Remote Teams Guide: How to Manage Your Remote Software Development Team
The remote format of cooperation has become a trend in recent years and is not going to slow down. It is convenient both for companies and for the employees themselves, therefore, in the field of IT technologies and programming, it has become an integral part. As of 2024, the number of vacancies in these areas for remote work has grown to 75%.
But for leaders, building the right management of a remote development team remains a challenge. Today we will talk about exactly this. Unfortunately, effective management is not limited to the correct use of time during the working day and the organization of space. Everything is much more interesting, so let's take a look at the concept of a “remote team” and how to properly manage it.
What is a “remote team”?
Many companies from different fields began to use remote collaboration in their practice. The format is different. For example, attracting several employees from another city/country for permanent or project cooperation, as well as working with office workers remotely.
The main essence of such teams is not joint activities while they are in other countries with different time zones, but the absence of the need to constantly be in the office. That is, employees can live in your city and work from home that have not need to wear a business attire. This format allows you to save on the arrangement of workplaces and process management.
Remote communication and workflow design are the main challenges for such collaboration. Let's take a look at a few recommendations for resolving them.
How to manage a remote software development team
The main purpose of the article is to provide practical advice that will establish the process of managing a team from different angles. Let's get started!
Different time zones
If you are collaborating with a team/staff from other countries and you are in different time zones, you should use a “golden watch”. They will cover the difference so you and your team can easily customize your workflow.
For the calculation, you only need to know the time zone of both sides. For example, you are in Canada, and your team is in the UK, that is, the difference between you is 5 hours. This means that the optimal time for your interaction is from 14.00 to 18.00. During this period, you can hold meetings, conferences, and other agreements.
But there are countries between which the time difference is too great. For example, when it is 7 am in Canada, it is already 5 pm in India. In this case, the golden watch rule does not work, and other ways must be found to maintain interaction. It is best to use reports by type:
● tasks completed for yesterday;
● plans for today;
● problems preventing the completion of tasks.
These reports should be sent daily before the start of the working day.
To calculate the “golden hours”, you can use online services such as EveryTimeZone and TimeAndDate.
Remote employee competencies
90% of the success of the remote collaboration is the right candidates. Find the right people for your team in 3 easy steps:
● select the most important competencies that your employee should have;
● for each competency, select the qualities and skills that the candidate should have;
● Put it all together to make it easier for the recruiting manager to interview.
They will help you structure the rubrics not only when hiring, but also when managing your team. With these steps, you will be able to track the competence and performance of your employees. Instead of the second step, it is enough to use the checkboxes opposite each quality and skill, and then analyze the data once a week or a month.
For example, for a software developer, the most important competence is knowledge of programming languages and their algorithms. Show them in the heading using a scale and monitor the results.
If your candidate has not previously worked in a remote collaboration environment, it doesn’t matter. Your main task is to check his level of professional affiliation. Ask for examples of work and rate them. Give him time to adapt and support him in the early stages.
During the interview, it is worth assessing the two most important qualities of remote developers - trust and accountability. Thanks to them, you can understand how a candidate suits you as a team player, and whether he can stay with you for a long time.
Adaptation and training
Starting a partnership without a trial period is dangerous for your company. Let it be just a couple of trial weeks, but you will be able to assess the competence and professional qualities of a software developer. Even if it seems that the new employee is a great professional with a huge baggage of experience, he may not be able to cope with your tasks.
Involve the remote team in your work, try to provide basic training on the specifics of your company, and help it at every step. Providing practical resources, like a genset silent for uninterrupted power supply, can also ensure smoother remote operations.
Provide employees with all the tools available to automate workflows. It is extremely important for a programmer to deal with the main tasks and not be sprayed with secondary ones. If you haven’t automated workflows yet, do it.
Create specific work procedures
Certain consistent workflows are required to be productive. We offer 5 fundamentals of effective management, and if they are simply important for office work, then for remote work they are mandatory:
- Establish guiding principles for workflow, teamwork, and accountability so that everyone knows their entire list of responsibilities.
- Create a plan of work on the project, its purpose, and requirements for the final result. Leave it all to the developers and make sure they get it. Without a clear vision, good results cannot be achieved.
- List the optimal time to complete each task, even if your remote employees are professionals.
- If you want to contact 1 or 2 programmers - write to them on the LAN. If you write a message to the group, the whole team will be distracted and, possibly, additional questions will follow.
- Let's give complete answers to all developer questions. Recheck all project requirements to rule out the possibility of incorrectly drafted clauses.
Creating a work plan will lead to an understanding of which experiences are positive and which are negative. Remember that you work with your employees remotely, so you may not always be able to detect mistakes in a timely manner during communication and work. This can make collaboration difficult and prevent you from completing the project on time.
It is also worth excluding micromanagement, especially if you are not a software developer yourself. When you have hired a team - let it open up. Do not indicate what to do, and do not give solutions to problems when you are not asked. Otherwise, the project will fail. Give a clear statement of what the result should be, tell about the task and its main difficulties - all the rest the employees are able to do themselves.
Be transparent
Working in the office presupposes a constant presence - whether you're managing tiny homes for sale in California or coordinating software teams, everyone knows all the information about all employees, processes within the framework of their duties and the affairs of the company. Maintaining such a relationship with a remote software development team is difficult. But this is very important to establish. Prepare a presentation or a few lectures about the company and its employees, talk about all the changes during online meetings. Workers must believe that they are part of the working organism and not an unimportant part.
