Digital Nomad’s Swiss Army Knife

by Doug Harper / Nov 12

There’s no doubt that working as a remote team can have its challenges (I’ve been doing this on and off for about 5 years) but here are some great tools to help reduce the distance between individuals and teams who are working together remotely.

A few of the most valuable tools in the remote Swiss army knife are the IM blade, the Cell Phone blade and the online collaboration corkscrew.  Even better with the remote Swiss army knife is that you can actually use some of these tools together.  One of my favorites is the IM and online collaboration (like gotomypc.com).  It starts as a question on IM and turns into an online meeting with a voice call.  This allows each party to see exactly what the other is working on and closes the miles between workers.  This is great for troubleshooting when you can’t actually see what the other person is seeing.  This is great for the day to day issues that come up no matter the type of project that’s being done.

That being said, remote work needs to happen within a framework of defined deliverables and probably a project plan with assigned tasks and deadlines.  The project plan is the engine that keeps the project wheels rolling and the various technologies are used to make sure the wheels are all rolling in the same direction.  Waiting until the end of the project to see if it’s all “ready” is pretty much a recipe for disaster.  IM or instant messaging should be adopted by everyone who’s working on the remote project.  In addition to an attendance manager, it makes it extremely easy to communicate with your remote team.  Milestones and conference calls are needed along the way to ensure that progress is being made toward the goal.  Just like with most things in life you need the right tools and as always, organization is the key.

• Add Comment