 So welcome to the sixth session of NetSquared Meetup Islamabad, unfortunately due to the prison circumstances we are hosting this session as a live webinar and you will have one recording available or session on YouTube which you can check out later. So today we have three participants over here and I will let them make the introductions themselves but before that I'll have a brief introduction about what today's meetup is all about and what sort of technologies or problems or challenges and most importantly as per the normal course of our meetup and the solutions that we'll be talking about. So when COVID happened earlier in 2020 everyone organizations, companies, solo entrepreneurs all of us were struggling with a transformational period which happened to be a not to say that explicitly but a blessing in disguise for some companies because they were able to harness more optimized, more fast, more quick and more swift ways of coming together collaborating and working together. So the point of arranging today's meetup is that we have put up an assemble of some project managers who will be sharing their pet tools, their favorite jugars if I may say, of how they harness their tools and specific technologies to get the most out of their teams and get the projects done in a good way despite the existing challenges. So first of all I would like to introduce Mr. Sameer and Sameer over to you if you could just share a brief introduction about yourself with the audience. So hello everyone this is Sameer, Sameer Saleem. I'm the, as I say, I can speak in Urdu and English as well right? Yeah that's okay. So I'm a Pakistan startup group and I'm the founder of the group. It's one of the largest communities in Pakistan about startups and entrepreneurship. Then I've previously worked in many companies but I'm currently living in Dublin, Ireland and heading one of the technology units of Novartis and the global pharmaceutical. Yes Anjali, Anjali Deserving is the project manager at Alphos Technologies and Anjali, if you can kindly introduce yourself. Assalamu alaikum, my name is Anjali Besmail. I'm actually my area and domain is education. I'm doing PhD in educational economics, you can say area specialization. That is why basically I'm working in ed techs and Alphos Technology is working, most of the projects are on education. So based on that my role in the company is as a program manager and I am managing all their projects related to education and we do a new product development based on the customer's demand as well. So basically research and research. We will provide solutions in education technology basically. I want to see women you know achieving so much. So Imran Sir, Imran Tanveer is an android developer and he is currently serving as an HR manager and Nova and Rist and Ransat if you could do the introduction. Hello everyone, Imran Tanveer here. I actually started up my career as a mobile app developer after graduating from NEST back in 2011 and after working as a developer for around four or five years I started my career into the training domain as well where I used to train the undergraduates on same mobile app development. I have held the newest number of seminars and hands-on development workshops on mobile app development across almost all the universities over here and then I also worked with Android ATC and contributed in their books which they were using in their training centers across 50 countries and then also one of my book where I was a reviewer that got published on Amazon as well and then I also worked on a couple of my own ideas with the motive to develop as a startup and I was also working with PTA on mobile app development jury panelists as well. Other than that I was also invited by ITU in Sri Lanka to deliver a workshop on mobile app development so that continued till around 2016 I guess and then from past three years also I've been working at NOVA as manager learning and development here I am managing the skills training the resources over here based upon our technical requirements and managing the resource pool their assessment their skill analysis and all those things I've been managing over here. Thank you. So the point of today's discussion is that when COVID started earlier in 2020 so all organizations were struggling physical offices and we were trying to make sense of you know how to reorganize our working and restructure and at the same time the challenges were to get the work done. Productivity didn't go low but we had to attend. So earlier we did a session on this that the challenges faced and we were doing the transformation. There were a lot of experiential learnings but today's session is all about you are from the industry you are working professionals so what were the key areas that you have when you have this transformation that you have strategized or planned so what were the key areas of priority that you have attended in the first most. So I'll start with Sami. So that's a very good topic by the way Amna and thank you for arranging this. There are a lot of people who talk about it so it was important for us that as a large organization and of course as a even as a start-ups in Pakistan so it was important for us to have motivation first of all to see how we can manage the motivation in the team. Motivation was that everyone was afraid that our jobs would go away. That was a very and I think so that was the biggest fear right and we said that you know it was not the thing because if you're working in digital what happens is that for you in fact in fact there are more jobs because you get more motivation to work and then we motivate you to get the commute. Now how you can motivate is that people say that then you motivate that your job will not be going we'll be endorsing that even endorsing that at least we'll not lay you off and everything that was important to communicate then of course there was the other thing very important that see imagine the savings that you're doing you're not coming to the office so you're saving the mute time then you're not coming to your saving a lot of fuel energy and time on it. Then we also motivate people through giving things like especially in my company that but ergonomics is how your posture is and everything so you you tend to motivate people by giving things like like even this this the sign that is take the risk or lose the chance simple simple notions of communicating these was very very important to do so then of course how to manage this was that divide that divide the work because when you're working from home you have a boundary of 9 to 5 doesn't exist then you have to define within the team that you have to also see that your focus of attention might be divided but then how the team is empowered to do each other's tasks and that that entails one very important I think so Imran can also compliment on that as learning that how that the team understands each other's roles so this is