Remote Project Leadership...Mar 16, 2020 · Sample Structure Purple: Teams Channel + SharePoint Folder Pink: SharePoint Folder (no channel) • Use public channels for distinct sets

Remote Project Leadership

Leading Practices & Discussion

©2020 Proprietary and Confidential. All Rights Reserved.

Practical Tips

Let’s Solve a Problem

Open Microsoft Teams

Identify your partner in the table to the right

Take 3 minutes to message your partner and answer this question:

What can you personally do today to help your client or Bluetree successfully navigate the COVID-19 crisis?

Prepare Your Clients

©2020 Proprietary and Confidential. All Rights Reserved.4

Be intentional• Set expectations with your client or your internal team on the remote project management practices

you are planning and obtain buy-in.

• Prepare a presentation or agenda specifically designed to review the practices you are putting in place

Offer value through sharing• Our clients are likely facing some of the same challenges we are – share your practices and

technology to provide value where you can

Your client wants to be reassured that you’ve got this handled.

Working With Clients


Presentations• Leverage a webcam and dress as if you are onsite with the client

• Consider making webcams a standard part of your team culture

Virtual Client or Team Member Shadowing• Establish a GoToMeeting and watch the client or internal stakeholder perform their workflow.

Recreate the Trust & Closeness of an Onsite Relationship• Replace the "walk to your desk" option of traditional work environments.

• Consider exchanging cell phone numbers and texts with project and internal counterparts

• Establish a 30 minute weekly phone touch base with individual clients and do not cancel it.

Request an in-room facilitator/ally for meetings where a large group is meeting without you physically present

Nothing changes. Be respectful, professional, and deliver work on time at the highest quality.

Working With Clients


Etiquette & Good Citizenship• Provide a reason for meeting cancellations

• Work in quiet areas

• Acknowledge and accommodate when school closings or loss of child care might lead to noisiness

Virtual Meetings• A great read from the Harvard Business Review provided these tips:

• Do something in the first 60 seconds to help a group feel and experience the problem at hand

• Create an experience of shared responsibility early on in your presentation

• Give people tasks that they can actively engage in so there is nowhere to hide

• Select the least amount of data you need to inform and engage the group. Don’t add a single slide more.

• Never go longer than 5 minutes without giving the group another problem to solve

Nothing changes. Be respectful, professional, and deliver work on time at the highest quality.

https://hbr.org/2020/03/how-to-get-people-to-actually-participate-in-virtual-meetings?utm_medium=email&utm_source=registrants&utm_campaign=covid19readinglists_20200318&deliveryName=DM72959&_lrsc=6ea2d75f-b786-4da2-9108-8bcc2ad599fc

Technology


Client Technology• Escalate if conference rooms being leveraged by the

client do not have sufficient sound quality

• Ask if your client uses Microsoft Teams and join it

• Discuss with TechOps allowing client guests into your O365 group

Personal Technology• Utilize a high quality speakerphone in a quiet area.

• Download XMind and leverage it as a virtual whiteboard tool – free version is available

Work with your client and TechOps to make sure you have everything you need.

Task & Project Management


Progress Reporting• Discuss with your client whether they need more progress

reporting

• Leverage Microsoft Teams to request start- or end-of-day summaries

Progress Management• Consider multiple internal team touchbases in the week (Tu, Th)

if:

• It’s appropriate for your team's mission and structure

• You aren't participating in recurring client meetings that accomplish the same outcome

• Reconsider the frequency of client-facing touchbases if they aren't often enough to provide peace of mind to your stakeholders

Not much changes except the frequency of interactions.

Maintain Urgency & Engagement


Maintain a sense of urgency• Deliver on time, at budget

• Incorporate the challenges that come from a remote setting such as client availability, technology, etc. into project planning and timelines

Stay engaged• Join your team member's meetings and ensure they are not becoming too casual

• Ensure you have 1-1s with all specialists on your teams

• Get CC’d on meeting materials and ensure they are being sent with a high level of quality

Working remotely isn’t a reason why a project can be allowed to go off track.

Collaborating Internally


Managing Meetings• Video conferencing through GoToMeeting

• (Optional) Calendly for Scheduling

Maximizing use of Microsoft Teams as a collaborative tool • Chat

• Planner Boards

• File Sharing

• Consider setting up clients as guests in Teams or joining client Teams

Social & Cultural Opportunities• Consider an open GoToMeeting or Lead Office Hours throughout the day for team's with defined

social onsite cultures (not a good fit for all projects)

• Consider a virtual happy hour at the end of the week

Microsoft Teams & GoToMeeting make the world a lot smaller.

Virtual Whiteboarding



Open Microsoft Teams

Identify your partner in the table to the right

Take 3 minutes to message your partner and answer this question

If you already answered this question during the Remote Leadership Essentials class, see if you can document even more ways


What is Mind Mapping?

A mind map is a diagram used to visually organize information. A mind map is hierarchical and shows relationships among pieces of the whole.

Mind mapping can help unlock brainstorming sessions and is an excellent tool to use for virtual whiteboarding session to rapidly collect and organize information

What are the benefits?

Helps you grasp a big picture overview of the subject under study.

Improves your capacity to explore detailed snippets of information.

Helps reduce mental clutter, cope with information overload, and overwhelm.

Stimulates the imagination and encourages creative insights and ideas.

Helps expand your ability to take effective, better organized, and more comprehensive notes.

Helps accelerate your ability to solve complex problems.

Helps unlock hidden understandings within information chunks.

Helps provide you with more clarity about your goals, ideas, and actions.

