How to Manage Remote Development Team: A Complete Guide

Quick Summary: Looking to hire a remote development team? Great, but hey, first watch out for the best practices to manage the remote teams. It’s easy to hire a remote team but it’s difficult to optimally handle them. However, if you want to master how to manage your remote development team, don’t miss out on reading the whole article below!

Remote work, remote jobs, work from home, and work from anywhere are the new catchphrases buzzing around the world. After the COVID-19 pandemic, companies have switched to remote working options for employees. It makes the business run smoothly no matter what. So, employees get the leverage to work from home in their comfort zone. 

However, this initiative has been started with the motive of eliminating the spread of the deadly disease. It has changed the perspective of working in the corporate world. People begin to like working remotely. Also, remote employees find their productivity way better at home. Instead of working from the office, a remote approach will benefit you in saving costs on infrastructure. 

It has become normal for employees to ask for remote opportunities. 35% of the people enjoy working from home all the time instead of visiting the office. As a result, hiring a remote team is a piece of cake today. But the catch here is managing a remote software development team. 

Being a software development company for over a decade, we have gained insights into hiring and managing remote teams. Our developers have been making the client project reach its final goals. In this article, you will learn how to manage and work with your remote development team. 

Beginning with basics by introducing what a remote team is.

Remote Software Development Team: Overview

The remote development team is a group of people who work together on a defined software development project from their location. Such remote groups include professionals with different skills from various regions of the world. So, they follow the work-from-home (WFH) or work-from-anywhere policy. You can even hire your remote team and get started with your project through online mode. 

The remote development team has the potential to deliver any software and application project. It has also been classified among the IT outsourcing strategy that makes you work with talents across multiple time zones.

Having proper systems set up, the remote team is connected through online mode. Sharing daily task updates and establishing communication channels gives a corporate atmosphere. Hence, the remote working culture remains similar to the office following the company norms. It just makes minor variations as teams are working from their comfort zone.

Working for the company goals is the motto of the remote team. It builds a good balance of work and personal life. However, the company has to efficiently manage the whole remote team, which brings some challenges. You need to address such challenges as the cost to hire software developers remotely incurred for a long duration. So, let’s have a quick view of such challenges;

• It becomes difficult to maintain internal communication
• The micromanagement approach is intimidating for remote workers
• Time-zone differences may affect the task completion journey
• If the company doesn’t interact with the remote team periodically, it creates a gap between the departments
• Undefined workflow and hierarchy of the teams
• Difficulty in task management among the team
• Lack of collaborative efforts for the project

Thus, you need assistance in dealing with the remote team. Here you will be getting to unlock some hacks or tips for managing remote development teams.

11 Significant Tips to Manage Remote Software Development Team

1) Describe the company’s guidelines clearly

First comes first, you need to clearly and precisely define your company guidelines and rules to the team. It is the basic yet critical aspect. Usually, it is essential at the time of onboarding the remote employees. So, the team will be well aware of the regulations of working from home. It includes the following stuff;

• Shift timing
• Daily responsibilities
• Break hours
• Leave policy
• Attending meetings 
• Availability
• Communication Protocols
• Task deadlines, etc.

When working with a remote team, these prerequisites showcase your company’s needs. Accordingly, remote workers can analyze working conditions. So, it establishes a mutual agreement between the company and the remote development team. To get an understanding of the hiring process, you can check out our article for CTOs and CEOs on how to hire software developers! 

2) Schedule weekly/monthly meetup sessions

The remote development team stays away from the office team members. As a result, it becomes even more important to maintain a cordial connection. Having a routine meeting with all the team members increases their interaction. It is a pro tip to manage the remote development team. So, it makes the company and teams discuss and define the new targets. 

A healthy virtual meeting every week or once a month helps you manage a remote team proficiently. Aside from that, the remote development team which is located in different places might have feelings of loneliness or fear of missing out (FOMO). Moreover, the face-to-face meeting boosts their morale and feeling of getting equally valued as the in-house team. So, the remote development team can communicate and work accordingly. 

It makes the team leaders and project managers build networks with all the remote development teams. As a result, it assists in achieving desirable business goals with collective efforts. 

3) Plan streamlined workflow among teams

Develop and deploy workflow among remote team members in a simplified pipeline. The priorities and deadlines clarity play a prominent role in managing and working with remote teams. It can become more straightforward by utilizing the relevant and best remote team management tools. Here are some of the tools that work for you;

• Employee management tool
• Reporting portals
• Time desk tracker
• Project management tool
• Attendance entry portal and many more.

Many misinterpret such systems set up as spying on the remote development team. But that’s not the case. It’s used to streamline the business workflow among the departments. 

Anyways, you can get a centralized tool with all-inclusive features of the above tools. It prevents rummaging on different tools. Employers and remote employees can oversee the task status, attendance, meeting schedules, files, important announcements, and so on. 

Having said that, we have a precise solution on how to manage a remote development team, i.e., develop a remote team management application. Our experts have delivered robust tools to the client and it has helped in simplifying the management of his business. 

