Remote Work Covid 19 How to Continue Your IT Projects in the New COVID-19 Reality?

The world has changed recently. The borders have closed, many companies have switched, or are switching, to remote work. It may sound simple, but how to actually make this change in a way that is secure and keeps your business productive?

At Predica, we have some frames of reference for the current situation. Still, I only know a few companies that had a chance to observe it first-hand.

Two years ago, our customer Maersk had to handle a cyber-security crisis. It wasn’t a health-threatening situation, yet it was similar in many ways to what we’re facing now:

• Company operations became disrupted by an external event (a cyber-attack).
• 100k+ people had to establish a new way of work.
• The organization had to act to address immediate operational issues.

Based on this and other experiences, I prepared some guidance for you in these uncertain times. Here are the key challenges you will face and suggestions on how you can deal with them.

1. Communication

Communication is key. You need to be able to inform your employees of any changes and make sure they can reach the updates from any location.

We had three key challenges:

• Q: How to channel and address questions our employees had around changes in work and projects?
• A: We used Yammer and then MS Teams with dedicated channels and Live Events.

• Q: How to keep everyone up to date with the latest policies?
• A: We use a single Teams Channel where we post all communication to employees.

• Q: How to make sure everyone stays up-to-date, working on their schedules from home?
• A: Using all that Office 365 and Microsoft 365 have to offer: both tools and configuration.

Here are some additional actions which can help you:

• Create a dedicated Teams channel and add everyone to it. Teams are provided for free for 6 months right now. If you are not sure how to get them, email us and we will help you.
• Microsoft released a free Crisis Communication app for Teams. You can get it here.
• You can address everyone using a Teams Live Event. This is what we did with our CEO and country GMs who addressed our employees over a Live Event. Here is a link to a page detailing how to use it.
• Live Event recording is available online through Microsoft Stream – it is one of Office 365 services. Post the recording on a Teams channel after the event.

What if you don’t have Office 365? No worries. Microsoft makes Office 365 available for companies for free during this crisis for up to 6 months. Email us, and we will send you information on how to request it.

2. Keep the projects going

The next task after setting up proper communication is to make sure that the work doesn’t stop. How to do it remotely?

Here are the tools we use:

• Project communication: Microsoft Teams – addresses chat, audio/video calls, file exchange, etc. (free for 6 months).
• Task management: there are plenty of options. Planner integrated with Teams works, and nothing beats shared calendars. All options are explained here (again – they’re free or available in trial quickly).
• Development projects: Azure DevOps provides an environment to work remotely across the entire project team, from product owners, project managers to development teams. It’s available online and can work with your on-premises servers (free for the first 5 users).