what we did initially and then of course that was the ultimate thing then of course comes the all the mechanics of communication you know even motivating with chocolates and motivating with virtual singing competitions on teams on skype and joke share karna ek du se ke sa daily status update share karna that was the most important thing yeah sure I would totally agree with me this was actually the biggest fear in everyone's mind and from the very first day when we were going remote so I'll just start with the day because our management was very keen on the safety first policy for the employer so I guess we were one of the very first organization who went work from home or we adopted that policy so after that like I still remember on on the last day in office when we were going remote so we asked everyone to take everything that you want to take with you at home that will make yourself easy and comfortable in working so people were asking the question because my since I'm working as manager learning and development so since my role is to conduct some in-house training sessions we're using our own in-house resources so a couple of people came to me and they were saying that so that was something that had in their minds that we are going home we will be working online so things will not go as they are working in and that as they are going in office so I assured them that everything will go as per routine nothing will get disconnected and because there was a feeling of disconnected there was a feeling of isolation developing in the people so this was one of the biggest challenge to make them feel that we are all connected nothing has changed nothing has disturbed so we'll be trying our best to work as smoothly as possible and productivity won't be compromised obviously there there were some days where we felt that people are losing their motivation so we used to send them surprise cards some chocolates at home some surprise gifts at home obviously after doing their work performance review so we used to give them incentives as well and one of the biggest thing or the most important thing that I'll be talking later in the session as well that our management work as a leader so this is very important I hope we will all agree with this and that there's a big difference between a manager and a leader so our management actually worked as a leader in this time so that actually worked very well so they they were with us at every time obviously we had two teams working in two different time zones in UK and in Islam so they were with us in different time zones they were with us in every time in every challenge so they were there with us every time so I'll be again talking about some of the activities some of the things that our management was doing with us later in the sessions as well so I will be directly with the questions initially to you so if you could just name one go-to tool free of course that is your standard go-to tool you know I can't do without this tool at least if I'm talking about a remote management so so I love Trello Trello Trello.com has been my favorite for six years now and I would say Trello.com helps me not only manage for work but also for for personal life as well so Trello.com is free as well and there's a very special thing which is that you write tasks and then you say to-do in progress done and you can assign people as well in teams that whose task is this even I do it for my personal family that my brother has given this task and then I say to-do progress is completed or not and it helps you motivate I mean I will say it's free of cost so you can use it for your life which I do but you can also do it for your personal professional needs so a simple thing which is to-do in progress done three columns you can make tasks in it and you can drag and drop it in between it's free of cost it's very simple the UI is very simple and the spelling is T-R-E-L-L-O Trello.com so you can use it taking quick notes and you know idea brainstorming and leave your favorite tool concept which you feel not on a personal level of course in the professional working you think my company cannot operate without this tool initially when we were working from office we were also using Trello and we were effectively using our development team with our QA team but when we started using it our non-technical team when it was coming so they had a little bit of user friendly options we felt less like we had to share some meetings for a few minutes we had a discussion or a threat so we shifted to Asana and on Asana we made it very easy to communicate and create groups and you list down all the projects your team members who are on one of your projects you tag on that you assign a task directly to a team member but you can add others to see the activity as well and in that you can share images, you can add attachments, you can add a detailed description you can maintain a timeline, you can see when your task started and when it ended a team member took so much time to complete it, if it was a deadline, how much delay did it take? I mean, this part of Asana was very helpful and friendly, we used it very effectively and coming back to Sameer, again if you can share any case study it could be a case study for a client or it could be a project internally or it could be a problem that you were able to attend to just make a specific tool, now you can't pick Trello, okay, there should be nothing other than Trello where you used that tool in a creative way, you were able to attend to a problem So, I belong to a community, it was an internal project in which I didn't use Trello similarly but we tried to keep it and then we used Asana and then eventually we came to Slack The problem was that we needed the idea, the goal was that we had to manage our community's social media, now this is not professional work, this is volunteer work, right, but volunteer in a professional manner, not that because everyone was like this, so we are a group of people and we have 22 lakh communities, we need to communicate with them about Covid, right, and we are a group of central communication team that we wanted to do how to roll out the messaging because our prayer mosques are all closed, right, Jamaat Khanas, which is what they say, we are closed, how do we communicate, so we had to do it on Slack, but Slack was never used, then eventually what we had to do was to announce, because Jamaat Khanas is not there, we will put it on Facebook, so there could be more issues, so we said, let's do one thing, let's make a thread on WhatsApp and let's make a link of Google Docs, and let's circulate WhatsApp, first five friends, we tell everyone, five, five, five, five, five, five, and limit five, you know, we did communication by doing five limits, the eventual goal was to tell the community itself what the precautions of Covid are because the community lives from Karachi to the northern areas of Pakistan, right, so it was