Thus, it assists in ensuring the productivity of remote teams and keeps track of their activity.

4) Review remote employees’ performance

Utilizing remote team management solutions, allows you to have a systematic record of each employee’s performance. The employers and higher-level managers can review the performance and efficiency. Accordingly, companies can manage to offer fair appraisals and increments to the remote team.

Similarly, if there is a backlog in the overall performance of the remote development team, the company can address it efficiently. Therefore, it gives remote workers and managers a sure-shot view of the recent status. It allows remote employees to take further measures based on the review metrics to improve performance.

5) Set standard communication network

Communication is key to building and maintaining long relationships, whether it’s between clients — companies, or remote employees. To stay connected and informed about each other at the workplace is really important. As a result, the remote development team should encompass great communication skills.

For instance, if your remote development team is facing some system glitches, they can communicate it with the management directly.

Moreover, if a new project is introduced, communicating its needs such as types of software development, and technology stack is important. Hence, it will eliminate the problems beforehand. This can be possible only with proper communication channels. Also, it increases the engagement of the remote employees with their colleagues.

6) Offer learning and growth opportunities

Now coming to the most negligible part which may impact the efficiency of the remote development team. The company must provide learning opportunities to the remote team. Deploying skill development programs virtually opens the door for enhanced results.

Consequently, it will make your company widen the scope for clients from multiple horizons. On the counterpart, the remote teams also wish to have career growth. If your company fails to drive such skills and career advancement training sessions, it leads to early resignations of remote teams. Therefore, it is important to maintain the employee retention rate as well. 

7) Provide extensive support

Managing and working with a remote development team brings a set of understandings for both work and non-work-related things. The remote team is working from their home which makes them accountable for handling their family or personal duties. So, it becomes important to offer them support in the work forefront. 

The higher managers or team leaders should take the initiative to deliver their support to remote employees for projects. It builds long-term relationships among the team members. Also, the support boosts the morale of the remote team and keeps them motivated.

Related: Team Extension vs Dedicated Development Team

8) Execute virtual team-building activities

For any organization today, developing interpersonal skills and team activities is a pivotal aspect. Accordingly, team building becomes part of tips for managing remote software engineering teams. Being the company or employer, you have to implement virtual team-building programs. For instance, you can organize a weekly virtual meetup for some fun and lightning online activities. 

Employee interaction and teamwork are enhanced with such virtual activities. Also, remote working may become boring after a while. Having meetups for some time to play fun games and communicate with the team members is an effective break. Thus, it builds good rapport among the team members and balances their remote working environment.

9) Celebrate or appreciate the team’s milestones

Next comes the most undervalued area which gets ignored many times is appreciation. The remote team being located far away from the office premises, needs to catch up on the workplace culture. Thus, appreciation and rewards are something that keeps them motivated and encourages their efforts. It gives realization of their importance and value for the organization.

Every organization should fabricate policies on appreciating team members for their milestones. It can either be in monetary benefit or any other perks. This is among the best tactics for managing and working with remote development teams. On the other hand, it will increase remote employees’ loyalty to the organization.

10) Organize Business Trips for Remote Team

Always having a virtual meeting and chatting isn’t enough. Once in a year or 6 months, it’s good to make business trips for remote development teams. The most exciting and employee-friendly way to manage remote teams is by planning a business outing. There is nobody who doesn’t like trips, isn’t there? So, organize a short business trip with remote employees amid a work collaboration and project discussion. 

Well, taking a break from work chores and gathering with remote and in-house teams is an enjoyable part of itself. It creates valuable memories and builds personal bonds. Aside from that, playing fun games and individual thoughts makes remote teams sociable. Therefore, it helps provide a healthy and open work culture to remote teams.

11) Collect Remote Teams’ Genuine Feedback

No matter how the employee-centric approach an organization follows, employees, especially the remote development team, always have some concerns. It’s better to take their feedback about your company periodically. You can also make a questionnaire and circulate it among the remote team. 

By answering the questions, you can get views of what the remote team is thinking about the company. It gives clarity to making new modifications depending on their responses. Apart from this, you can also get one-on-one feedback on their work and relationships with other team members. 

So, it makes the remote team feel acknowledged as their concerns are highlighted and considered. Consequently, it brings the remote team’s trust in the organization and management. 

Get Your Remote Development Team Now!

With the business scaling the worldwide market, it becomes important to mobilize and work with global talents. It is also beneficial to make the software development project cost-effective. Therefore, if you are really in need of a reliable and experienced remote development team, we can make it up for you. 

Rlogical Techsoft is an expert and recognized software development company. Having a client base from different regions, we have dedicated developers allotted to serve the peculiar needs of the project. Hiring our skilled App developers will totally delegate your hassle to us. 

From managing the remote team to sending the task update, our team leaders and project managers will handle it all. So, you can freely prioritize the other major matters. Whatever your location is, our remote team can be available depending on your requirements and deliver custom software solutions!