How to Manage a Remote Software Development Team?

Regardless of the field, you work in, communication and collaboration are undoubtedly essential aspects, which will impact the efficiency of the working team and the final results.

Frankly speaking, when it comes to hiring a dedicated development team, making a collaborative and communicative environment might be a tricky task. This is an especially difficult job in cases when instead of having in-house developers, you decide to choose a dedicated remote software development team.

Choosing between in-house or outsourced remote software teams has a lot of different points of view. One of the major advantages of having on-premises developers is direct developer collaboration itself. In other words, the ability to directly interact with developers creates a more communication-friendly environment and makes development management easier.

But how to hire remote developers to achieve the same high cooperation with a remote software development team? Is offshore team management communication a real deal-breaker, or a well-spread misjudgment?

Remote Software Team Collaboration And Working Process

Regardless of which software development approach you have chosen, you will have to communicate with your developers. IT outsourcing is about delegating tasks, that need to be done, yet keeping up with the process.

You might have just a startup idea and decide to outsource all the technical aspects, having no previous development plans or agreed tech stack. Still, even in such cases, clients have to manage distributed teams and keep up with development progress.

There is no need to even consider the possibility when a client won’t deal with communication and collaboration in software development. Instead, let’s consider what communication techniques are used to manage the development team.

Types of Developer Collaboration and Communication

Surprisingly, there is a wide range of possible collaborative software development types. Mainly, they are divided into internal and external, as well as individual or group communications. The approximate list of these types looks like this:

• Internal collaboration in software development is used within a single team. To make it simple, this type is common when you have a full-fledged dedicated software development team. Therefore, if any developer has any questions, they will get in touch with other team members to find the answers to these questions. Communication and collaboration within a single company are also considered internal.

• External collaboration in software development is opposite to the previous type. It means, that the collaboration takes place with third parties, who do not belong to the remote software team. It may include knowledge sharing with outsiders, or even collaborating with third-party organizations. It is a common practice, used to gather the feedback of users. Hiring a dedicated development team and team extension services are also examples of external collaboration.

The rest types of cooperation are mainly subtypes of the preceding two. Among them, it is possible to distinguish cross-department, cross-team, or virtual collaboration.

However, the foregoing is rather a general conception, than actual offshore team software development collaboration tools and communication methods. Most of the mentioned communication types are combined and used during any software development.

To collaborate effectively with a remote software development team it is worth considering a few major factors, which help to define the terms and ways of communication strategy.

How To Manage Offshore Development Team?

There are two main approaches to doing so.

The first one - is hiring a dedicated development team, and assigning an in-house project manager to the team. As a result, you will always have a confident person, who will be responsible for the offshore team management. In other words, you will have an intermediary between you and the offshore team, who is experienced enough, is aware of the company policies and the goals of the project, and has group communication skills.

The second way includes the same step, yet you will hire an outsourced project manager, who is going to work on the side of the remote software team. The rest of the aspects are very similar to the first approach.

Despite this resemblance between both approaches, they are driven by a completely different logic. To rephrase it, depending on the location of your PM, the communication priorities change:

An in-house team manager prioritizes client awareness. It gives them direct and immediate access to the manager and helps to keep business owners informed all the time. The flip side of such a decision is that your project manager will lack remote team developer collaboration, having only routine and scheduled communication like standups, reports, feedback, etc.

The situation is the opposite when your manager is outsourced and works with its remote software team. As a result, the remote team collaboration with the PM will be faster and more efficient on the internal level, yet might result in scheduling the manager-client communication.

What Is an Offshore Software Development Team?

Offshore software development teams are another way to name outsourced developers. It is a group of app developers for hire, who are engaged as a full-fledged dedicated software development team.

Offshore teams create a specific software product or perform predefined tasks on an ongoing software development project. Still, even these app developers for hire can be divided into different subcategories. Each of them will have its working specifics with different project management strategies.

