While it is important that each team member has flexibility to work at times that work best for them, it is also important that they have effective collaboration hours with their immediate team members.
Set your working hours (and keep it up to date) in your status message on MS teams, ensure a minimum of 4 overlapping hours with team’s collaboration hours. Please be online and available during work hours. It is generally considered not professional, if for any reason you’re not available, without prior update on MS team’s channel.
Start your day by sharing a status update on your primary project workspace with:
At the end of the day, reply to the same thread with what you completed. This keeps everyone aligned and shows follow-through. Your updates should be outcome-oriented and as much details as possible, such as reference PRs, issues, or project artifacts with hyperlinks, making it easy for others to follow your work without extra conversation.
Daily updates are part of our work culture. If you don’t post them, we usually assume you’re not working.
Good PPP Example:
Plan:
Problems:
Progress (EOD reply):
Bad PPP Example:
Plan:
Problems:
Progress:
Key Point:
Always focus on clear, outcome-driven plans and actual deliverables in both your morning and EOD updates. Avoid listing process steps or admin/checklist activities on their own.
Other than your primary project workspace, these are common channels that you should know:
It is expected for you to attend key team meetings. It helps everyone to be on the same page.
During meeting, please:
While we are on the topic of meetings, please be mindful of team member time when you call for meetings. Please share the agenda few days before the meeting in a document and invite for comments.
Please plan and inform your time off a week before. To take time off,
You do not need to seek approval from anyone. We trust that you will do the right thing keeping everyone’s interest in mind. Last minute time off, except medical emergencies, are discouraged as it disrupts work flow.
Due to the nature of remote work, you are expected to adjust your communication style to optimize for asynchronous working. This means that you should prefer things in writing over verbal communication and write with clarity. Write a document or message in detail and invite comments from others to collaborate. Write verbosely to remove guess work from other team members.
For example: I am stuck at XXX. Can someone help me? This is not a sufficient message - rather tell folks what all things you tried, raise a PR and push your changes and then ask for help. These are just an example, best to Google “How to seek help at the workplace” to learn more and do some independent thinking.
We also prefer that you use your work related channels on MS Teams over direct messaging to make the information accessible and transparent to other team members and remove any gaps in decision making.