Managing Projects Remotely? 5 Top Tips for Success.

Remote work and support services have moved to the forefront of the news and corporate agendas. With the COVID-19 crisis, organizations and employees are faced with a different set of work circumstances. While this health crisis climate is new to all of us, remote IT services is not new to Apps Associates. We have been providing them to over 50% of our client base since 2002.

Many of our clients have shifted to an all-remote workforce. If remote project delivery is now your daily reality, Apps Associates is experienced in this arena and can help. As remote support continues to scale, we have some tried and tested suggestions we would like to share that may help to ensure your projects continue without interruption. Here are our top five tips.

• • 1. Video Conferencing tools are one of the most important aspects of continuing to collaborate on project work. Apps Associates utilizes tools such as Amazon Chime, WebEx, Skype, Microsoft Teams and Zoom – on a regular basis to support remote delivery, as we find that these tools are of better quality for long meetings or heavy attendees. We have also found that these tools are easier for client resources to leverage. If a client utilizes a different tool, we will procure a license for that to support their environment. In addition, we recommend that you utilize the instant messaging features to allow teams to see available resources and to quickly communicate.

• • 2. Meetings should be held with video streaming on for all team members, so that everyone can see each other and gauge reactions to what is being presented. We have found that this greatly assists in making the meetings more effective, and ensures that the teams are engaged and attentive.

• • 3. For many organizations, employees are used to an office culture. Very few of these employees engage in remote work on a regular basis so this situation is new to them. There are ways to make working remote still feel like a community where employees are readily accessible. If you work with Apps Associates remotely, our team is experienced here. We typically run our clients through an “Intro to Remote Collaboration” workshop to help our clients understand the approach and ask questions, as well as adjust the approach to make it most successful for them.

• • 4. Security is extremely important when working remotely. You want to involve your security team in the process and alert employees to be hyper vigilant about phishing attempts, etc. The Apps Associates’ security team has spent significant time ensuring that all of our connections and devices are secure, regardless of whether they are in an office or at home through a VPN. All associates have home wireless internet services that have WPA2 security. We have the ability for all of our employees to connect to the VPN at one time with no degradation of service. Our network is tested regularly with penetration tests, threat prevention, and other security concerns to ensure that we are in compliance. Each associate’s laptop is encrypted at rest, with appropriate controls for anti-virus and anti-phishing software. We would install VPN clients from our customers for all access to internal network objects, which can work between our network and our clients.

• 5. Customer specific devices can be leveraged if required. We can arrange to have this equipment picked up and distributed to our team.

We know these are uncertain times, and you may need some extra support to ensure your mission critical IT deadlines are being met. Apps Associates is here to help with infrastructure built to support connections remotely to our network for all employees and the ability to set up connections to our customers. We have a tenured staff who has been performing their duties like this for over a decade – all delivered securely and on time.

If you have questions about our approach, feel free to reach out to our team at [email protected]. As remote work is on the rise, we can connect you with the right people to ensure minimal interruption during your transition. If you are interested in our remote IT services capabilities, and would like to speak to one of our clients who has worked with Apps Associates remotely on project work we can make that happen.

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