Metrics, key performance indicators, objectives and key results (OKRs), being able to measure progress – it all links back to a need within organizations to ultimately quantify return on investment.  When we all worked in one place, most metrics were tied to outputs – achieve sales targets, ship code, maintain a positive net promoter score.

Changing environments demand new metrics

But how have those ways of measurement changed in the last year? Do they take into account the challenges and opportunities that come with remote working? As Dan Montgomery, the founder and managing director of Agile Strategies, said, the current situation “is a great opportunity to get better at managing people around outcomes rather than tasks or, worse yet, punching a virtual clock to prove they’re working. Many employees working from home genuinely have big challenges, including bored kids, sick relatives and an unending stream of bad news. They need the flexibility right now and will appreciate your trust in them.”

Having that flexibility is particularly critical in uncertain times. “Now more than ever, the goals that we’re setting are so critical for us to be able to navigate what happens next,” Ryan Panchadsaram, co-founder and head coach of What Matters said.

Defining a clear vision

But how do we set those goals? One mistake many businesses make is not aligning targets and objectives throughout the business. It doesn’t matter whether you’re a start-up, a scale up or an established sector leader, without a goal at the company level, you’re lost. Chris Newton, VP of Engineering at Immersive Labs, calls this “Vision — it all needs to have a really clear, inspiring, well understood company vision that is really guiding every department in the business. Not just product and tech, but you’re talking about the whole wider business. There has to be a direction, a clear direction for the company.”

Chris was talking as part of a recent Indorse Engineering Leaders panel discussion. Once you have that big vision, he says “Underpinning that is going to be the product and tech side of things. You will have your product vision: ‘what are we trying to achieve for our customers through the product?’ Then you have the engineering vision that underpins the product vision. It is complementary to the product vision, and it supports it. The engineering vision & strategy lines up to delivering the best outcomes for customers through the product vision.”

It is only once that big picture is in place that a business can start to work out how it is going to get there.

The right framework for transparency and function

Chris was particularly keen on Objectives and Key Results, or OKRs. “Objectives framework, such as OKRs, can be a really powerful tool in terms of getting that prioritization and alignment right. It’s great to make a clear and visible link between what software engineers and managers are doing on the ground and how that then ties back up to top-level objectives.”

What this brings to an organization is transparency in goal setting. Everyone, from senior executives down to team members, is clear on how objectives are created and how what they do helps drive results.

Having that process is critical to determining what action is going to be taken. As another panellist, Nik Gupta, Software Development Manager at Amazon, highlighted, getting the basics right is critical. Nik and his team “spend about two months just getting our metrics right. Literally, just figuring out what are the right metrics we should track worldwide – are they instrumented, are they reliable, and how would we validate them, etc. It is absolutely essential to get that framework built before you start delving into ‘what projects are we going to do and why.’ ”

What that looks like is going to vary, and it can be easier for some functions than it is for others, as Smruti Patel, another panellist, highlighted. As Head of LEAP and Data Platform at Stripe, she has found that the former is easier to measure than the latter. For LEAP, “the metrics here are obviously more tangible. It’s easier to measure how much you’re spending on your infrastructure or how much time the customer sees when they make a request.” 

However, on the data infrastructure side “some of the inherent qualities or principles from the platform that the internal users require are security, reliability, availability, and leverage, in terms of product enablement, which then enables Stripe’s users. Here, identifying the right set of metrics for infrastructure kind of work has been a challenge.” 

To solve this, Smruti and her team were looking at leveraging learnings from LEAP and seeing how they could be applied to Data Platform. 

Prepare for change

However, while it is important to be clear on what you should measure, being too rigid once they’re defined is counterproductive. Panchadsaram pointed out that “OKRs were never meant to be these rigid rails, they were meant to be a tool for your teams to collectively commit to something.”

In a blog for O’Reilly.com, former Rent the Runway CTO Camille Fournier echoed this sentiment when she said “measurement needs to be focused on the right goals for right now, and you should expect that what you measure will change frequently as the state of systems and the business changes.”

That can only be achieved when metrics are aligned throughout the organization.