very, very difficult. So this was that that we do the jugard was to communicate all the social media channels, but the jugard was eventually to use what's up and a link may PDF when I get the sphere when I get a scope under communication. And as far as managing the team, it was simple to manage the team. What's up for business to use. What's up for business to assign to the team. So that was something that was something that we used. We were not very I was not very comfortable with it, but we used it. Facebook has recently introduced opened out rooms. So it was me. Because I think there's a lot of potential in that. So I haven't used that, obviously professionally. But talking about professionally the tools that have been working greatly with us. The top two most or I would say the most helpful was Google calendar. Because while working from home, and since everyone was following their own flexible timings, and then we were also working with hybrid teams in two different times on with a time difference of roughly four or five hours between us. So Google calendar actually worked in a way that I used to schedule through the Google calendar and I used to invite everyone into that invite and then that used to be reflected on their calendars. So if and so if I'm going to invite any meeting or call any meeting with couple of colleagues, I can put up their names in the search field of in Google calendar and I can see when each of them is available. So I can pick up a common free slot out of even there were a couple of times when I had to call some meetings of about 40 people or 50 people in two different time zones. So I used to add everyone into that search bar and I used to get a common time slot at that time everyone used to be free. So that was actually working amazingly with us because So that was actually working in a way that we don't feel that we are disconnected or working remotely. So everyone was there on Google calendar. So that actually worked very well and for the communication part we were again using the very helpful tool of Google Google Hangouts. And as soon as this pandemic and work from home all started. So Google actually was very helpful. Thanks to Google as well. Google made the limit of participation in a way that everyone like we were able to include everyone into that call and the time duration was also set to unlimited. And then a very helpful feature that also came very soon was the recording thing in Google Hangouts. So every meeting that we used to hold we used to record that meeting as well and as soon as that meeting ends the recording automatically set to pass. So that's how we were very connected and very was working face to face almost face to face with everyone else. Like a very optimum way of working because in my experience you know So this is a very smart way of doing that I believe. I just I mean before you leave because again I know that you have to leave at 6 30. So my last question would be to you. What are your key takeaways? If someone has any questions or if you have any questions or if you have any questions I just I mean before you leave because again I know that you have to leave at 6 30. So my last question would be to you. What are your key takeaways? If someone has to set up their own business and start from hiring a remote team to organize. So there is a structural breakdown of your processes. So that would be really helpful especially startups. Because I would really say and I'll say this that I'm not trying to promote Pakistan startups. But what first of all it's it's a if you want to even hire if you have an idea. We just say my idea in Pakistan give trainings that you have an idea you want to execute an e-commerce store or you want to start a blog. First of all it's better to understand you can't do it alone. You have to build a team. Sikandar Azam also did not do it alone. And if I say it's a very big example. Rasool sallallam also first went to Islam and told his wife Khatija and then of course it was smart. So it works together in a team. Realizing first that you need a team. Then of course after that the important thing is that you have these setups like Pakistan startups, Pakistani e-commerce Association of Pakistan or you go to Facebook group and post it. What is your idea? Realizing that you don't. The idea is not stolen. The person who executes idea wins. If you have no idea of stealing, right? You will not think that you are stealing. So first of all that mentality needs to be there. Secondly, when you post your ideas over there or you say you want a team or something like that, think about your journey. First of all, think about your process. If you are doing e-commerce setup, you will need logistics. You need customer service. You will need to make some purchasing. So you have to build that journey. You can wear a paper. Wear a simple paper. Draw that journey. How will the customer react? You will see Facebook ad, Instagram ad. Then you draw out the whole journey. And then of course tools. These tools are available. If you want to do scheduling, you can use easily. Use Trello. Write tasks to yourself. I want to make a journey. I want to make content calendar. I want to do procurement. So you say to do. As I was telling in the beginning to do. These are my two tasks. Then as you check it off. I posted it on the Pakistan startups or the Pakistan freelancing association group. So many people have reacted. I schedule them for interviews. I do this. And then you say to do in progress. Let's say Amna's interview or Imran's interview. Whatever. So you can again and again say this is in progress. And then of course then when you're done, this is how you build a team. Of course, for each team, then you divide progress. Let's say Amna's job is customer service. So how will the customer service react? This is her JD. This is her. So you have to the whole point of those online management tools are to help you to set up tasks. You can't set up tasks if you don't know the journey. Right. So I always before this question, let's say I'm going to work on platforms. I'm going to want to work on the whole website development frame. The website development can go QA. Can log on to identify the resources. Okay, remember that you won't be able to achieve everything alone. This is the first key point before anyone can help you with this. Before that, you should be aware of the first clarity of thought. You should be aware that you need a team. I have to communicate with some people for that team. They will react to me. I have to give them a timely answer. I have to take their interviews. I have to take a task. Procurement. Let's say you want to run. You want to advertise a product. Let's say you're selling, let's say, let's say furniture, right? Or, for example, electronics. So if you're selling electronics, who will develop the content calendar? Will it be a team meeting at 10 a.m. that we all meet and sit at 10 o'clock meeting