How to Create an Efficient Virtual Team Office: Hsoub's Solution
Is it
necessary to have a team working in one office in order to
coordinate effectively? If I were writing this article 10 years
ago, I would say ‘yes!’, but many perspectives have changed now, as
long-distance work or working in a coffee shop has become very
common, especially for online companies. Emails, instant chat
services like Skype and different social media do a great job of
empowering individuals online and keeping them up-to-date and
connected, regardless of their geographical place.
Yet sometimes, those solutions are not always suitable for the work
environment. I am speaking from experience, because we at web
development company Hsoub
have tested many of these solutions, since our team is located in
Egypt, Syria, Jordan, UAE and Saudi Arabia. Our biggest problem was
scaling our platforms and communcation as our team members grew.
We discovered that social media is often a huge source of distraction and is not always suitable for open and direct discussions. Also, sending emails to massive groups to discuss a subject can be hard to track and unpractical most of the time. As for Skype meetings, ensuring that everyone can attend the conference call without encountering many technical issues in the Arab World can be a waste of time for logistical reasons and can distract the team from its focus.
Virtual office
After
researching and experimenting with different solutions, we finally
resorted to a solution that worked, and got rid of long meetings
and instant chat programs. What we really needed was a virtual
office that gathers team members in one place and empowers them to
communicate freely. The solution we resorted to was WordPress P2.
WordPress P2 is a free design of
WordPress developed by Automattic Company, the company that
originally developed WordPress. P2 transforms WordPress into a
microblogging platform that can be compared to Twitter, but has
more privacy settings and is not limited to 140 characters, of
course!
With a few adjustments and additions, P2 has become the virtual
office we needed, and we've been using it for 6 months now. During
that time, we haven’t organized one team meeting on Skype and we
stopped using the emails and weekly reports that we used
previously.
P2 is the ideal solution for us because the team is working from
different time zones, and we don’t rely on specific working hours.
Instead, we measure the performance of completed tasks. Some team
members might prefer working in the early morning or during the
night or midnight. Instant chatting programs require the presence
of everyone at the same time in order to do the discussion. In
addition to that, it also distracts and bothers everyone who is
trying to work silently. Since we started using P2, the team’s
productivity and performance have increased significantly. That is
why I think it’s an effective way to remotely cooperate and work in
a group.
For an optimized experience, I recommend using the below additions
in WordPress P2:
- Password Protected: This addition protects WordPress using a
password to forbid anyone outside the team from accessing the blog
and reading what’s published on P2.
- P2 Resolved Posts: You can add a button for the topics that are
going to be published, so it’s marked as Unresolved. This is useful
for determing fast tasks that individuals can complete within the
team. For instance, if you want to assign one of the team members
to solve the problem or follow up on it with one of the clients,
you can mark the demand as Unresolved and it will show in red so
the person sees it clearly, and once the task is done they can mark
it as Resolved to inform you that the task is completed.
- Who’s Online: This feature shows the people that are currently connected to P2 and when they were connected the last time, which facilitates the tracking team member’s activity especially when they are given a determined task.
Using WordPress P2 is like using any other web application; you need to install it on your website or host it from any of the companies that offer hosting services. Still, it costs less than other similar solutions like Yammer. Also, since WordPress and P2 are both open source, it's easy to personalize your company's interface, unlike it is on other commercial solutions.