Key takeaways
- Remote work forces you to brief more clearly, annotate, sketch and check that you are understood, which makes you a better PM.
- Schedule regular check-ins and informal pulse checks so conversations are not only about problems; ask people to share screens.
- Clarify the brief with the core stakeholders before the kickoff so the meeting confirms direction instead of extracting it.
- Use collaboration boards and simple prompts to democratise meetings; if people drift, the meeting or the invite list is wrong.
- Make the complex simple with dashboards and status reports, be realistic about your schedule, and manage expectations transparently.
About this episode
“In order to be a remote project manager, you really have to boost your project management skills.”
Whether you’ve been managing projects remotely for a long time, or you were flung into it when Covid-19 forced you into it, you know that keeping details, tasks, people, and projects on track from afar can be a challenge. There are, of course, some tactics you can employ to make the job easier, but what it comes down to is that remote project management requires you to lean on your PM skills and intuition.
In this episode of Time Limit, Brett welcomes Ben Aston from thedigitalprojectmanager.com to talk about remote project management. It’s a wide-ranging conversation that covers:
- The basic requirements of remote project management
- How to manage remote meetings
- How to run retrospectives or post mortem meetings remotely
- How to connect with your team remotely
- How to show your value as a PM from afar