Digital Product Teams Beware: Remote Work Isn’t All It’s Cracked Up to Be
When looking back over the last few months of remote work, in some ways, digital product teams are extremely lucky. Since the very beginning, software development was built with offsite work in mind. From having employees across the country, to in many cases having entirely offshore development, to embracing easily accessible tools such as Jira, Asana, or Basecamp, web-based atmospheres have always been able to embrace decentralization. After the pandemic struck, there really hasn’t been a significant change in the day-to-day for many of us on digital teams. What has changed though, is choice. Now that 100% of teams are remote, what can we learn from this unchosen lifestyle and what can we expect of the future in terms of productivity, creativity, and collaboration?
Based on personal experience, I estimate that about 10% of the larger digital team I am part of worked from home on any given day prior to the pandemic. This team includes product, dev, sales, UX, content, analytics, and testing amongst others. Flexibility in a corporate environment is extremely attractive for employees not only because it allows you to better integrate your personal life with work (child-care, travel, doctor’s appointments, deliveries etc.), but it actually allows for times of quiet escape where larger projects could be completed without distraction. For engineers/developers, think coding. For product managers, think functional documentation or presentations. The first few weeks of quarantine were a welcome change of pace. But all too quickly, I found myself putting off certain items for in-person, impromptu conversations that I assumed would be available when we returned to work. That date hasn’t occurred yet, and despite the incredible value of Teams, Webex, Zoom, or Slack, it’s starting to weigh on productivity.
Let’s take for example a make-believe Company X that is based in manufacturing and distributing a tangible product. 60% of Company X’s work could be done remotely during the pandemic. Sales, marketing, finance and logistics would likely represent this cohort. But someone needs to actually make, ship, and manage inventory. This most likely means that 40% of day-to-day operations must remain on site. For groups in this situation, on site activity is a requirement and likely would never be at risk in the long term. For a digital team however, that 60% likely goes up closer to 95%. In many ways, teams with a core digital product are entirely capable of long-term remote work. It’s that 5% though, that I would argue is potentially the most important part of the business. Product brainstorming sessions, user journey mappings, and spontaneous discussions in a hallway, are all crucial to steering a digital product in the right direction. Without natural in-person collaboration and relationship building, long term planning and product development will undoubtedly suffer. Why else were startups paying 5x per square foot to locate their businesses in cramped New York City WeWork offices pre-Covid?
Before the pandemic struck, recognition of the importance of on-site work was common amongst digital leaders. At Comcast NBC/Universal, the $1.5 billion Comcast Technology Center was the second tower built in ten years to cement the importance of the onsite headquarters in Philadelphia in addition to what “30 Rock” had already become in New York. (Full disclosure, I currently work at this campus in Philadelphia.) Upon its completion in 2018, Comcast CEO was quoted as saying “I wanted us to create the most exciting home possible for technology innovation … where employees come to feel renewed and inspired”. Also opening in 2018, the $1.1 billion Salesforce Tower in San Francisco was purposely built in the center of the city to embrace the advantages of a traditional urban headquarters. Salesforce has already publicly voiced their desire to reaffirm that commitment in post-Covid life. In a SF WBUR interview recently, Elizabeth Pinkham, a Salesforce real estate executive, described how “reimagining” the building was crucial since “culture and collaboration are vital to the company”. She goes on to discuss how their new goal is to commit to a work environment that can provide “maximum productivity while keeping that culture alive.”
With any luck other digitally based organizations will follow Salesforce’s lead in embracing their onsite working environments. There certainly are advantages to remote work and after all is said and done maybe that 10% mentioned at the beginning of the article goes up to 20% of staff working from home on any given day. The very possible danger many firms may take however, would be to commit entirely to a remote workforce which likely would backfire when it comes to developing and maintaining a competitive product set. No one is I think denying that working remotely 1 or 2 days a week allows developers to turn off notifications and pump out sets of code at a staggering pace. Similarly, it allows product focused resources to consolidate ideas and organize personal thoughts before bringing them back to the larger team. What we’ve found though is that we’re putting off many of the group collaboration sessions because they just don’t work that well on over video-chat. It’s this kind of group collaboration that is crucial for product teams. In order to take a step back and plan a very effective product roadmap, you need in person working sessions and informal “water cooler”-like chats. Ultimately, there hasn’t been a problem in terms of “what” is being built and speed-to-market may have even improved, but the “why” is at serious risk of getting lost. Today’s environment provides an opportunity to recognize the potential turning point many businesses face when it comes to workplace location and to take measured steps to ensure their success by committing to onsite work environments of the future.
