Remote work is a concept that does not require a specific location to operate successfully. Let’s think of it this way: despite commuting to a workplace each day to work from an appointed desk, remote employees can execute their projects and surpass their goals wherever they want.
Such remote teams can be from different countries or the same country or city. It’s just that everyone will work from their place, without having to go to the office.
It makes a lot of sense to hire a dedicated software development team during the current Covid-19 crisis to implement development projects. Remote developers are flexible, cost less than local talent, and top-tier people give high performance to the team.
But managing it can be a challenge as remote elements often introduce unique challenges, usually related to communication, project management, and acculturation. It can be difficult to approach organizational issues that come with the management of remote employees across the globe.
In this article, we will guide you on how to run the remote software development team effectively. Let’s figure it out together.
Hire The Right People For Your Remote Teams:
When you hire remote developers , the hiring process should be the same as when you are hiring for the main office.
You should ensure that your team is not only the best qualified but also fit for organizational goals and work objectives.
Look for people who are passionate about performing great work and solving interesting problems. Along with key capabilities, trust and responsibility are primarily important when hiring a remote team. Some points should be on the manager’s checklist while hiring a remote development team are:
- Self-learners who pick up new skills
- Team-oriented
- Decision maker
- Clear and organized explanation
Define Work Procedure:
Clearly state the project guidelines for productivity, teamwork, and accountability to your employees. Explain the project, describe the goals in detail, set clear tasks, and review the requirements to make sure you have included all functionality. Your remote team can operate faster and give more accurate quotes if you clearly state your project’s approach.
Discuss how often you conduct project meetings and what communication tools you utilize. Concur with your project manager for a quick summary session after each meeting to create new goals and analyze the decisions you have taken.
To assure that everyone is working as per your requirement, invest your time in:
- A complete outline of what is expected
- The lining of responsibilities and rules
- Setting goals and objectives
- Calculating deadlines
However, this seems to be time-consuming for the first time, but after dividing the tasks into goals and giving explanations and suggestions on what is needed really pays off in the end.
Communication Should Run On A Schedule:
Your remote team will be working from a different location and perhaps from a different time zone. Hence, you should set a schedule that determines what hours remote workers should be online. Strictly keeping scheduled meetings will help organize your day and your team’s workflow. Besides, it will eliminate the time gap and Delay in project launching.
Make certain to inform your team in advance about the upcoming meeting as regular updates help to keep everybody on board. Managers should create open communication channels to establish consistent, recurring team dialogue, and encourage an all-in-one communication tool for continuous contact to ensure everyone is on the same page.
Automate Everything That Could Be Automated:
Reducing the amount of manual work by implementing automation is another thing to observe. Automate repetitive work, time-sapping, and doesn’t have to perform by employees. Hence, your team can focus on tasks and processes in a way that requires their input, expertise, and knowledge rather than wasting time on monotonous and iterations.
Therefore, automate the process which can be automated as it will save your time as well as efforts. Also, automated solutions reduce the number of human errors and blunders.
Transform remote work with transparency:
The primary tool that you can employ in remote project management is transparency. The more they know about overall strategies and decisions made at the top, the better. Make sure to document all the information and send it to all your team members. Transparency helps your remote team understand what success means to your company and what they must do to achieve it.
Thus, transparency and accountability are important factors. You should extend a dedicated development team that can articulate their project roles and obligations.
Fix the Tools for Remote Teams:
Software teams need a variety of specialized tools to do their work. This may include specialized hardware, software solutions, or both. A remote team consisting of a common email service, file sharing capability, instant messaging platform, a project management software, a video conferencing tool, etc. is considered the most efficient.
Some of these tools are very expensive. Using the wrong tool means that projects take longer and may have lower quality than you expect. It is significant to make sure that the remote software development team is using the right tools while working
Hence, Include your team members when deciding which tools you should get and which ones to skip as they would have a better knowledge about it.
Conclusion:
Managing a remote development team can be challenging in terms of achieving an excellent level of productivity. With the right attitude, right tools, and proper planning distance is an opportunity rather than an obstacle. We hope the above guidelines will assist you to build an effective, efficient, and energetic remote team as a manager and leader.