Generations ago when people were employed in a company they tend to be located on the same premises if not the same building then came a time when rapid expansion forced some people to re-located in other offices, sometimes half way around the world. The recent wave is partially working from home office. In each evolution of working practice the challenges are the same. How are resources integrated on the same team when the members are physically segregated? This issue was partially solved by the availability of higher communications bandwidth and with LTE and WiMAX networks coupled with brilliant devices such as the iPad, applications such as seamless multiple video conferencing, true mobile office has now arrived.
With the advancement of technology working remotely has became more convenient. You can now use even advance projected screens in the office so you can interact with colleagues, much like when you are physically present in the same building. Back in 1991 while I was completing my engineering degree in communications I experimented on how to use holographic based interaction in a mobile devices and wrote a paper on it. Back then the wireless bandwidth was not as high as it is today so the device was rather clumsy, partly influenced from my interaction with two-way communications and amateur radio, however the idea and purpose is the same. Now that the time has come where it is possible, there are still a few kinks to iron out such as effectiveness and efficiency but as human innovations go we are constantly improving.
The challenge today is how do we get the most out of tele presence while increasing if not maintaining work force effectiveness and protecting privacy… The solution is actually an old one, employed even before the time of telegraph… TEAM BUILDING. To be effective and efficient it is imperative that the team functions as one, especially with time zone differences between offices. Let’s take into consideration the challenges in a technology like AmanziTel where we have distributed development, meaning our developers working on the same project are spread across several countries and time zones. It requires effective management to put everyone on the same page and on top of that ensure that our daily software builds as part of our continuous integration processes are bug free and fool proof. Apart from effective management, the team every now and then gathers for social activities that promotes camaraderie and instill the team spirit in each individual member. This reinforces the team’s strengths considering the fact that the entire team is only as strong as its weakest member.
With a coherent team tele presence becomes more effective. The challenges is of course to apply it to a larger group such as an entire company. The approach I would recommend is to group resources in manageable teams where each team shares the same philosophies and works for towards a common goal with the company mission as its battle cry.
3 comments:
In the western culture workign from home is acceptable but in the eastern culture it is not.
In Asia, everyone must report to the office and this seems to be more efficient and acceptable.
In countries where the cost of labour is not very high then tele presence is more expensive due to the cost of infrastructure and management. In this cases it is cheaper to repalce the person than implement tele-presence infrastructure.
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