Team management all over
As I’ve previoused written I have a large team siting all around the globe working close together with me and the other in the team. At present there are 23 people to make sure the perform at the very best all time. And that’s not easy, but it’s easier now when they know eachother and the fact that I can benchmark them and send reports each week that shows there performance over the last couple of weeks.
I can then use this benchmark when we are negotiating contracts and fees, since I’m always paying for performance this kind of measuring numbers are important. I’m working on more keyfigures that can be used to measure the work they do.
Another thing that was and still sometimes is a problem for me is how you demo a new function in the system. I mostly use Skype, Msn, Yahoo IM, Gtalk and other instant messenger clients to chat with my personal. But sometimes you need to show them a demo as well, and I’ve been experimenting with shared desktops, video tutorials, text tutorials with images but still I haven’t found the best way.
What I’ve noticed is that programmers often tend to learn faster with text and images, and for other services we can use shared desktops. But I also have people working from places where 0.5 Mbps are considered high speed internet. For those people I’ve been unable to use shared desktop, so we have tried with video tutorials. All these different kinds of system take a lot of time, not to mention the fact that we are constantly changing things in our systems.
From the beginning I was uncertain that I could trust all the people in the team, I therefore didn’t not share contacts with them. I was the only person that had contact with the rest, but as some of them have worked with me for two years I now have no problem giving them access and the possibility to talk to each other. There’s a lot to win on this. Instead of them asking me things, they start by asking the other people in the team. And if they can’t solve it together they ask me.
All this sounds great, but I can still sometimes have the to much of there work are depending on me. We have therefore decided to hire a new person that will report to me and handle a lot of this work. I will be working more strategic. This will be great and it will also make it much easier to scale the team.


