How to Manage a Remote Development Team: 6 Proven Strategies

Increasing an organization's employee efficiency and sustaining high performance is a topic that requires constant reassessment. The pandemic necessitated working from home for many employees. A considerable percentage of employees now work remotely from different corners of the world. It has become critical to ensure that remote work experience is productive for employees and organizations.

This blog will walk you through six proven strategies to effectively manage your remote development team. Make sure to incorporate these strategies before you start to hire remote developers and build your engineering team. But before we dive into the strategy to manage teams, let’s discuss how you can build a remote team of software developers.

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How to build a remote development team?

When working with remote teams in a software development company, the fundamental concept is to preserve work consistency while allowing for flexible work hours. This necessitates proper work planning. Foresee possible difficulties and take proactive measures to resolve them as a manager.

Building trust is a typical approach to managing teams, particularly remote teams. Managers must have faith in their workforce to be committed and motivated to work successfully.

At the end of the day, it's all about the people you hire and how you carefully select the best people who would complete your team with their unique skills.

There are plenty of online job portals that help you hire remote developers. Use one of the most trustworthy online platforms and utilize rigorous vetting processes to pick the top remote software developers worldwide based on tech stacks, skills, and seniority.

However, before promoting your vacant job post, it's best to define clear development needs. Once you know what kind of resource you want, create a targeted job description. Make sure to mention the skills and expertise you want, tech requirements, and employee benefits. Once a candidate has passed through the initial screening and assessments, ensure to conduct a face-to-face interview to get deeper insights into their skills and additional expertise.

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6 Strategies to efficiently manage a remote development team

1. Establish your targets

Establishing short and long-term goals is essential for employees and the organization. While assembling and managing development teams, it is necessary to remember that the modern workforce is more concerned with continuous learning and self-improvement than stability. As a result, it becomes vital to establish a clear goal to link your team’s interests with the company's objectives.

2. Strengthen your team's communication.

Maintaining effective communication channels is the primary requirement for managing a software development team. Working remotely does not mean you can’t collaborate with your virtual team. In fact, uninterrupted and continuous communication brings the same level, if not more, of innovation to the table.

Without face-to-face communication, it might be hard to distinguish the intent of communications sent between you and your team members, which is an apparent difficulty in managing remote developers. Undoubtedly, it's more challenging to comprehend a text message.

So, you can begin your day with a video conference rather than a lengthy conversation on Slack/Teams/Email. Maintain a routine for meetings. This is especially effective when you are managing a larger software development team.

Individual check-ins through phone or Skype may be best if you manage a smaller group. The critical point is to convey priorities, keep projects on track, and keep ideas flowing. This will assist you in avoiding misunderstandings and helping you and your team members move forward in sync.

It may require extra work for remote employees to establish online communications. This may initially appear unrealistic, but encouraging your employees to communicate frequently with you and other team members will help you increase productivity. It could help to have an employee app.

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3. Identify and provide the required tools.

A critical component of successfully managing remote development teams is ensuring that the relevant tools are easily accessible to every team member. Project management software such as Trello, Workzone, and Zoho Projects become essential when managing a team remotely. Always hire remote developers with experience working with the software mentioned above.

4. Be empathetic, organized, and trustworthy.

As remote team management is all about teamwork, empathy is a soft skill that pays off in a larger sense. Whether you refer to it as empathy, emotional intelligence, or simple human decency, this fundamental effort can assist teams in establishing and maintaining a good and long-lasting relationship with their colleagues. Also, empathy is unquestionably a necessary talent to test when you start hiring.

5. Foster a sense of belonging

A shared sense of belonging among team members can increase work productivity. According to research, corporate leaders' top talent issues are now culture, engagement, and retention. Over half of corporate leaders and managers consider this a "critical" issue.

Culture is the collection of your organization's behaviors, values, reward systems, and policies. Thus, it is critical to maintaining a specified culture within your firm. And once you have a defined culture, hire candidates who are an excellent cultural fit for your organization.

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6. Recognize exceptional performance.

Positive feedback can be used to show appreciation for work. It can be an excellent motivator for building team spirit. Ensure that you regularly provide constructive feedback to remote team members and encourage colleagues to celebrate triumphs, even online. As a manager, you should establish a habit of publicly praising each team member.

Recognizing remote team members' efforts or superior productivity is critical. When an employee achieves a milestone, send congratulatory emails to express your appreciation for effective and efficient work. This gesture instills a sense of gratitude and recognition in the employee. Additionally, you may show your appreciation for employees by providing them with increments, awards, and gift cards.

The strategies mentioned above not only promote an employee's commitment to you and your firm but also help you manage your team by keeping everyone motivated and happy.

Conclusion

Many companies have adopted remote work since the COVID-19 outbreak. You must know how to effectively manage a remote development team to foster a culture of growth and build innovative solutions. The major strategies you can adopt are establishing your targets, strengthening your team's communication, and identifying and providing the required tools. Promoting a culture full of empathy, discipline, trust, appreciation, and communality will also foster strength among your team.

Author Bio:

Anaswara is a marketing enthusiast who admires impactful ideas. She finds joy in dancing, traveling, etc. Let’s say anything that makes her bring in the adrenaline rush. Into any of these? She is waving at you to join the tribe.