PM POV: Working with Distributed Teams

From the balanced perspective of our stellar Project Manager, Bianca Ionescu.

Bianca’s dedication shines through everything she does. Whether she’s flawlessly managing our projects as an exquisite PM or finding balance through yoga, her energy serves as the glue holding our projects and teams together. We truly can’t imagine where we’d be without her. However, this article isn’t solely about celebrating her; it also delves into how she embodies our culture and work ethos. Managing diverse contexts, projects, and time zones adds the spice that makes us great!

In her own words:

Working with distributed teams underscores the importance of clarity and transparency, especially in remote work environments. While office settings offer straightforward communication, remote work highlights the need for deliberate efforts to connect and foster idea exchange. Despite advancements in digital communication, there’s still a gap in information sharing compared to face-to-face interactions. Therefore, as a PM, it’s crucial to intuitively understand information flow and cultivate an environment where team members can access and integrate knowledge efficiently toward the shared goal of building impactful digital products.

Transparency and accountability

In distributed teams the impact of misinformation is even greater, so it’s important that we set clear ways of working in place but also keep ourselves open enough to add information or ask questions to ensure clarity and transparency. Understanding how to work around assumptions and biases that happen in digital communication due to the absence of nonverbal cues, is quite an art. This is why great PM practices go beyond just resource coordination and assuring that everyone is aligned on goals , the work ahead cadence of execution and ownership. When building digital products especially in distributed teams accountability brings everyone together and gives the team momentum. I call this the single source of truth, the point we return to and that keeps us going.

Diversity in thought and work

We’ve been working with teams across the world from India, Germany, Israel or US and I had the opportunity to work through a diversity of thoughts and perspectives, navigating these situations can be very rewarding. In my experience the nest way to see things through it through a “ one team” approach, we work in a synchronised manner, fully interconnected and aligned so whenever someone flags an issue we take it back to the forum to agree and find the best outcome. Above all cultural differences, the desire to build the product is what drives us all.

My great tip as a PM is to understand how each stakeholder communicates, what are the preferred channels, communication templates, and understanding how everyone prioritizes information can help you understand what is the appropriate communication flow.

A PM life in a Post Covid

For many companies fostering and nurturing the best practices for remote work has become essential in the post Covid world but for us at Salt and Pepper it has been fairly easy to adapt. It is ingrained in our culture that transparency and accountability are driving forces in our day to day so it was easy to map out procedures that helped us reach the same level of effectiveness and quality as before. As with the clients and teams that I work with now, once we have a clear understanding that the final product is the goal it’s easy to come together and find ways to put that into motion. For me personally it has been easier to convey and foster a working and efficient environment knowing that these values were instilled in me and my team from the beginning of my S&P journey.

What is the future of PM?

I think the role of a PM is ever changing, you get to know a little of everything and your can gain so many more perspectives: I’ve been a SCRUM master, a PM, been on sales calls, on quoting processes so it’s clear to me that the role of a PM is ever evolving. Whether it’s into a Product owner seat, a business developer seat, or a confident sales person, there will be more and more opportunities for people with varying perspectives and contexts like a PM, to lead meaningful conversations around the lifecycle of a product, positioning and even ideation. The future of PM is looking bright as the industry as a whole is evolving.

For myself in my role i feel that the more partnership we incorporate into our client relationships the better the outcome and the way of working, we have steadily become a consistent point of trust for our clients and i believe the results speak for themselves, we’ve reached into many industries Finance, health, wellness, lifestyle, mental health, crypto, real estate, security, across Web 3 , Iot and AI projects with notable projects like MultiversX, Counsl, EmbrWave, Vivior and many more.

Favourite Project

I hate to pick a favorite because all of them had a special something, but if i have to i would say HID is probably closest to my heart. With HID Mobile Access, you can use a mobile device as a credential to access doors, networks, services and more safely and securely. The company was already well known as an industry leader for their solutions so we were excited to work on a project that literally impacts millions of people daily. ( 80 million doors around the world are owned daily using the app that we developed) And this all goes back to what I said earlier, even in this context, global industry leader and our pack of dedicated people at Salt and Pepper we managed to get around the same idea and way of working ensuring clarity and transparency along the way. We partnered to ensure that not only we put out a solution but the best version of that solution.

 

Advice for people starting out:

I think what would have helped me starting out was : don’t wait for the perfect conditions to give it your best, just give your best and your momentum will create the perfect conditions. Feel brave enough to take the first steps and you’ll find growth as you move forward. This is also the essence of our Agile process, always in motion, adapting, optimising and getting things done.