Scheduling meetings
If you are working with a team with a different time zone than yours, consider this when scheduling meetings. If there are no "golden hours" for your cooperation, you will have to exclude them altogether.
For everyone else, schedule daily, weekly, monthly, and other reporting demos in advance. List all the questions that need to be asked to employees, warn them about the time and make sure they understand when to get in touch. And, of course, remember that video conferencing and video reporting should not be extremely dry, so everyone is afraid of them. Add some humor and informal conversation.
Also, keep the minutes of all online meetings, this is a great way for everyone to evaluate themselves from the outside and get a little hint in the form of a to-do list or important details.
Do not cancel appointments as this can give the remote team the false impression that you have forgotten about them. Only in the most extreme cases can you reschedule them.
Personal connections
Discussion of exclusive work issues will not allow building a trusting relationship between you and your employees. Distance is already creating barriers, and lack of emotional connections during online meetings will lead to an unhealthy work environment. This, subsequently, will become the basis for the decline in productivity.
In a face-to-face meeting, raise questions about lifestyle, hobbies, hobbies, attitudes, and principles. Give these discussions an informal subtext and be friendlier. This will build trust, increase workflow engagement and increase productivity.
Pay attention to building personal relationships with each developer. They can bring up interesting ideas for problem-solving. But during general meetings, most often there is not enough time for this, or the employee may be afraid to express his opinion for the review of all colleagues. It is better to hold such meetings 2 times a month so as not to overload the employee and have time to listen to all his suggestions.
Team member remuneration
Don't forget to compliment your remote workers. Even if they have made mistakes or decreased productivity, they will gain more confidence if they know they are appreciated. Use a few simple rules:
● thank the developer for every idea, even if it didn't fit;
● make memorable gifts after completing the work plan, even inexpensive corporate gifts will be a pleasant bonus;
● Start every online meeting by praising the tasks completed.
● Offer cash rewards for overfulfilling the plan.
If that doesn't matter to you, remember, a healthy team spirit leads to incredible results.
Pair programming
Using pair programming has become a great way to improve the quality of your work. It is based on the simultaneous work on the same task by two programmers at once. They can be performed in an online meeting environment or offline. Developers can write the same code, which will eliminate possible errors. In addition, they will be able to share skills and best practices with each other, strengthen friendly ties, and increase the speed of completing tasks.
Yes, making this collaboration permanent is a bad idea, just like asking developers to work together for several hours at a time. Let them be small tasks that can be completed in a couple of hours. For example, ask them to check the correctness of the code or write a small part of it from scratch.
Communication outside of work
Maintaining relationships outside of work should be ongoing. Gather online meetings with the development team at least once a week, and chat on distracted topics. They don't have to be long. Use some online games or team building sessions. They will help all employees relax and truly relax.
Control
Remote collaboration provides some leeway for employees, but they should not be allowed to use it. At the beginning of work, strict supervision of the allocation of time should be exercised. Over time, you can weaken it. You need to make sure that the team will get the job done on time.
Unfortunately, more than 50% of information leaks occur precisely because of insiders. But making total control or recording screen data is also not permissible. When you are confident in your subordinates, you should only track their working hours if they cooperate on an hourly basis or your whole company works according to the principles of time management.
Do not follow every step of the programmers and do not burden them with unnecessary tasks. Give them the opportunity to find solutions on their own. And to check the progress of work, it is enough to use time tracking tools or regular written reports. Tune in to the fulfillment of global goals, and leave the secondary ones for a specific day of the week.
Track results
If earlier we talked about control of freedom of action, now we want to highlight the issue of tracking the results of work on a project. To do this, it is worth using several performance indicators:
● principles of time management;
● an objective assessment of the capabilities of each developer;
● providing only feasible work;
● tracking the execution of tasks using counters;
● reflection of the results in graphs and figures, with their further analysis.
Using them, you get everything you need to evaluate performance. On their basis, you can conduct online meetings and analyze each result separately. Each team member will be able to understand where he was right and where he made a mistake.
Time tracking tools are suitable for the assessment. Each of the employees can install one of them on their computer and send a report every day. But this entails providing incorrect data. Use special industrial accounting methods:
- Jira is a standard tool used specifically for software development. Despite the complexity and piled-up functionality, it performs the most important tasks. Kanban boards are universal accounting records. They are easy to operate. Everything is configurable on an intuitive level. Moreover, they integrate easily with other programs.
- Asana is a cheaper alternative to Jira. The trial version accommodates up to 15 participants at once. The user interface will please more than the competitive program. It is more structured and easier to use, while in terms of functionality it is in no way inferior.
Use each of them for your work to assess which one is most suitable.
Conclusion
Don't be afraid to switch to collaborating with remote teams. Even if it seems impossible to you, you should know that we have analyzed 14 practical tips for the correct management of programmers, because it is not difficult at all. Today, most of the world's software leaders have moved out of the office. Their employees are scattered around the world, and each of them feels comfortable. Today, you can fully control the workflow of your programmers, even if they are thousands of kilometers away. And new technologies will help to be constantly in touch, so as not to lose a minute of "golden hours" and working time in general.
Hopefully, you now understand how to manage collaboration with a remote software development team and can build it in an efficient way.
