Process Building: Set Your Virtual Team Up for Success

One major challenge when working on a remote office setup is keeping everyone on the same page as to how things should be done. This is where a stringent work process becomes handy. But how do you build one that best suits your team? Here is a useful process building guide to follow.

Understanding what workflows are

Often, workflows are seen as being similar to the idea of assembly lines. In this model, the workflow is seen as a predetermined set of steps you consciously follow to accomplish a task quickly. However, there is more to the idea when relating to remote teams.

Here, the definition of the workflow expands to emphasize how flexible it should be to allow people to efficiently collaborate across different regions and times. The workflow also needs to be robust to allow effective communications between you and other members of the team.

Another important component of a workflow is the feedback loop. This lets you identify processes that can be improved through negative feedback. By incorporating this, the workflow can correct itself and improve continuously.

Process building step 1: Analysis

Now that you understand the expanded definition of a workflow in connection to a remote team environment, you can start building your team workflows. The first thing to do is identify and analyze the various work processes that should be done to deliver the desired result. One helpful method for identifying these processes is management consultant Peter Drucker’s 5 questions.

What is your mission?

This defines the results that you want to achieve. Here, you need to establish the mission as clearly as possible to better help the team understand the scope of its work. From there, you can list down the general processes needed to accomplish the mission.

Who is your client?

When asking this question, do not stop at just the customer who will be using the result of your work. You also have to identify the other shareholders who would gain from you delivering the best results. For instance, the team itself also directly earns from the good work they did. Define the processes that would deliver the most value to your client and give you greater returns.

What does your customer value?

This question zooms in on the specific things that your customer wants. Here, you need to identify the processes you should do to gain such insights, as well as the ones that will give you the specific desired results. Market research is one such crucial process that should be included here.

What are the key results?

This question identifies the key performance metrics used to indicate the success of your team. Once you have determined these KPIs, you need to know which of the processes you have listed are not meeting these and the stated goals. This can require a longer period of analysis than for other questions.

What is your plan?

The last question outlines the actions needed to accomplish the team’s strategic objectives. Here, you list any other process not yet included in the earlier questions but are essential for your workflow. You also begin to establish the interconnections between each process.

Process building step no. 2: Identification

After you have answered the five questions above, you will have a long list of processes. The next step in process building is arranging these into a more cohesive workflow. Here, you need to enlist the whole team for the effort.

The idea is to identify a better workflow based on the experience of each person working on a specific process. Start by asking the person doing that process whether it is efficient or inefficient based on their experience. Note that since you might have several people working on the same process, they will have varying responses to the question. Take note of these for later study.

One thing you need to identify at this stage is the bottlenecks that are present in each process. For instance, the lag time for the transmission of data from one team member to another can create a bottleneck preventing the latter from immediately starting their task. Aside from the bottlenecks identified by your team members, you can also anticipate others based on your knowledge.

Create a visual flowchart of the various processes to get a better picture of how the work moves from one to the next. This will serve as the basis of the eventual workflow you will implement. Mark the different bottlenecks on the diagram to see where they occur and determine how you can reorganize tasks to resolve them.

Process building step no. 3: Experimentation and streamlining

Once you have the initial workflow, you need to test and see if it works, and refine if it doesn\’t. It is worth noting that process building rests upon doing successive experimentations. The changes you made during its experiment are then tested during the next to see if they now fit the team’s needs.

There are no definite rules on how you should do these experiments. You can, for example, conduct large scale tests as part of regular team reviews. Alternately, the team can do sporadic experiments based on member suggestions to see if these ideas can be incorporated.

Streamlining your workflow

One of the main goals to focus on the experimentation stage of process building is streamlining the whole workflow. Here, you need to go back and assess the processes you are using. Rate these processes from 1 to 10, with 1 being the most important. Once you have ranked all processes, decide which ones of the lower-ranked process you can drop without affecting the overall workflow.

The same methodology can be used for refining each process. This time, focus on the tools you are using for each. Look into how effective these tools have been accomplishing tasks and remove those that have already served their purpose. You would also trim down tools that require more features to remain effective.

Another avenue you can explore in the streamlining work is automation. Particularly, you want to automate the tasks that are too repetitive. Doing this frees your team to focus on more labor- intensive tasks, improving workflow. But you need to carefully weigh which repetitive tasks still need human intervention to ensure that they are completed.

Build an efficient workflow for your remote team

Process building for remote teams can be a bit complex with all the additional factors you have to take into account. But by having a good grasp of the fundamental steps outlined in this guide, you can develop a workflow that will best fit your team’s needs. Continue improving it and you will also see a great boost in team performance.