big team, large projects, software focus
• Asana,Trello - smaller teams
• standardise documents and processes
• focus on the results, not the process

6. Over-comunicate
• centralize the communication
• have daily stand-ups, preferably video
• (or) have written standups (there's a Slack bot or
basecamp for that)
• keep an up-to-date and well-organised searchable
documentation (Google Drive, Confluence)
• have separate emails, Google Drive and (if needed)
social media accounts

7. Balance between over-communicating
and letting people do real work
• inform only the people who need the information
immediately
• reference the rest and keep them updated via the
documentation
• inform the team in a separate, non-notification
channel, about the documentation changes -
sometimes it might affect the work you didn't
expect

8. Worry about security
• hardware protection
• wi-fi
• VPN
• 2 factor authentication
• scheduled password updates

9. Contact
ndomnicu@gmail.com
linkedin.com/in/ndomnicu
twitter.com/ndomnicu