Remote teams, whether made up entirely or only partially of telecommuters, face challenges of communicating efficiently and effectively. The challenges are not any greater than teams that sit together; simply different. Technology has provided us with the opportunity to work remotely, and also with many great solutions to the challenges that arise. I have compiled a list of some online applications that you may find helpful in keeping a remote team working and communicating together. Other suggestions are welcome!

Protonotes
“Protonotes are notes that you add to your prototype that allow project team members to discuss system functionality, design, and requirements directly on the prototype. You can think of it like a discussion board/wiki in direct context of your prototype.”

Loopt
“Loopt transforms your mobile phone into a social compass; connect with friends and get alerted when they are nearby; share your location, status and photos with friends and AIM buddies; explore places and events recommended by friends.”

Facebook
“Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you.”

LinkedIn
“Over 23 million professionals use LinkedIn to exchange information, ideas and opportunities. Stay informed about your contacts and industry. Find the people & knowledge you need to achieve your goals. Control your professional identity online.”

Basecamp
“Project management and collaboration. Collaborate with your team and clients. Schedules, tasks, files, messages, and more.”

Highrise
“Online contact manager and simple CRM. Keep track of who your business talks to, what was said, and what to do next.”

Backpack
“Intranet, group calendar, organizer. Share info, schedules, documents, and to-dos across your company, group, or organization.”

Campfire
“Real-time group chat for business. It’s like instant messaging, but optimized for groups. Especially great for remote teams.”

Gliffy
“With Gliffy online diagramming software, you can easily create professional-looking flowcharts, diagrams, floor plans, technical drawings,
and more!”

MindMeister
“MindMeister supports all the standard features of a classic mind mapping tool – only online, and with as many simultaneous users as you like!”

Helipad
“Write notes and organise them with tags; Create and maintain to-do lists; Draft documents on any device with Internet access; Quickly navigate with tags; Share your documents with friends [or co-workers]”

TrackMyPeople
TrackMyPeople allows you to easily track your time, as well as your employees time. Afterwards the online timesheet offers you and your employees flexible management and reporting options.

Paybackable
“Simple Online Expense Reports. Track out of pocket expenses; Calculate mileage expenses; Submit expense reports easily.”

BigContacts
“Web Based Contact Manager. Full featured: group calendar, tasks, email, files, photos, sales opporuntities. For organizations from 2 to 2,000 people.”

DeskAway
“Web Based Project Collaboration. Whether you are an individual or a small business, DeskAway helps you organize, manage and track your projects from a central location.”

88Miles
“88 Miles is all about making time tracking simple and quick. If you have ever spent the better part of your Friday afternoon trying to work out what you have been doing all week, you will love 88 Miles.”

myHours
“myHours.com is a time management, timesheet, time tracking solution. It enables you to track your work time, projects you work on and tasks you perform.”

WhoDoes
“WhoDoes 2.0 is the new version of the web-based application for the collaborative management of projects and coordination of the team.”

OnStage Project Portal
“OnStage is an online workspace, collaboration, and project management tool. It is a simple tool for complex needs.”

ProjectOffice.net
“Manage your project flow; Manage your time and expenses; Need to track issues? Share your knowledge through wikis!”

Joint Contact
“Joint Contact is a state-of-the art project collaboration tool for sharing and managing information that is used by business owners, project managers, freelancers and independent professionals. ”

Taskado
“Our Goal at Taskado is to make all projects easy to manage, and make your life easier in the process – because life is a project. Our philosophy is simple: project management is not about control, it’s about delegating and communicating.”

Update: This turns out to be fake, which would help explain why no one leaves the room but they all stand around waiting for their turn to be injured. I thought maybe someone had locked all the doors. For some reason this video was made to help market the new action movie, Wanted, which has nothing to do with the content of the video at all. Makes sense, doesn’t it?

Yikes!

Update: And from another angle.

Technology changes so fast in our society, that our methodologies, procedures, and comfort zones often lags behind. I’ve discussed the lag in acceptance for Telecommuting in my article, Telecommuting: Old-thinking vs New-thinking as one example of societal trends not keeping up with technology.

