Coronavirus Didn’t Disturb Our Work. How Do We Still Deliver Products on Time?

Covid-19 creates a major health risk. There’s no doubt about that and we all need to be conscious. But as we can see, the situation also affects our everyday lives, and, as a consequence, the economy. How to live and work during this crisis?

The UN trade agency assumes that Europe almost certainly will experience retention and the virus will cost the global economy about $1 trillion. Schools are being closed and events cancelled. The virus changes the way we live, communicate and work. How to collaborate during these tough times? 

We think that it is crucial to remain responsible for our projects and comply with duties and contract, however, it could be hard when we also take so much care about our team’s wellbeing. Fortunately, we were prepared for that kind of situation and these serious circumstances didn’t disrupt our work. 

All of our employees are trained and have equipment and environment needed to be able to work remotely at any time. Below, we will explain to you how we organized this. Our company was prepared upfront, but if you’re a business owner, some of these tips might also help you.

All of our employees work on the company’s laptops that are set up to our internal network and environment. That allows them to work from home and using the internal environment guarantees the security of all information. Thanks to working on the company’s laptops, our employees are fully mobile and can work securely from anywhere they want. Other equipment like monitors, mouses, keyboards, is available for them to take.

In our everyday work, we use Slack to communicate. This tool allows us to create spaces for different projects as well as create channels within them to grant access only to people connected to a particular part of the project. That guarantees data protection. Via Slack, we are able to organize video calls between team members and with clients, as well as video conferences for the whole team. These communication habits help us when it comes to remote work because generally there are not many changes.

Managing projects in an Agile way also allows us to switch to remote work easily. We use Jira as a tool to organize everything. All the project-related tasks are gathered in the backlog, assigned to team members and divided into two-week sprints. That way, everyone knows what are their tasks during the particular sprint. What is more, we organize short daily meetings on Slack, where everybody confirms if they know what to do. At the end of each sprint, we sum up everything.

These practices allow us to work remotely without many changes. During this special period right now, we organize all of the meetings via Slack. We also especially pressure all of the team members to be fully transparent and keep everyone updated about their tasks’ status. What is more, everybody is asked to sum up their day on a dedicated channel on Slack.

Each of our employees also logs time spent on every task in Jira. Time tracking is normally used by us to give clients access to time logs of each project to be transparent with them, as well as to optimize work and predict future sprints. Now, it also helps our employees to be transparent before their team members.

From our experience, communication is the key to organize remote work successfully. That is why now we organize all the meetings as always, but remotely with no exceptions, via Slack video calls. Video calls, as opposed to simple calls, allow us for better contact. 

We are prepared to switch for remote work entirely and close the office at any moment.

All these practices allow us to continue the work during the coronavirus crisis without any disruption. All of the projects are being pushed forward on schedule. As a company, we see this situation as a double test for our responsibility.

On the one hand, we’re responsible for our employees’ wellbeing. That is why from the first days we launched a special communication policy and kept our employees updated with the situation. We took care of purity in the office and education about the best practices. We also informed our employees that if they feel sick, they shouldn’t come to the office.

On the other hand, we’re responsible for our projects. That is why we were prepared to enable any of our employees to work remotely. Now we can switch the whole company to remote work and not suffer any consequences. 

All of that allowed us to keep everyone healthy and keep delivering everything on time. What is more, we can still accept new projects and help business owners to push their products forward. We know how to organize the whole cooperation remotely to kick the project off and manage it successfully. We need to keep doing our job and not let the crisis impact business owners, their goals and profits more.

If you’re a business owner and looking for immediate actions, we have a few tips for you:

• If your employees work on the company’s laptops, allow them to work from home. Educate them that when they feel sick they should not come to the office. Be ready to shut down the office and switch to remote work entirely.
• If your employees don’t have the company’s laptops, now it’s time to invest!
• Switch to remote communication channels like Slack, organize your meetings remotely, as video calls.
• Use a tool to track the progress of everyone’s work – like we use Jira. Ask team members to log the time spent on each task.
• Arrange regular meetings to check on your team and keep everyone motivated. We have dailies and a meeting summing up each sprint.
• Ask your employees to be as transparent as they can and to keep everybody updated about their progress.

That way you will be able to continue your operations and deliver projects on time.

We wish you all good health and strength!