There are three main types of such approaches:

• Combination of in-house developers with the hired dedicated team, to develop or update some features or perform other agreed assignments.
• Full-fledged remote software development teams, proposed as a service by an IT vendor. In this case, offshore developers are usually gathered together in a specific region and are working on the project from the very beginning.
• Offshore Software Development Team, which consists of individual specialists all over the world. It can be hired directly by the product owner or proposed by some IT outsourcing companies. It is probably the hardest working scenario, which is worth considering only in very specific cases.

Regardless of the chosen path, you have to understand, that these developers will be out of your reach. Therefore, hiring a dedicated development team and managing it might be a real challenge for some software product owners.

Anyway, communication within a team will be one of the most important aspects to take care of. Still, it is not the only concern when it comes to software development outsourcing. For instance, the destination for IT outsourcing is also a debatable decision.

Where to Look For an Offshore Software Development Company?

There are at least a few main IT outsourcing centers. Among the most popular modern IT outsourcing destinations are Eastern Europe, India, and Asia.

The region where you are hiring a dedicated development team directly impacts the project management strategy and the overall working process. The reason for this is obvious: your software developers will have to cooperate and communicate with each other.

Eastern Europe, Asia, and India are located in different time zones. The possible meeting time will differ, depending on your choice. Additionally, the cultures of these three regions are very diverse from each other. In other words, location is the second aspect to take into account.

What is the best choice between them, you ask? Frankly, this is not an easy question. Each of the options has its pros and cons. Regardless of what you choose, it will most probably differ from the software development in your country.

Eventually, if you are thinking of Asia or Europe as outsourcing destinations, you will have to understand, that there are also different countries with their reasons why to outsource to.

The only advice we can give you - is to hire a dedicated development team and choose the country, most suited for your project and meets your requirements. So, what are the other aspects to take into account?

Pros And Cons Of Offshore Software Development Teams

It is hard to talk about how to manage offshore teams, not knowing all the specifics, benefits, and drawbacks they bring.

Benefits of Remote Software Teams

Niche-experienced developers are probably one of the most sufficient features of IT outsourcing services.

IT outsourcing is not limited to a specific region. So, product owners can find app developers for hire globally. Therefore, it is possible to look for software engineers with experience in a certain industry like Blockchain, eCommerce, etc.

Additionally, hiring a dedicated development team globally gives more options to choose from. To rephrase it, offshore software development gives access to a bigger talent pool.

Finally, IT outsourcing helps product owners find required specialists faster and cheaper. It is a global market, meaning that there are more options to choose from and the developers’ salary differs from region to region. For example, instead of looking for a Python developer in the United States, a development company can find a skilled specialist from Ukraine or Poland, whose salary will be much lower.

Offshore Team Management Drawbacks

Working with an offshore software development team brings some challenges as well.

The main drawback is the contrast between your core team and the potential outsourcers. One of the most obvious challenges - is the difference between the time zones.

If you hire an agile offshore development team from Ukraine, while you are based in Washington DC, your Ukrainian employees will be 6 hours ahead. So, when your team starts their work at 10 AM, your Ukrainian team will be already ending their working day at 4 PM. Setting a common schedule will improve developer collaboration and communication. Still, it is not an easy task in such a case.

Another important factor to take into account is the possible differences in cultural and ethnic specifics. Clearly, in the modern world, we have an additional corporate culture, that allows for avoiding unwanted awkwardness. Nonetheless, it is still preferable to learn national specifics to avoid possible conflicts or misunderstandings.

Finally, internal developer collaboration and communication will also be a challenge. All the foregoing facts, combined with language differences and preferred software development collaboration tools for communication and management may require some changes in IT outsourcing infrastructure. Despite the fact, that developers are familiar with the English language, they may not be the best English speakers, so be ready to face the language barrier.

How to Collaborate Effectively with Remote Team?

Judging from our experience, the best way to achieve the best possible results and efficiently manage the development team - is to choose offshore team management services.

