“How to keep remote teams happy (and productive)” on LaptrihnX, March 16, 2021.
Careful planning can help overcome some of the difficulties of remote teams. To speed approval of its DevOps team’s software improvements, a Fortune 100 financial services company developed an automated, low-touch review process, says Alan Zucker, founding principal at DevOps consulting firm Project Management Essentials.
When the team worked together before COVID, each approval of a new production deployment was done manually—a messy process that started with a request to a vice president, who often had to forward it to a director, who in turn asked project managers to sign off. But with everyone working remotely, it might take days to get a response.
With the new system, approvals often happen in hours. “Now it’s automated, and doesn’t require the same level of human touch or interaction,” Zucker says. “It just flows so much more quickly.”