Project Management from a Distance – Part 1

In this six-part series, I plan to cover the following topics of remote project management:

Part 1 – Why remote?

Part 2 – Will it work for you?

Part 3 – What type of job enables remote PM?

Part 4 – What setup do you need?

Part 5 – Negotiating when it’s not an obvious move

Part 6 – Staying the course

In this first part of what I plan to be a six-part series, we ask the question why remote? Why would you want to cut yourself off from your co-workers and hermit-up (is that a word?) in your house to work? Why would you want to hang around your family and have them interfere with your productivity? Can you separate work from home?

These are all good questions and must be asked – and answered – before you decide to go remote or even try to go remote. First let’s look at why someone would want to go remote. Some of those other questions above will be discussed in future installments in this series.

My Situation

For me, when I first started managing projects remotely it seemed like a no-brainer. I was managing large projects with teams of resources who were already dispersed around the country. It didn’t make much sense for me to drive to an office that was nearly an hour’s drive away and spend nearly $250/month in gasoline alone just for the privilege of sitting at a desk surrounded by people making noise and distracting me. It didn’t add up. By going remote, I gained back about 90 minutes of my life – and potential work time – just by not driving to the office. Over the course of a full month of workdays, that’s about 30 hours.

Not every situation is going to be that cut and dried, but mine was. I would go to the main office on occasion, but 95% of the time I was able to do everything I needed to do from my home office – not including, of course, the onsite customer kickoff sessions, etc.

Other Scenarios

In my situation, it was common sense. Each person needs to look at their own situation and their own reasons. Let’s say, for example, that you want to manage projects remotely because you have small kids and want to help out around the house. That’s nice and depending on your projects and call schedules, you can probably pull that off and remain fully productive. However, using that as a reason isn’t likely to fly with your executive management team. And it also doesn’t mean you’ll be a productive leader of your project resources. It doesn’t mean you won’t, but if that is your PRIMARY reason for wanting this working situation, then that’s not good.

Another reason may be health-related. There are definitely good reasons related to health issues that either just came up or have already existed for a long time to make you want to or need to work remotely and ones that your employer should probably understand and work to accommodate. That, of course, is between you and your employer…and possibly your lawyer – your call.

Summary

The bottom line is – you need to figure out why you want to do it and see if it’s a good enough reason to do it. And will your situation let you be productive in a remote working or telecommuting situation? Those are the things you need to ask yourself. Oh, and don’t forget to ask you family….you may think they want you around only to find out that they’re more productive with you gone. I’ve faced that reality a time or two!

Related posts:

1. Project Management from a Distance – Part 6
2. Project Management from a Distance – Intro
3. Project Management from a Distance – Part 3
4. Project Management from a Distance – Part 5
5. Project Management from a Distance – Part 2