every day to set that time? The point is, you know, discipline takes a lot of focus. Discipline is, it's very hard to do. Discipline is very important. Don't lose your track. The to-dos, the progress and the done. Manage it every week and reflect. The last thing I want to say is reflect. If I said that we are selling electronics, who will do its marketing? We will make its content at 10 a.m. together. Who will do its designing? Who will advertise? How much does the budget cost? You prepare it. And at the end of the week, on Friday or a Monday morning, reflect on it. Reflection is necessary. What do you didn't do? What do you didn't do? What do you left out? Because nobody is perfect. Nobody gets everything right. No cooperation in the world gets it perfect. So you need to understand the tools and discipline under discipline. I think so that might answer your question. Thank you very much. I agree with that. And just to add to that, the effective management lies in the basic structure. That is your work experience. Everything else would be a breeze later on. If we have one to two minutes, and if there are any questions for Sameer, because he has to leave shortly. We will just be taking two questions. That is okay with you, Sameer. Anyone? Yes, we have quite some audience over here. So are there any questions? If you can drop it in the chat. If not, even I can, you can give my email address to people. I think so you have it. So maybe you can, so we will, I'll be more than happy to take the questions offline as well. I definitely take on the content is conversation on the start-up screw. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Take care. Love us. If you can attend to that. Sorry, being the financial side and playing around with budget has never been my area of work to be very honest. But like, I see my finance department working. They're working on these very same tools. Like Google Sheets has been very helpful because the finance team sitting over here in Pakistan office has to interact with our remote team sitting in UK. So everyone is there on the Google Sheets. So any sheet, any financial stuff that they add into any sheet is being shared with everyone. And then there is a chat available into that window as well. So anyone can come into that sheet and they can do, they can interact, write their life into those and obviously all those Excel features and has been always been very helpful, very smart thing to use. So I see my finance department lying totally on those, but there were a couple of requirements coming up from our UK finance department. They were trying to reorganize their working routine while working from home. They asked us to recommend some tools. So I recommended then same G reports and I also organized a short training for them because I trained them over those tools. So can when to be very specific. So I told them that how they can use these tools. They can make the tickets. They can make the task and then they can assign to the people. So everything is there visible on the board. So that was very helpful for our finance department working over there so that they'd actually give them visibility and reliability and most importantly, like everything was there in front of everyone. So everyone knew that, okay, this person is working on this task and this is upcoming or next to be done by this person. So I've been seeing my finance department working with very same tools and obviously it's been amazingly handled. Everything they've been handling very greatly. So I'm coming back to you with our series of questions again. What are your takeaways for anyone who is trying to set up a small team? Yeah, they're already there exists a team and they're trying to optimize them. So what do you suggest would be the main processes involved? Okay, let me just add to Imran's point. I just want to say that being here with the tech team here, mainly the panelists are based on technology. We also had some requirements for budgetary finance. So they developed their tool on their own and built in in-house tools that we're using for financing and budgeting. So basically, in technology, you use your resources. The main developers and resources that we have exist, they just need an idea. You present them an idea, just discuss with them, do a bit of research. And you can develop your own tool. So this was what we did. Actually, we developed six products from home. And all the products were based on customer demands. And there was one thing that we need to manage. Basically, my clients belong to the university. And we developed a tool for them to go to their financial management. And then we started using in-house. That was a great thing. Our customer demand for us was also easy for us. Secondly, talking about team management and development. So when we initially started our work from home, we faced a lot of issues. Basically, connectivity issue was the most important thing that we had to tackle. The first instruction was that you should have a separate space. And the second instruction was that you should have a separate space. You can make a portion in your room, in which you can easily use your space to work in the office. It was very difficult for the family to accept that this work from home is also something. It doesn't exist for them. Being a female, they definitely expected it. And the guests came and made tea in the kitchen. So for that, mentally, the family took one and a half months to prepare. And then we came to know that this work from home is a part of our full-time work. Even our work costs were extended a lot. So initially, all those things were faced by moving to a separate space. Communication was a huge issue for us to communicate. We weren't able to get an idea of the tasks we assigned to our team. For example, if a developer had a task assigned to us or not, if Q&A had given a comment to their developer team or not. So managing all these things, it was really hard in work from home space. And we initially communicate through Skype. But the tasks we assigned to us were easy to do. So we were able to get an idea of exactly where we were moving in the commenting style. That was helpful for us to manage things and the great thing was that there were updates in your inbox. Plus, there were updates in your official email ID. If you are not opening your inbox, you will have to check your inbox if you have a task assigned to you. If you have a task completed, if I have assigned a task to someone, then go to the completed task and recheck if you have a task completed or just mark it and move it forward. So remotely, you have to facilitate this as well. If you are with your family, then tell us your time. What time do you work physically? We need a job. We don't need your time. You can give us your task. It doesn't matter if you did that during the day or night. So we have some developers who work the whole night. They are not available in the first