Remote teams are not a new concept. Several organizations have been outsourcing development and support tasks to nearshore and offshore bases for more than a decade. And remote working is gradually increasing given the benefits it gives, like high productivity levels, lower costs, and access to a global talent pool. With the recent COVID-19 outbreak, virtual teams and remote working have truly become mainstream and are being embraced by both employers and employees alike.

The huge shift to remote work this year has presented many new challenges for IT teams—not least of which is the issue of securing the organization when large numbers of employees are now working at home. At PagerDuty, around a fifth of our employees were already based remotely, but the impact of COVID-19 meant that hundreds of other Dutonians had an almost-overnight switch to working away from the office.

At times, directing projects in multiple locales from a desktop or laptop feels like conducting an orchestra in the dark. Coordinating with diverse, remote teams of developers producing software on an agile schedule of continual updates and releases can be especially nerve-wracking. At Sleuth, we’re crushing the remote-work challenge because, in 20 years of managing from afar, we’ve learned a thing or two — actually three — about how to do it right.

A key topic of conversation that comes up again and again with our customers is the challenge of collaboration in a remote work environment. Too many channels of communication or documentation are ineffective, and IT professionals are starting to feel fatigued by never feeling quite “in the know” with business decisions that are happening in real-time. When separated from colleagues, teams can feel distant and unmotivated or find it hard to stay focused.