Another, is in our form of communication. In the past, we communicated almost exclusively with telephones and in person discussions. Now, we have email, chat rooms, and IM. We can access fellow team members at our every whim, even when they are working remotely. But this luxury of communication has it’s drawbacks. We all struggle with distractions, and these forms of instant communication create even more than we would already have. Focusing on a single issue at a time is generally the best method of completing a task, but being bombarded constantly with requests for help on other issues from teammates, requests for status updates on tasks by project management, and spontaneous team brain storming and problem solving meetings all serve to derail us from our train of thought and prevent us from completing the task at hand.

There must times when team members are allowed to focus on their current task, without risk of interruption in thought process. When developers are problem solving, it takes some time for the brain to get into the problem, thoroughly digest it, and get the creative juices flowing to find a solution. But how any times have you been involved in this process, only to be called into a meeting, get involved in an email thread, or be bombarded suddenly with IMs?

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The American Telecommuting Association has an article on its web site, addressing the most common objections to telecommuting. As I said in a previous post:

Ten years ago I thought by now most Software Engineers would have the option to work from home. But old habits die hard, and human psychology changes much slower than technology does.

This contrast of “old-thinking” to “new-thinking” discusses those old habits.

Here are a few of the objections they answer:

• I can’t be sure someone’s working unless I actually see them busy at their desks.
• ‘Working at a distance’ is inefficient because of all the distractions and time-wasters at home.
• If people start working from home, they’ll never come back to the office.
• If some of our people start working from home, the rest of our workforce will feel slighted or mistreated.

In conclusion they say:

Today, more than ten million employees and their employers have already learned — often after years of reluctance, inaction, hesitation to make a decision, fear of the costs, and a totally human resistance to doing old things in new ways — how easy and effective it is to avoid that long trip into the office on certain days.

Or at least that is what Money magazine claims. I’m not sure I agree with their ratings in each of the categories.

Low Stress?
I suppose compared to being shot at, or having someone’s life in your hands it’s low stress, but I’ve experienced plenty of stressful situations in my career, including going through two mass layoffs (both of which I escaped without job loss, but not without stress), countless overtime hours, ridiculously imposed deadlines, outrageous client demands, writing software that is vital to a company’s daily success where one bug can bring it to its knees, poor Project Management (ie. micro-management), and constant shifting skill sets required to maintain “hirability”.

Flexibility
I don’t know what they mean by flexibility. I see they say, “Telecommuting is quickly becoming widespread.” However, I have found extreme resistance to telecommuting. Ten years ago I thought by now most Software Engineers would have the option to work from home. But old habits die hard, and human psychology changes much slower than technology does. While countless studies have shown that working from home improves productivity and reduces employee stress, many old school managers are still resistant to it, and somehow feel you aren’t working if they can’t see you in front of your computer in your cube. Thankfully, I’m currently enjoying telecommuting, and as long as it lasts, I plan to stay on my current contract. I have as flexible hours as I could want, so for me, right now, yes flexibility is a benefit. But, from past experience, and hearing from others in the field, I’m surprised a study would show this to be a strength.

Creativity
This category has been one of my biggest complaints over the years. It really depends on your management. In many environments you are told exactly what to do, how to do it, and when to have it done by. That doesn’t leave much room for creativity. I have had the good fortune to be on some projects, including my two year project at IBM, that gave me great freedom for creativity. But I have also had many projects where I was completely constrained to follow antiquated architectures, development methodologies, and project management styles, that squashed any hope of thinking creatively and allow for problem solving. Tip for IT managers: Software Engineers will work harder and with more passion if given the chance to be creative!

Ease of Entry
So on this category they give it the worst grade and yet this is the one category I’d give an A to. Why you ask? No, not because I think its an easy to skill set to pick up, but because IT managers seem to think it is, and hire just about anybody. They either hire because someone memorized an API (but can’t use the API, learn on their own, problem solve, etc), or because they seem to have great potential (aka. they came cheap). This field should be a lot harder to get into than it currently is.

I thoroughly enjoy my job, when I’m on the right project, but I’m not sure the grades from MONEY magazine are accurate, but this is what so any are told in high school, so its no surprise that seemingly millions and millions get into this field every day.