half. They are fully active in the first half and they have to do this as well. The point is that if we are working late in the sitting, we have no objection to this. Some team members were like this and we had to see that we have to follow the time of 9 to 5 because they are available after the office hours. One of our practices that you are working with is stand-up meetings. In stand-up meetings, there was a rule that we didn't talk about work. We only had to communicate with each other. We had to ask each other about the weather and the politics. It was practically our rule that we didn't talk about work in stand-up meetings. It was very good that we communicated with each other. Another rule that we followed was that basically, if you are late, you log in from Skype or Zoom and attend meetings and you can't say, we are ready. But we had another rule that we will all turn on the cam in the morning. You have to be ready for your normal office routine. You are fresh and your team feels fresh too. You are ready in the morning and we had a rule that you have to sit for your daily tea cup meeting. Everyone is having tea. It's a very easy, relaxed communication style. You have to feel that you are not talking about work and communicate with each other. This helped us to move things. We had to mentally prepare them in 2-3 weeks and now the office will start. When we came to the office we realized how difficult work for a home was. It was very easy to work in the office. But to remotely manage, Zoom helped you a lot. Skype helped you a lot. There are different managing tools that help you a lot. In our case, we are a tech company. We already communicate remotely. So working from office or working from home we didn't have this much issue in terms of our clients. But some of the HEC clients are very used to coming to our office. Government sector people are not that easy to Zoom. After that the whole situation was that HEC was very frequent. We would invite them to our meeting. Otherwise, if you go to their office you don't get time for 10-10 days and you can't talk to them. You can't decide anything. So our HEC project continued in a very fast pace during that time. It gave us a lot of benefit. Other than that, if we have a team then we can give the team as much flexibility as we can. If there is an urgency, then they can tell us. There was another rule that helped us a lot. Skype changed our status. So we know that our team members are not available at this time. When there is an online or working on the desk those small statuses help you out a lot. You can communicate at this time. So overall working from home it was easy for a small team. Just like Mr. Imran, the team is very big. So I think we need to move to some other tools as well. So that is from my side. Thank you so much. You are telling us all the details. Anyone who is looking into that sort of a challenge will have an idea of how we can address them. The same question is to you Mr. Imran. How would you suggest to structure a team or to manage your new team or to shift your enhanced team remotely? What would be the key steps in your opinion? I will answer these separately. I have case studies of managing a new team and going or taking everyone along who is already working with us. First of all the point that I think is most important for everyone being on a senior position in any organization especially in this work home situation and every key manager or everyone in the management of any organization should act as a leader. There is a very clear difference between a manager and a leader. So leadership skills help a lot in these times especially and secondly I would say that you have to take ownership in these times especially because it is more important if I am if I have scheduled a meeting if I have scheduled an online training session anyone from within our organization is going to train a group of people in any of the technical or the non-technical domain topic. So if I am the one who has organized the session so I should be there for starting a meeting. Meeting time for example is 11 am 12 am obviously. So I should be there couple of minutes before that meeting. If I myself if I am not there I should be leading from front. If I am not there obviously how can the other be there on time or again obviously working from home most of the challenges are there sometimes because of environmental issues like you are not even able to come on time. If you see anything that could happen at that particular time you should you must be telling or notifying that team even there is a tentative misplacement or tentative issue that you are expecting. So you should be informing the team well beforehand for that meeting. I had an internet issue at my place over the weekend. So on Monday around that very same time I was actually very I have always been very conscious about these timings thing. So I was expecting or I thought that this can happen on Monday around these timings as well. So before that meeting time like a weekend 3-4pm internet connectivity which disturbed me over the weekend. So around Monday I had a meeting around that very same time. So 30 minutes or 1 hour before that meeting I travelled to the office and I was actually making sure that I should be there before that meeting having everything settled up so that if I have not shown up into that meeting how can I ask others that what happened and obviously what happened in that meeting. I was the one who called up the meeting so I should be there even in whatever case whatever problem is there in these things our management has been very helpful and they have led everyone with a great leadership skills. A case study which I would like to mention as the work from home started obviously as Sameer told that there was a biggest fear in everyone's mind about uncertainty or about their job security. So our management took an amazing step at that time they put a 30 minute time slot common for everyone in different time zones and our CEO from obviously in UK office so he used to come online and he used to call everyone into that town hall so he named that meeting as town hall so for that 30 minutes everyone from here and everyone from there used to be there on that call and in those 30 minutes he used to share the company updates, he used to share the financial details, he used to share how stable we are how we will be working what are our new clients coming up what are the new projects we have gathered or what are our predictions in for the next three months so if a leader is there if the CEO is there and he is explaining everything to everyone and he was always open for every question coming up towards him anyone was totally free to ask any questions so that actually helped the most in developing a sense everyone knew for example if a family wants to have dinner everyone was waiting to sit with their parents all the updates would be shared so at that time everyone