Put simply, for metrics to be relevant in the current climate, they need to be aligned with a company vision which is then cascaded down the organization. It is a process that needs to be rigorous in order to inform the work teams need to do, but it also needs to be flexible. At a time when the situation changes almost daily, it is the only way organizations operating with remote teams are going to develop metrics that are beneficial to the business.

The post Are your metrics right for a remote workforce? appeared first on SD Times.

“Enhancing B2B campaign strategies with residential data recognizes that solo or displaced workers have moved from the traditional workplace to home offices. For direct mailers, this means getting smarter and more efficient, better managing the blurred lines between B2B and B2C marketing strategies and channels,” said Greg Brown, vice president of global marketing, Melissa.

Melissa’s identity cross-matching technology relies on an individual’s known details to complete missing elements. With just one piece of data, such as an email address, phone number, or address, organizations can find and verify more information about an individual and create more thorough customer records. Marketers can confirm an identity, amend addresses, and append missing contact information, for example, enhancing business contact data with consumer information such as home address, along with associated emails and phones.

Data is validated against multi-sourced datasets, such as telecom data, USPS datasets, title and deed information, financials, GIS, and more. This also increases accuracy by ensuring valid and correct links between the data and customer identity.

For individual records, try Personator here or learn more about Melissa’s enterprise solutions by visiting www.Melissa.com or calling 1-800—MELISSA.

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Businesses are beginning to realize they will not be able to return to a 100% normal working environment. “If 2020 has taught us anything, it’s that we got to be creative about when we work, how we work, and where we work. This has been an opportunity to rethink all those processes organizationally,” said James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk, a developer-focused industry analyst firm. 

Governor presented a keynote at this week’s DevOps World 2020 on the future of work beyond the pandemic. 

According to Governor, just as applications and solutions have had to become more distributed to remain competitive and keep up with modern advancements, the future of work is now going to have to go through some of those same changes. “The future of work is distributed. The future of work is not everybody always having to go into the office,” he said. 

Companies like Salesforce and Google have already announced they don’t have plans to return to an office until 2021. Banking company Barclays also revealed they don’t see a return to normality when it comes to people returning to the office. 

The decisions businesses make in 2020 about how they are going to proceed are going to have serious impacts on their ability to succeed moving forward, Governor explained. 

For instance, Governor spoke about a German automotive company that found themselves not being able to test the software necessary to use and build cars at the beginning of the pandemic because all their test infrastructure was on premises. Without a move to become more remote and digital, the company would no longer be able to operate. 

Silicon Valley has been a magnet for talent and companies have provided campuses for their employees. Governor believes businesses there will have to rethink how to recruit and retain talent. Eight months ago, most software development job listings would require you to relocate, and now they are turning to telework options, he said. 

However distributed work environments don’t have to be looked at as a downside or challenge. Governor believes it is a better and more human way of working. 

CloudBees released The Future of Remote Work and Software Development at the conference, which looked at the impact the pandemic was having on software delivery and how virtual work came into play. The report found 59% of respondents are finding software teams are becoming somewhat or significantly more productive. Forty-two percent find it easier to complete work tasks in a timely manner; and 61% found it was easier to work across time zones. 

“The responses underscore how IT organizations aren’t sitting back during COVID-19 – businesses are asking IT to be more strategic and teams are taking steps to increase cross-company collaboration and become more efficient at software delivery,” said Shawn Ahmed, senior vice president and general manager of software delivery automation for CloudBees.

As far as going to events, while everyone is missing the ability to connect and network in person, Governor looks at virtual conferences from an accessibility point. People who are single parents, or have a disability, maybe are in a wheelchair, or even across the country now have the ability to attend these events.

“2020 can possibly, if we’re intentional about it, be a trigger for a more inclusive world of work, and [an] all inclusive industry,” said Governor. 

The way he believes we can be intentional about it is to start thinking about platforms and processes, and flexibility in terms of when work is expected to be done. 

The industry needs a single platform moving forward that includes observability, troubleshooting, feature flags, infrastructure as code, compliance, and the ability to track changes and understand what is going on, Governor explained. 

