How to Effectively Manage Your Remote Software Development Team

If you’ve only managed on premise teams, you may not be so sure about your management style when working with a team located in another country or working from home.

While managing a remote team does have its challenges, you can bridge the gap between your in-house and remote teams and keep everyone accountable, efficient, and productive.

A big challenge for managers working with remote software developers is changing their own thinking and accepting that the developer will not be in plain sight but that managers can still be able to supervise and watch the job being done.

In this article, we’ll look at essential steps and approaches to manage your off-shore or remote software development team appropriately and effectively. In a nutshell, we’ll highlight tips and techniques that will assist you in:

• Establishing a good working relationship with each member of the remote team.
• Keeping an eye on the team's performance.
• Ascertaining if your team is aware of your strategy and knows what to do.
• Keeping your goals and objectives at the forefront of your thoughts.

Businesses and managers must incorporate a number of mechanisms to track progress, eliminate duplicate workloads, and improve productivity under this new remote working paradigm. Such procedures will ultimately benefit both managers and employees.

Here’re some top tips and best practices for managing software projects done by remote teams:

 

1. Transparency on project detail plays a crucial role

 

When committing your project to remote developers you must be open and honest with your team about all aspects of the project. Simply assigning tasks without a thorough understanding of the project's goals, problems, and milestones will cause you more harm than good.

Make all team members aware of the roadmaps, encourage them to participate fully, and set up regular virtual team meetings.

 

2. Schedule communications

 

Your remote team may be based in a different city or country and, most likely, in a different time zone. Maintaining strict attendance at regular meetings will help you organize your day and the workflow of your team.

Meetings that aren't scheduled on time might lead to communication breakdowns, which can cause your project's launch to be delayed. Many consumers prefer Ukraine time because it is conveniently placed within three time zones of the rest of Europe.

 

3. Tools for remote teams

 

Tools are necessary for remote team communication since they help in your team's work. An effective remote team will have a set of tools, including email, file sharing, instant messaging, project management software, video conferencing, and anything else necessary.

There are also numerous collaboration tools available to help with well-structured communication. For example, you can use the following all-in-one solutions to organize, prioritize, speak about work, send files, and manage your projects:

• Troop Messenger,
• BasicOps,
• TipHive,
• Hibox,
• Paymo,
• Hive, etc.

 

4. Stay transparent

 

It's easy to forget about folks in your office who you don't see every day. However, you must keep the remote workers updated about company events.

Everyone should be informed of the company's goals, critical choices, strategy revisions, and other key information.

Make sure to keep track of everything and email it to everyone on your team, whether they're on-site or not.

 

5. Build processes

 

It's quite doubtful that putting random people from all over the world in a virtual setting will result in them producing excellent work right away. Processes are required to make it happen.

It’s, therefore, critical for your project to have a process-oriented approach to managing a remote team. Unless you've been specifically asked to or you can see that the team is underperforming, provide project goals and main points rather than solutions.

Rather than recording every step and delegating smaller chores, teach your motivated team members to solve problems and arrange their work on their own.

Set clear priorities and concentrate on long-term objectives rather than daily objectives.

 

6. Reward your developers

 

Your employees will look to you for approval because you are the leader of your team. Providing duties is one thing but, in team management, giving praise for completed work is quite another. Praise will undoubtedly improve your team's performance.

To get things off to a good start, begin each meeting by praising the work that has already been done. Make sure to mention what you enjoy about the project's progress.

Your team will recognize that they are progressing in the right direction if you can provide constructive compliments.

 

In conclusion

 

If you've always worked with your team in the same building, it may be a bit challenging in the beginning to manage a remote team. However, if you stick through it and learn to manage remote teams, it’ll get easier as you get the hang of it and you'll reap the rewards.

Remember, great talent and coders work in teams, and they are located all across the world. The quality of their work is not influenced so much by their location, but by their participation as a team.