For instance, our outsourced software development process that works automatically includes a project manager as a part of a dedicated remote software team. This ensures a high level of internal contact and improves group communication skills, giving more space for effective collaboration between team members and the manager and with each other. Additionally, an easy-reachable manager increases the pace of work, being able to answer project-related questions or issues right away.

Eventually, it is up to you to decide, how to manage the remote software development team, yet we encourage you to consider the outsourced offshore team management tools and services. Nevertheless, there are a few ways how to improve the level of remote software team collaboration and create a comfortable remote work environment for communication. Most of these tricks and approaches are mainly well-spread remote team communication practices simultaneously.

Virtual Software Development Collaboration Tools

This type of software plays a crucial role in any project, no matter whether it is an in-house or remote software development team. Therefore, the first aspect worth considering - is choosing the right virtual software development communication tools and applications.

There are numerous software solutions, that were designed to manage distributed teams, track the progress of the project, and usually propose built-in messaging, calls, and other asynchronous communication features. They are commonly referred to as agile tools, yet most of them are often used in terms of plan-driven development approaches as well.

Among such remote software development collaboration tools for offshore developers, we can name Notion, Asana, Jira, Slack, or other digital tools for team meetings. This list is not final and can include countless other apps, the previous ones are simply the most popular choices in the IT industry.

Clear Documentation

Apart from having a way of communicating with your remote software team, it is worth preparing a guidebook, with at least brief documentation, so that your entire team always has access to the Frequently Asked Question, saving the time of PM, and making it easier to find needed resources in no time.

Additionally, it is a very convenient way for onboarding or project transferring, simplifying the process of hiring a dedicated development team by allowing the newcomers to faster learn all the needed information, related to the project.

Collaborative Software Development Environment

Additionally, it is worth setting up a remote environment for developer collaboration. Having various ways of communicating on-demand services like chats is an important feature. Yet, try to avoid chaos by setting some discipline and communication routine.

For instance, try to schedule your remote meetings, devoting special hours to them. One of the most popular practices for managing an offshore team is setting regular meetings at the beginning of the working day and the end. As a result, your remote software development team will be able to keep up with the rest, know the current progress and tasks to be done for today. Also, it allows sharing experience with the rest of the group when needed.

Finally, scheduling makes it easier for project managers to track and sum up the progress, keeping the clients informed of day-by-day progress, asking for their opinions, and implementing changes during the development.

How To Increase Efficiency By Building A Distributed Development Team

Another great practice of hiring a dedicated development team and managing it - is to build a distributed team.

Let’s get straight to the point, and find out what the advantages and potential drawbacks of distributed development teams, how they appear, and most importantly - what are the best practices, that help to increase efficiency by building distributed development teams and what are the secrets of distributed team management?

What Is A Distributed Team?

Let’s start with the basics, and find out what exactly a distributed team is.

A distributed team is almost the complete opposite of in-house developers or dedicated software development teams. It does not mean, that they are not as experienced or as committed, as the foregoing. The main difference between all these concepts lies in the physical location of software engineers.

For instance, both on-premises developers and outsourced development teams are mainly working from the office space. While in-house software engineers work directly with the business owner, staying at the original company office, the offshore developers do almost the same thing, yet instead of direct employment, they provide clients with specific services like DevOps or white-label software development.

At the same time, distributed team management has something in common with freelance developers. Contrary to all the alternatives, distributed teams consist of remote expert developers, who are working from home or other places, except for the office. They also differ from freelancers, because they work as a team, instead of a more individualistic approach, which is a well-spread practice among freelancers.

The Origin of Distributed Development

If we will talk about the nature of the distributed team phenomenon, then we have to admit, that they existed long before the COVID pandemic. Still, this event was a trigger for the popularization of such a working approach.

Due to various restrictions and social distances, as well as the quarantine, most software developers were forced to relocate from offices and start working from home. So, during the harshest quarantine period, probably all software developers were working in terms of distributed software development teams.

To rephrase it, probably each IT vendor has already experienced working under such conditions, yet might not fully understand the term itself. This working method became so viral, that some journalists conducted various types of research, like “The Science Behind Managing Virtual Team” article by Andrew Mawson for Forbes.