was waiting for that 30 minutes time slot on Thursday everyone knew we were all sitting together and all the company updates would be shared now obviously different C-level members head of product development they were also coming up with the updates of different projects this is the financial details this is the outreach this is the status of the last week so when the company is on the same page everyone knew how stable we are what are the challenges we are facing we are joining us so this has helped so for the management everyone should be acting as a leader they should be leading from front and cutting it short I will give you a quick example if we are going to manage a new team during this time starting from March until now December we had a cycle of internships we hired interns and we had a plan of training passing them through the 8 weeks training duration and after that 8 weeks we used to assess them based upon different evaluation tasks and then the best performing candidates out of that internship we used to offer them permanent employment so we did this twice in this duration so this made it challenging that some of the interns were directly from the universities they had no experience of working remotely for them this was the biggest challenging task to do internships to prove yourself to come to top candidates to be hired for the job and working remotely was a big challenge for them so how I used to manage them I gave them a flexible timing to decide which 8 hours of time you have to follow starting from 9am till 9pm 8 hours when everyone started everyone was just used to send a high message or a good morning message into our chat group over the google hangout so we knew that ok this person has started their day and this is the time that they have started the day and these are the updates from it so just a hello or hi everyone coming up on the group used to bring everyone on the same page so this is how we took and this internship duration on the phase was very successful in both times for us and we were able to find amazing candidates amazing resources for us and the training phase and the training we went we took them through was very helpful either they are staying with us or they are applying to any other organization so they are not at the fresh graduate level anymore so this was the two case studies that I have been very thankful and taking throughout our organization so that was very helpful to be our management acted as a leader ok if I can add like Mr. Imran was talking about new training or interns or hiring our TA during this phase we hired him and he was doing it call, discussion, introduction because we were working on the team our daily stand up meetings the biggest plus point was the new team members they were very excited to meet because communication was going well we were assigning them tasks we were assigning them easily and we started at a good pace after that when the office joined we were very excited about it our communication with the team is good we daily have a stand up meeting your communication gap will be less it will be more helpful to work with the team we have a lot of tasks management project management coming to team building activities how to motivate your employees because there is a lot of team building when everyone is sitting together coming together a regular workshop tea breaks team building activities what have you guys used for virtual we would really like to hear that you can answer that definitely we had some workshops time to time there are some courses online and offline for which we motivate them in this time we had some courses for them as well that you can attend there were many courses that were not able to attend because of city or location but during this phase every course was available online for training we had many options we offered different teams for different times so it will help you develop your own skills the teams would join they attend the courses they do report that we learned that was part of the mandatory part that you shared your experience with the other teams and how it will help other team members brought together the team there was an unconventional intercommunication that was developing basically you gave us an example before talking about team building we were also practicing with our client we celebrated a product launch we had a countdown after the countdown after the fireworks we launched the product it was a great activity for all of us with our client with mutual interaction we launched the product whenever you launch a product the sense of achievement that comes in your team it motivates you to do something and the client is happy when you communicate with your team they directly hear the comments they are happy about it it motivates you that helped us a lot even in the office this is a normal practice whenever we get a new client based on the new client you have to present you have to give a demo you have to show the product you take the feedback from the customer we share the team they do some improvement based on that the customer feedback through the team they get motivated and they start doing the task that helped for that you need to have a regular flow of customers coming through Imran sir how would you share some case studies some virtual team building activities yes I will be very happy to share a couple of activities that we did and they proved out to be very helpful first of all different phases say this is a start totally it was sort of a lockdown situation everyone was totally working from home so in the start we did an online some sort of interactive quiz or task competition that here between 12 and 1 we booked one hour with everyone on google send invites everyone was there on the call on the live video calls and our CTO which obviously he was acting that was one of an example he acted as a leader you came in at that time it was around 6 30 or 7 a.m so he was there and he was acting as a leader for that activity we divided everyone into four different groups and first of all we asked different general knowledge questions so everyone was there answering and working within their teams the most exciting part was task based activities for example we used to give a task that whoever has right now at that particular time has most noodle packs in their houses so they are going to win certain points certain incentives then a core question that whoever is having their car fuel tanks fully filled so they are having they are going to win certain points so this time we made it interactive everyone was on video calls they were counting the packs of biscuits for example 10, 20, 30 then someone was counting the packs of noodles then one was whoever is having the most cash right now in their pockets so that was an exciting part some are spending money some have pounds different currencies and whoever is having the maximum amount of cash right now with them is going to