productivity

Remote teams, real results: best practices

Explore the best practices to better remote teams and learn from those who hit the bumps.

Sabina Vardanashvili

Nov 27, 2024 • 4 min read

With more businesses embracing remote work, keeping track of tasks, ensuring team alignment, and maintaining productivity is crucial. Remote teams face unique challenges, from time zone differences to communication barriers, making effective task management a vital component of success.

This article will walk you through the best practices for task management in remote teams, showcasing tools to optimize your workflows and help your team achieve its goals.

Challenges of task management in remote teams

Remote work offers flexibility and freedom but brings a new set of challenges, especially when it comes to task management. The lack of in-person communication, asynchronous workflows, and the physical distance between team members make it difficult to ensure smooth task delegation and completion.

Here are some of the most common challenges:

Lack of real-time communication. Remote teams often face delays in communication due to time zone differences, leading to a lag in project progress.
Difficulty in prioritizing tasks. Without a proper system, tasks can pile up and it's easy for team members to lose track of what needs to be done first.
Tracking task progress. Keeping everyone accountable and on the same page can be a hassle when there's no real-time visibility into the status of various tasks.
Delegating tasks efficiently. Ensuring that the right person gets the right task at the right time can be tricky, especially in a remote setting.
Collaboration breakdown. Traditional task management tools often fail to integrate seamlessly with communication platforms, leading to fragmented workflows and collaboration gaps.

Establish clear priorities and goals

To ensure team alignment, it's essential to establish clear priorities for tasks and projects. Remote teams must have a shared understanding of the goals they are working towards, and each task should be prioritized accordingly.

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Best practice tip. Use task management system to break down large projects into smaller tasks, each with a specific deadline and priority level. By visualizing task priorities, your team can focus on what matters most.

Utilize task management tools with visual clarity

Visualizing tasks is key to staying organized. Remote teams benefit greatly from tools that provide clear visibility into all tasks, such as Kanban boards or task lists with deadlines and responsible persons assigned.

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Best practice tip. Visual task management tools, like kanbans and timelines, allow teams to see the full scope of their work at a glance. Team members can track progress, shift deadlines, and reassign tasks with ease.

Automate repetitive tasks

Remote teams often face a high volume of repetitive tasks, which can take up valuable time. Automation can free up time for creative and strategic work by handling routine activities such as status updates or task delegation.

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Best practice tip. By automating follow-ups, status updates, or notifications when a task is assigned or completed, you can handle repetitive tasks.

Facilitate asynchronous communication

For remote teams working across different time zones, asynchronous communication is vital. Team members need to be able to update the progress of their tasks and leave feedback without waiting for real-time responses.

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Best practice tip. With Orchestra's chat and task management integration, team members can leave comments on tasks, request clarifications, and share updates, all in one place. This eliminates the need for constant back-and-forth emails or meetings.

Ensure transparency in task progress

Transparency is key when managing remote teams. Every team member should have a clear view of task assignments and progress to ensure accountability and allow managers to step in when tasks fall behind.

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Best practice tip. A real-time dashboard where managers can monitor task progress, track milestones, and identify bottlenecks. Team members can also update the status of their tasks, ensuring transparency across the board.

Assign tasks according to skills and availability

Effective task management involves delegating tasks based on the skill set and availability of each team member. Without the ability to observe team members in person, managers must rely on tools that provide visibility into each member's workload and capacity.

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Best practice tip. Use task assignment feature to match tasks with the right people. The platform allows you to view each team member's workload and adjust task assignments accordingly.

Prepare a simple and transparent desk for delegating what you don't need to manage

Hold regular check-ins and sync meetings

Regular sync meetings help remote teams stay connected, ensure that everyone is on the same page, and provide opportunities for feedback and troubleshooting.

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Best practice tip. Schedule and manage virtual meetings directly within the platform. Additionally, you can integrate tasks discussed during the meetings into the project workflow, ensuring that nothing gets missed.

Create standardized task templates

Standardizing recurring tasks can save time and reduce errors. Whether it's daily check-ins, project updates, or content reviews, having a template ensures consistency and speed.

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Best practice tip. Create and store task templates for frequently repeated tasks. This allows your team to quickly duplicate and assign tasks without starting from scratch.

Ensure proper documentation for all tasks

Without proper documentation, remote teams can struggle to track why certain decisions were made, what the current status of a task is, and who is responsible for what. Documentation ensures continuity and clarity, even when team members are working asynchronously.

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Best practice tip. With Orchestra, every task comes with space for detailed descriptions, attached files, and documentation. This ensures that all task-related information is easily accessible to everyone involved.

Evaluate and adjust based on team feedback

The success of any task management system relies on its ability to adapt. By regularly gathering feedback from your team, you can improve workflows, streamline processes, and address any issues before they become bottlenecks.

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Best practice tip. Use Orchestra to gather feedback through built-in surveys or regular syncs. Adjust workflows as needed to ensure continuous improvement.

Managing tasks in remote teams requires a thoughtful approach, a reliable toolset, and a commitment to flexibility and transparency. By following these best practices and using Orchestra, you can optimize your task management processes, keep your team on track, and achieve your project goals more efficiently.