Working with a remote team: the questions we get asked most

Every audit we run turns up some version of this. The questions about working with a remote team that come up most often on our calls.

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. Budget a little time for it every quarter and it never becomes a project of its own.

Do we need to care about this?

Write things down, because hallway context does not exist. It is worth being explicit about, because assumptions differ quietly. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

Can it wait until after launch?

Occasionally. More often the post-launch version costs several times the pre-launch one. The cost of getting this wrong is rarely visible on the day it happens.

How do we know it is working?

Regular short calls beat rare long ones. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Assume whoever inherits this will have half your context and none of your patience.

What this looks like day to day

The projects that go badly are rarely the ones with the hardest technical problems. Three things worth confirming about working with a remote team before you move on:

• Someone can say what the current setup is without going to look
• Write things down, because hallway context does not exist — and you know whether that is true here
• There is a way to tell whether the last change to this helped

The point is not perfection, it is knowing which of these you have consciously chosen to skip.