The businesses that don’t adopt more of a remote structure, and try to force employees back into the office are going to struggle over the next couple of years, he added. 

“The last 20-25 years has really been about the rise of distributed systems. The next 20-25 years is going to be the rise of distributed work,” Governor said. “The most successful communities are going to be those that can really work together effectively at scale across geographical boundaries, across boundaries of time and space, being able to be asynchronous That’s one of the charms is just finding ways we can collaborate more effectively and it isn’t, I know one thing, in the office.”

The post DevOps World 2020: The future of distributed work appeared first on SD Times.

Microsoft Teams recently celebrated its third anniversary and in doing so, released some new, innovative features that are ideal for remote workers to help them become more productive during this COVID-19 outbreak. 

While working remotely is obviously much different than interacting within the same building at a corporate headquarters, where people can engage in face-to-face dialogue, at this time, organizations are doing their best to maintain connectivity by engaging in professional, online meetings. With this third anniversary edition, Microsoft Teams is enhancing and adding new capabilities to build the best online meeting experience to help users succeed from a remote location. 

RELATED CONTENT: Microsoft builds a new online developer experience

Let’s explore some of the new capabilities which have already rolled out, along with some new ones which are scheduled to be available later this year.

Avoid background distraction — While attending a Teams meeting from any location, the “user with background blur” feature can keep the focus on themselves without worrying about background movement. 

Minimize background noise — Many of us, while working from home or a remote location, can sometimes face noise issues in the background and are unable to clearly understand what is being said in online meetings, which can inhibit concentration. Microsoft Teams has arrived at a solution with real-time noise suppression features to minimize distracting background noise and to improve our ability to clearly hear what’s being said.

Easy participation in large meetings — The new “raise hands” feature in Microsoft Teams meetings makes it easier for attendees to actively participate in large meetings. Attendees can send a visual signal when they have something to say, and everyone in the conference will see a visual cue on the attendee’s video feed, as well as in the participant list. This will give an attendee the room to more actively participate in the current conversation.

Offline experience — With offline support, users can now access Microsoft Teams even when no network is available or with terrible network conditions. With offline capability, users can create and read messages, view calendar, browse previously viewed channels, pinned chats, and more.

Quickly reach a group all at once — Microsoft Teams allows creating a tag to categorize people based on attributes such as role, project, skill, or location. Tagging people helps the user notify a group of people all at once by @mentioning a tag in a chat or in any standard channel of the team without having to type every single name. Anyone who has been given that tag will receive a notification as they would if they were personally marked by @.

Automatic creation of an org-wide team — For small to medium-sized businesses, and for organization-wide collaboration purposes, Office 365 global admin can easily create a public group that automatically pulls in every user in the organization, and keeps the membership up-to-date with active directory whenever a user joins or leaves the organization.

New files experience in Microsoft Teams powered by SharePoint — The new file experience in Microsoft Teams provides you with the ability to have a rich preview across 320+ file types, create views, sync files to your computer, work with metadata, pin files to the top, take actions like check-in and check-out, and much more.

Pop-out chat windows for easy chat switching — For smooth movement between ongoing conversations, Microsoft Teams will now allow the user to pop out individual chat conversations into a separate window.

Several other new features are planned in the near future. Let’s take a look at what’s currently scheduled to be coming to Microsoft Teams.  

1. Low-bandwidth support — Microsoft Teams is also now optimized to work in low- or poor-performing network scenarios. With this support, a user will be able to send messages even with sub-optimal connectivity. In the case when network bandwidth is too poor to send a message, the user will be notified, and a message will be saved until the user has returned to a functioning network.  
2. Store recordings in region storage when stream isn’t available in Go Local — Teams meeting recordings get stored in Microsoft Stream cloud storage. In contrast, cloud recordings are currently not allowed/enabled for customers where Stream service is not available in the corresponding Go Local region. Now, Microsoft is going to change the current behavior by allowing “Allow cloud recording” and turning it ON by default. This modification will store the recordings in the respective in-region data center.
3.  Include up to 10,000 users in an individual team — In Microsoft Teams, the upper limit on individual team members has been increased from 5,000 to 10,000 users. This upgrade will likely start rolling out to customers very soon.
4. Group chat with up to 250 people — Sometimes we need to collaborate with a large group; for instance, members from multiple teams without creating a team as a group chat. The group chat feature will allow up to 250 users in a group conversation to quickly do a group chat. This upgrade will start rolling out to customers soon.

