Three myths about working with a remote team

Most teams know this matters. Fewer have decided who owns it. A few things about working with a remote team that get repeated more often than they get checked.

Strategy work is mostly deciding what not to do, and writing it down so it stays decided. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

“It only matters for big sites”

Write things down, because hallway context does not exist. The teams that handle this well are rarely the ones with the biggest budgets. Doing this properly once is usually cheaper than doing it approximately three times.

“We can deal with it after launch”

Sometimes true, usually expensive. In practice this is a scheduling problem more than a technical one.

“Our platform handles it”

Regular short calls beat rare long ones. None of that requires a large budget, only a decision and someone to own it. Most teams find the first pass takes an afternoon and the maintenance takes minutes a month.

How to tell if yours is fine

Clear scope protects the client at least as much as it protects the agency. 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

If you are not sure where your systems currently stand on this, it takes us about an hour to find out.