Helps triggers creative associations between seemingly unrelated bits of information.Source: https://blog.iqmatrix.com/how-to-mind-map

https://blog.iqmatrix.com/how-to-mind-map

Sample Mind Map


Source: XMind

https://www.xmind.net/m/z9j5/

How to Mind Map

Enter your main topic in the central box• Don't edit on first pass, focus on collecting raw data

• Everything evolves around central topic or theme

Begin creating first-level associations around the central theme• Use individual words or short, punchy sentences

• Loose recommendation is to avoid more than 7 first-level associations

Branch out with second, third, fourth, etc. level associations• Ideas, Action Points, Strategies, Deliverables, Tangible Items, etc.

Re-organize later as new associations are made

Allow people to jump topics, just keep recording even if they go off track. You don’t know when creativity is about to strike.

Leverage icons, boundaries, and relationships to show interconnectedness of ideas

Create a “Triage” first-level association for ideas that don’t have a natural home


Open XMind or grab a piece of paper

Take 3 minutes to start building

See if you can organize your raw thoughts/responses into a MindMap

Be ready to share!


Keyboard Shortcuts in XMind


Description Keys(Windows) Description Keys(Windows) Description Keys(Windows)

New Workbook Ctrl+Shift+N Edit Topic F2 Find / Replace Ctrl+F

Open Workbook Ctrl+O Edit Label F3 Zoom In Ctrl++

Save Workbook Ctrl+S Edit Rich Text Notes F4 Zoom Out Ctrl+-

Save All Workbooks Ctrl+Shift+S Presentation Mode F5 Actual Size Ctrl+0

Close Workbook Ctrl+W Drill Down F6 Properties Alt+Enter

Close All Workbooks Ctrl+Shift+W Drill Up Shift+F6 Insert Topic Enter

Print Ctrl+P Map Shot F7 Insert Subtopic Tab

Undo Ctrl+Z Extend Branch+ (from number pad)

Insert Topic Before Shift+Enter

Redo Ctrl+Y Collapse Branch - Insert Parent Topic Ctrl+Enter

Cut Ctrl+X Extend All Branches * Key Assist Ctrl+Shift+L

Copy Ctrl+C Collapse All Branches / Insert Images From Local File Ctrl+I

Paste Ctrl+V Move Selected Forwards Alt+Up Insert Hyperlink URL Ctrl+H

Delete Delete Move Selected Backwards Alt+Down Insert Boundary Ctrl+B

Go To Root Topic / Top of Text Ctrl+Home New Sheet Ctrl+T Insert Relationship Ctrl+L

Select All Topics / Text Ctrl+A Quick Add Priority Markers Ctrl+1,2,3,4,5,6 Insert Summary Ctrl+]

Select Brother Topics Ctrl+Shift+A Exit the pop-up notes dialog/Cancel Map Shot Esc Zoom In/Out Ctrl+Scroll Mouse Wheel

Select Children Topics Ctrl+Alt+A Edit Topic Text SPACEBAR

Microsoft Teams for Remote Projects


Rough Agenda

Designing your Channels v. Folders structure• Private v. Public• What should be a channel and what should not?

Manage your team• Using moderation• Making members owners• Adding and removing members

Adding Apps and Tabs• Wiki v. OneNote• Planner Boards

Manage your channel

Creating New Channels

Etiquette• Replying to threads

Organizing your team navigator• Hiding and unhiding• Leaving groups

Open Q&A along the way

O365 Group Data Structure


Group = Team

Engagement SharePoint

General

1. Planning

2. Internal Team Management

3. Progress Reports

4. Client Background +

Data

5. Closing

Project Leadership

(private)Workstream A

Archive

Workstream B

Archive

Carpool & Hotel Coordination

Tools & Templates

Client-specific

Bluetree-standard

Program-specific

Project Lead Workspace

Archives

OneNote

Sample Structure Purple: Teams Channel + SharePoint FolderPink: SharePoint Folder (no channel)

• Use public channels for distinct sets of collaborators

to have all conversations related to their project or

workstream in that specific channel

• Leverage the General channel for project leadership

announcements, and use the moderator privileges

to limit specialist from creating new topics while

still allowing them to reply

Team SharePoint

General

1. Internal Team Management

2. Special Projects

3. Team Documentation

Management(private)

Workstream A

Archive

Workstream B

Archive

Archives

OneNote

Sample Structure Purple: Teams Channel + SharePoint FolderPink: SharePoint Folder (no channel)

Daily or Weekly Summaries


Summarize in writing, often• Not being physically together can mean

fewer opportunities to check-in with each other

• Leverage summaries within Teams to keep folks on track

Use the General channel for this purpose

Communicating in Teams


Create threads based on topics and return to those threads over time

Shame those who don’t use the reply button

Leverage moderation• Consider a Requests and Assignments channel where you only allow the lead or manager to create

new threads but specialists are allowed to reply

Communication Crosswalk


Example: Leverage OneNote for draft documentation and meeting notes. Utilize Wikis

Etiquette: Great blog post: https://www.avepoint.com/ebook/microsoft-teams-best-practices

Create a philosophy for your team’s files and communications

https://www.avepoint.com/ebook/microsoft-teams-best-practices

Leverage Microsoft Forms


Progress Summaries• You could create a progress summary form, link it

in Teams within the General channel and have folks submit regular progress updates

• We can also explore automated reminders in Teams through a Third Party app

Additional Resources


Leverage the Microsoft Teams Quick Start Guide

Ask the “AMA – Microsoft Teams Experts” channel

Google it• There are TONS of resources because companies all over the world are doing this

Just play around

Documents

Remote Project Leadership...Mar 16, 2020 · Sample Structure Purple: Teams Channel + SharePoint Folder Pink: SharePoint Folder (no channel) • Use public channels for distinct sets