win this number of points so this time we did some team building activities that everyone was interacting it was fun everyone was there on video calls so they participated very actively then we moved towards the hybrid model when people were allowed to come to office with keeping all the SOPs in debt keeping the social distance with them we did this since we had a book available 12 places in our office obviously far apart we called everyone in 4 different groups to the office at one time in the office 7-8 people used to come to the office with something cooked from their home obviously Pahar Selana was a bit risky at that time so everyone made some dishes and we used to place all those dishes in the center of the office and everyone was sitting at their own desk so everyone was coming and serving themselves one by one so this is how we called everyone once into the office in the form of one dish activity one dish party word computer security day we ran a security challenge that was an activity that we gave 4 days there was some security related tasks set up by one of our subject matter expert of security so they set up some tasks there were 4 days and everyone participated in the teams everyone has to complete those 7 tasks into 4 days within those 4 days so that was very helpful as well very exciting everyone was rushing up to the top places there was a live scorecard so many teams so many tasks at the end of those 4 days the CTO announced the awards for all those top 3 winners and the exciting part was the internship batch the internies were playing with us as equal as even the CTO he was attempting those tasks himself and the interns were there on those very same tasks so everyone was there on the same page playing around with the teams so that's how we kept the fun factor we kept the learning we kept the physical meters where possible then we used to send feedback cards chocolates and different gadgets to people to their homes so this is how we have been keeping our resources engaged and aligned and intact with everyone on a remote level we have a couple of questions first question is from Ali and it is how to meet critical deadlines with a remote team and Deepa I would like to you to answer that first definitely for that the first take up is everyone should be available if you have committed 9 to 5 this is my work course you have to work properly and you should be there to clear your team member if you are not available and the other team members should see that you are there as a manager I should be there for all my team members to answer their queries rather than team members they should be available but I should be available as well the most important part of that is to clear any clarification in the team they have to be everyone rather than disturbing everyone do your task first in the first half of the day complete your task in the first half we will not have any discussion we will not have any official meetings in the second half you know that you get exhausted and you have to work so we say we will take our tasks in the second half that helps that the un-disturbed period in the start of the day you do that and you meet all your deadlines sometimes you have to work according to the customer according to the office but you can do that if you have done more work then you can give it off or if you have worked over the weekend and they do some tasks over the weekend that was not possible in the university it was not possible and they have developed a new product for the student assessment and to measure the assessment they had to add some test banks and we get data on Thursday at 10.30 in the night and Friday at 9 o'clock we have to conduct an online test so our team had to work overnight basically if you are satisfied then you are happy as well but after that we say to our client that we have met your deadline but our team is so disturbed next time at 4.35 pm we will not entertain but still again we have to listen to our customers we have to work with them but to do something we have to do more but what I do is normally I commit a lot of chocolates if you have done the task then you will get a chocolate and in the morning if we go to work from home then I have committed a lot of chocolates but I have not given it yet but in the office definitely when they come to the table you will get the chocolate that you did the task with the chocolate I remember Mr. Imran's secret weapon yes we actually keep sending chocolates to people to their homes as well along with the cards we will post them so that is very exciting definitely I was also planning something but I think one of the TCS services was also closed so I was not able to send anything to them it still do you cash out that when you will resume work so we have one question from Al Hasan from Saudi Arabia he has left but your Zoom fatigue or you are connected all of the time so how do you manage that for yourself or your team members as well Mr. Imran if you would like to answer that obviously as I mentioned we make a very good use of Google Calendar so everyone's availability is visible to everyone else for example if I am having meetings from let's say 10 am to 12 am if I am engaged for 2 hours so no one is calling me in any other meeting in that particular time and then again for example if my 12 to 1 1 to 2 is my lunch time so I mark my 1 hour or 1 and a half hour as my lunch time on calendar so that is my break so no one is calling me into any other meeting in that break time so that's how we keep managing our breaks as well I can maybe 45 minutes 30 minutes if I am having a meeting so after that I book myself busy or free for 5 minutes or 10 minutes so everyone knows someone from our offshore office is about to call me into that meeting so he can see that I am not available for these particular 5 minutes or 10 minutes to join any other meeting as well so that's how we keep everyone noticed and everyone updated about our availability and we also keep on getting breaks and informed breaks if my break time for example is free so I have marked it on my calendar so everyone knows that I won't be available within this time slot so that's how we keep flexible bookings as well just few points not much basically our management team working with a small team we don't know who is available or not we actually know who is busy at this time so we have to involve everyone in which meeting the other thing we do is we keep our management decision and technical team totally separate there are few meetings where we have assigned tasks and we know that they are doing some task and they know they are available so we don't disturb them our management team directs them on these tasks so we can say technical issues that we don't have to face we know what everyone is doing one thing we are using during this situation we have a demo set with any client or discussion with any client we have a meeting in white we tag the internal