Microsoft Teams continues to expand its functionality to meet the needs of users in all roles and across industries, enabling work continuity during challenging times. There’s no debating the fact that “Work from Home” (WFH) is made much easier by using Microsoft Teams.  

Microsoft Teams allow you to quickly connect with teammates and be more productive from home as well. To ensure success, you’ll also want to consistently evaluate available technology options as they become available, and act quickly and efficiently consider them for support to truly empower your distributed teams and remote workforce. 

The post New capabilities in Microsoft Teams improve remote workforce productivity appeared first on SD Times.

Among those are the use of digital collaboration tools, access to the publishing software, bandwidth, and more. For me, personally, the biggest issue was actually just being home. I don’t have a home office set up, as I’ve never needed one, so finding space to work that does not preclude the rest of the family from doing what they do each day was the first challenge.

RELATED CONTENT: 5 tips for effective remote work

My wife was at first only lukewarm to the idea of me working from home, because, well, I’d just be around all day, being all needy and stuff. And it only got colder from there, as no matter where I was in the house, I apparently was in the way of her completing some task. By day’s end, she was on HER computer, researching other options.

 “Why can’t you rent one of those daily workspaces they have in office buildings,” she asked. 

“Because our state is basically locked down?” I say. “We’re not supposed to go anywhere.”

“Not SUPPOSED to go is not an order NOT to go,” she said. She’s got some lawyer in her.

I’ve started a journal of my experience, which I’ll share with you now.

Day 1 of “working from home” due to COVID-19.

I have a dentist appointment at 9:30 AM, so I wake up around 7:30, answer emails until 7:33, and do the Sunday New York Times crossword until 9:10. In between, I hear from my art director that she can’t get onto Slack. I throw on clothes (Oh no, was the computer camera ON??) — no shower, no shave — and go.

I return home about 10:30. Time to check in with the team and see what’s happening. I get the art director back onto Slack, then make myself breakfast. Now it’s 11:30. I start editing a couple of stories and send them along for page layout. I put in a solid two hours of work, then at 1:30, crawl out of the boiler room/new workspace to go upstairs to make coffee.

My daughter Hallie is awake (did I mention she’s home from college because it was shut down due to COVID-19?) I ask her if she’s upset that her Delaware Blue Hens’ basketball season ended the way it did, and was quickly reminded that she has no interest in that. It did, though, lead into a half-hour of listening to college fight songs (one a marching band guy…).  Side note: My alma mater, the University of Maryland, has TWO! Technically, one’s a fight song, presumably played DURING games, and the other is a ‘Victory’ song, presumably to be played AFTER victories. Yet at games, the Mighty Sound of Maryland marching band plays ‘Maryland Victory’ WAY more times than the fight song, despite rarely winning. Makes no sense. But in this coronavirus world, little makes sense.

Back to work for another hour. Now it’s lunchtime. I go back upstairs to have a sandwich, and Hallie — clearly bored on her revised spring break at home — talks Carrie and I into watching an episode of “Schitt’s Creek” — a VERY funny Netflix show. One episode turns into five, throughout which I keep exclaiming, “I can’t … I’m WORKING!”

After lunch, I’m back at it, transcribing recorded interviews into text. Play. Pause. “What did he say?” Rewind. Play, Pause. In two hours, I’ve transcribed 11 minutes of recording. I’d rather be back at the dentist! Six minutes to go until the end of the recording, I drop everything to start writing this.

Five o’clock. End of Day 1.

They’d better find a cure, and fast! The other options are me gaining what my daughter Lindsey called “the COVID 15,” which is like the “Freshman 15” of weight gain, but worse, because it’s associated with coronavirus. At least we don’t have peanut butter-stuffed pretzel nuggets… YET! And, of course, the final option … me being the victim of a bludgeoning death for having committed the crime of … always being home!

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