Distributed Team Management Specifics

So, business owners are facing the idea of sending all their team members to work remotely. What are the most obvious thoughts, that come to mind?

• They will be distracted! Well, that sounds fair enough. Comparing working from the office vs working from home, we can assume, that all the office routine is taken care of by other company employees, while no one will cook a dinner or clean the room for you at home. So, it is possible, that your employees will start distracting from work and prioritize housework instead.
• As a result, the performance of developers will decrease, provoking various issues, related to the working experience and development lifecycle, requiring the implementation of various tracking and management practices.
• Additionally, the overall security of software projects will be less effective due to the fact, that entire team communication mad collaboration practices, as well as the information-sharing process, will be possible only with the use of third-party software solutions like Google Workspace, instead of physical peer-to-peer communication.

For now, it seems, that building a distributed team of developers has a lot of drawbacks, that impact the different working processes, endangering the whole development. But what, if we told you, that all the foregoing is not true and is rather an unreasonable fear, than actual danger?

Distributed Teams Management Best Practices

One of the most important aspects, which directly impact the efficiency of distributed software development management is corporate culture and employee engagement.

The way how you treat your remote software developers defines all the potential threats and efficiency of your software development team. For instance, hiring an outsourcing software development team is a win-win strategy for businesses.

So, it is worth establishing a friendly and comfortable environment for each of the employees. Engaged and motivated developers show much better results, compared to others.

In other words, the best strategy for hiring a dedicated development team - is to create conditions, where they feel valued.

The Distraction of Distributed Development Team

Various distractions and the need to perform other job-unrelated tasks can bring both benefits and challenges for the job.

It is impossible to decrease the distraction of remote app developers for hire. Instead, it is better to prioritize task completion over fixed working hours. They will most likely start performing everyday tasks much faster because the rest of the time can be used for other personal duties.

The first lesson is: “You can’t make remote software development teams work efficiently all day long. However, you can be sure, that they can perform all the tasks”.

The Efficiency of Managing Distributed Teams

Many different types of research like from Forbes show that despite all expectations, the efficiency of distributed teams grows. Thanks to the shift from the orientation on the work to the task completion, combined with fewer “working interactions” like small talk, chatting in the kitchen, smoking breaks, etc., the remote software team members can concentrate more on the assignment. Therefore, such developers can show better results in less time.

Distributed Software Development Security

This is probably the most crucial concern of building and managing software development teams.

In terms of remote software development team management, all communications are possible only with the use of third-party software development collaboration tools. Any work involves effective developer collaboration, communication, and knowledge sharing.

This creates intense security concerns because all these interactions are done online. It also includes sharing potentially vulnerable or private information as well, like logins and passwords, other credentials, code reviews, and materials, used during the distributed software development process.

Nevertheless, it is possible to assume, that most of the possible security issues can be dealt with by using cybersecurity measures for software development outsourcing. Both development approaches share many issues, related to overall development safety.

Our Experience In Development Team Management

As was said before, we strongly believe in the efficiency of having an outsourced project manager. Judging from our case studies, it significantly increases the level of communication and improves the remote team management process.

However, we also understand the needs and requirements of our clients, being flexible in such services. Thus, despite having a working plan for how to manage an offshore development team, we can implement changes to meet our client's needs and achieve the best possible remote collaboration experience. As a result, we have different communication approaches within each software project, we are working on.

For example, in some cases, we are using group chats and weekly virtual meetings, when every member of the project takes part, having direct access to the client, and being able to share their thoughts and opinions on the ongoing project. Alternatively, sometimes all the team-client communication is limited to one-on-one meetings with the manager and client if they don’t have much time or want their privacy to be respected.

Anyway, when it comes to remote team communication practices, it is worth making the most convenient terms, so that everyone would feel comfortable enough. In case, you are interested in trying out our approach or have any ideas, worth sharing, you can always contact us.