team members so that they can mark on their calendars if you want to contact you can drop a text but don't expect to get a reply as we have a meeting already so we tried to match the interactive tools through the calendars so that was very handy and that is from Umair what is the best tool for task tracking which is the most effective so for us we are using Gira boards for all the task tracking for the issues that are under development that need to be picked up or that are done this mechanical board again is one example that we are using we have different columns to do ready for development in progress ready for QA and send to you or then at the last we have a column name done so all the tasks are there visible to all the teams all the team members that are there for that particular project or product so that's how we are managing all the development and updates within all the team members even if they are working different time zone so that if any member has a task from ready to do column names if the task is assigned to him and they are in the progress column so once he is done the task he assigns that to the QA and once the QA is done with the task so he assigns that to you so once he has done the testing the user perspective he has he's okay with that so he moves to ready to live column the DevOps has made moved that to the live so one after that the PO moves that task to the done so that's how we are managing and obviously within each task or within each issue the comments section everyone is updated about the progress about any issues or if any of the task is going on hold so everyone is updated on that task again as I mentioned earlier Asana we preferred and in Asana almost all the features that Mr. Imran discussed they are almost same in most of the tools that you use but in Asana I like that you can see the time when the start and end is there and for the graphic you can see that you can clearly get an idea of how much time a team member can manage that I would just like to summarize it we are already at 7 12 so Mr. Imran starting with you if you would just like to have a key takeaways from the discussion today my key takeaways will be again act as a leader if you are expecting your employees, your team to be there with you so if you are expecting them to follow all the timelines you should be yourself presenting yourself as a leader you should be there following all the timelines you should be there in all the meetings even couple of minutes before that meeting so it's a win-win for both obviously work from home time lines or coffee sometimes get tough after working hours can extend in the morning or at late night as well so if they are doing commitments so you should be there with them as well and once if anyone is working outside their comfort zone outside their working hours they need special acknowledgement as well and talking about that acknowledgement one smart point before I leave I have set up a channel called Kurodos so everyone can post anything into that channel for example if I have done something good I have done something positive out of my routine so my manager or my lead is going to mention my name into that channel and whole organization in both time zones is already added into that channel so everyone feels very good obviously being appreciated in front of everyone and in front of whole management in front of whole organization that if I have done something good or if anyone in my team has done anything positive so he is going to be recognized into that channel which is visible to everyone across the board as well so that's how we keep everyone motivated and on their toes what could be your key summary takeaways definitely a phobia that it can only be done in the office all those things will be over we can also work from home and even then I will recommend that it should be a policy HR should be at least we need one day a week work from home if we are going to daily office we should follow this it will be more easy for us even in our office we are continuing our practice our half team is coming to office we are working from home even if you have some issue or you are coming home late again if you have to travel too much to the office you can send a text to HR and confirm that you can work from home the second thing is if you want to manage it will be very difficult for you when you are with your team members or peers we have to meet our task deadlines within time but if you are working from home you need to stay motivated if you are not motivated your team can't be motivated this is the second key point communication you should be available to them the time they need basically being a team member or something else but if you are working as a program manager you need to be available to your team for all their queries you can't say that at 10 pm being a female we can't talk you have to do the work you have to communicate with your clients so communication you have to see it clearly the work from home practice if you think that you can improve your efficiency then you have to turn off your devices so do that as well because we might have not done it but during this phase we used Skype Zoom and mobile and we sacrificed our family time so if you want to get free turn your devices off just get a relaxed time if you relax for 1-2 hours you will be fresh at the same energy level and improve your efficiency and I think I don't have an idea should I mention this but working from home the most difficult thing was that I had to make tea by myself in the day otherwise I would have made tea in the office so we never mentioned them the supporting staff that is facilitating you whatever you need is available so working from home was a negative point that we had to do everything but in the office you were getting full facilities still working from home is an option but I think it should be a combo even regular work hours if you get one day where you can work from home that will be great if you give a little flexibility with your team then I think productivity will improve that's all from my side thank you I think one of the main learnings for me as well is whether it is project management team management remote or in house before executing everything your self management whether it is project managers leaders or bosses if they are self organized or self managed so I believe we should be looking into that basically as a nation management planning pre-planning in that we are good but this is an area that if I believe we could achieve a lot definitely so thank you everyone once again Imran Saheb and Sami had to leave early again for your time the recording of this session would be available on YouTube on Nitsquid's official channel so whoever has joined today they can definitely access it over there once it's uploaded so I'll be sharing the link for that on the same event page thank you G take care a lot this thank you so much Amna thank you for your time