Remote work is growing increasingly popular across industry domains, and many businesses currently switch to predominantly remote teams to handle their routine workload. However, the question of how to manage remote development teams remains uncharted territory for many companies. Businesses are still getting used to the new normal, and not everybody understands how the company can run predominantly on a remote workforce.
Forbes research states that 76% of entrepreneurs believe that remote work will become a standard model for most industries. Today, we are going to explore how you can better manage remote software development teams to maximize their efficiency and truly benefit from that trend.
Establish Clear Communication
One of the critical problems that make it particularly hard to manage remote management team is insufficient communication within the teams and between the teams. You cannot gather your entire team in a meeting room, you cannot meet some of your teammates in the office kitchen, and you cannot check on their progress immediately. You need special tools to build a clear line of communication with the team. For that, you can use online conferencing tools such as Google Meet, Zoom, Skype, Slack, or any other software you prefer.
Staying in touch with your team creates a sort of link between the company’s management and the employees, a link that might have been weakened by remote work. Of course, it does not mean that communication has to be constant to effectively manage remote development teams. Schedule meetings in such a way as to not obstruct the developers from doing their job.
Use Task and Project Management Tools
There exists a variety of task and project management tools you can turn to better manage remote developers. Use any tools you like, such as Jira, Trello, Basecamp – whatever floats your boat. Any and all of those tools can be used for more efficient task management. What you need to remember, though, is that task management tools alone cannot do all the job for you.
Keep the Team Engaged
One of the main things you have to remember about remote teams is that you cannot treat them as your in-house teams. If you ever worked from home yourself, you probably know that it might be hard to organize all of your processes as well as you did back at the office. There are lots of distractors at home too, so it might be hard for some people to be good remote workers. It gets even harder if you need to manage a remote software development team. That is why you need to keep the team engaged via the following methods:
- Small talks – alleviate the working atmosphere with small talks during meetings. Talk about something besides your project and make people interested in each other;
- Promote team spirit – try to get to know people on the team and let them know you. Creating such personal connections makes people care about their team and the project.
- Promote freedom – the more control you enforce, the more likely your team is to dislike you and the project.
- Don’t track time – time tracking is one of the most hated practices among remote workers. Rather give people deadlines and encourage them not to miss those deadlines.
These are simple but rather effective methods on how to manage remote development team that will help you engage the team in the project and create a professional atmosphere. This will help you create a positive vibe within the team while keeping people busy with their tasks.
Establish Clear Performance Indicators
Since we do not recommend using time-tracking tools, there has to be an alternative way to evaluate your team’s performance. Using Key Performance Indicators (KPI) will help you manage remote software development team as it lets you understand whether people are doing the expected amount of input into the project. Typical software developer’s KPIs are the following:
- Velocity
- Flow Efficiency
- Sprint Burndown
- Release Burndown
- Cycle Time
- Cumulative Flow
- Code Coverage
- Code Stability
- Code Simplicity
- Code Churn
The KPIs are specific for every role and you need to assign specific performance metrics to different members of the team to see whether they do their job well. Make sure you assign the right KPIs to the right people and track them regularly to understand who does their job well and who might need a little push. Each team member has to bring something valuable to the table.
Focus on Long-Term Goals
Instead of micromanaging every step of the way, teach your team to follow long-term goals and find their own approach to solving minor challenges. You will soon discover that it is nearly impossible to manage remote developers by controlling every little facet of their work. You cannot do that unless you hire an army of project managers. What you need is to make the team used to autonomous performance in short bursts. Give them a clearly defined goal for a sprint – a week or two, and encourage them to achieve that goal in a way they see fit.
Of course, you cannot leave developers completely on their own. You need to be approachable in case they need any guidance. Also, you should promote intra-team communication. Make sure your developers communicate with each other even when you are not present. Let them solve their challenges and achieve goals without you behind their shoulders.
Conclusion
It is quite challenging to manage remote software development team but it surely is possible. More so, it can be done as effectively as with the in-house teams while cutting major expenses related to maintaining sprawling offices. Basically, what you get is the same efficiency for a fraction of the price. But remote teams require a peculiar approach and you cannot manage remote teams the same way as you would manage in-house teams.
With the methods we’ve discussed above, you can take the efficiency of your remote team to a whole new level and guarantee smooth project delivery across all stages of the software development life cycle.
