Wrike Blog

When an internal memo from Yahoo! leaked to the public back in February 2013, there was a collective groan not just from people working in the company, but also from supporters of remote work in general. The memo banned remote work for all Yahoo! staff and cited that more effective collaboration would happen face-to-face — that it all begins with being physically present in the office. A Yahoo! spokesperson clarified that banning work from home was not a blanket repudiation of remote work,...

Collaboration remains a hot topic because it still works. In fact our CEO recently wrote a guest post on Inc.com stating that collective wisdom, crowdsourcing, and project collaboration are essential for the growth of a business or movement today — they should be integral parts of every company's DNA in order to survive and thrive. If you look at the factors that enable collaboration to occur on a massive scale, you’ll see three main trends shaping project collaboration and driving the ad...

The way we work is rapidly evolving. Mobile technology and cloud services make distance meaningless — it’s easier than ever to connect with colleagues around the world and access work from any device, anywhere. But achieving fruitful collaboration with distributed teams is still fraught with challenges. Tips for using a Collaboration Tool for Remote Teams If you're using a collaboration tool to deal with remote teams, then we have five simple tips that can help optimize the situation a...

When I spoke about remote collaboration at a July dinner meeting of the PMI Silicon Valley Chapter, one of the attendees raised a good point. Telling about his experience of managing diverse international teams, he highlighted how important it is to learn something about the employees’ habits and interests outside of the office. For example, he has always been curious about different national holidays and their meaning. This brought him a better understanding of his team members’ cultural ba...

Meet-ups with fellow project managers keep bringing up thought-provoking discussions and interesting ideas on how to maximize the efficiency of project teams. This time, I want to share some notes from the February dinner meeting of the PMI LA Chapter. After my presentation that focused on the ways of making distributed teams efficient, one of the most interesting questions that I heard from the audience was how to introduce a team to a granular work breakdown. No matter how talented and ex...

After the short holiday break, the new year quickly gained momentum. The first event on my 2013 speaking calendar was the dinner meeting at PMI Dallas Chapter. The topic of remote collaboration and its efficiency brought up a great discussion. The engagement of the audience is a clear sign of how many project managers face the challenge of dealing with mobile workforce today. And the trend  will only expand: as Wrike’s survey revealed, every fourth worker foresees his or her office going vir...

Do you occasionally shoot out a quick business email while on the go, or sometimes work from home? If this is your work style, it actually looks like you’re with the majority. According to our recent online survey, 83% out of 1,000+ employees spend at least an hour or two working remotely every day. We asked you and other people representing companies of all sizes, from solopreneurs to Fortune 500 corporations, how you feel about virtual collaboration and where you see it going. Your input...

 My post about The Secret Ingredients of a Successful Distributed Team turned out to be quite popular, so I decided to follow up on it by sharing a slide deck I recently presented to the Information Management Forum members (IMF). I was invited to speak about virtual teams, as well as how companies can easily overcome challenges connected with their set up. The presentation has 5 practical tips on how to make your virtual project team more efficient. The list is not complete, and there’s alw...

What are the advantages of a 100% virtual office? First, it’s inexpensive. You don’t have to pay for rent. Second, it gives people from different locations an opportunity to work together easily. Third, you can access your business data 24/7 from any computer. Yet, to be truly productive, a virtual office has to be well-organized. This can be hard to achieve when you get heaps of e-mails every day, which ruin your productivity. This is the kind of problem many small and midsiz...