Managing Remote Dev Teams in 2021

Managing Remote Dev Teams: 2021 Story Best practices to keep your remote dev teams involved, productive, and in good spirits.

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Table of Contents Introduction

Managing Remote Teams in 2021 .....................................01 Chapter 1

Hire the Right People ................................................................03 Chapter 2

Set Clear Project Goals ..............................................................05 Chapter 3

Make Sure Expectations are Straight ..............................07 Chapter 4

Schedule Meetings ......................................................................09 Chapter 5

Facilitate Open Communication ........................................10 Chapter 6

Use the Right Online Collaboration Tools ....................12 Chapter 7

Track Team’s Progress ................................................................15 Chapter 8

Build Trust with Teams ..............................................................16 Chapter 9

Create a Positive and Inclusive Work Culture ............18 Chapter 10

Focus on the Little Details .......................................................20 Conclusion

Closing Thoughts ...........................................................................21

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01

INTRODUCTION

Managing Remote Teams in 2021 The COVID-19 pandemic has led most companies

worldwide to reckon with a new reality: managing distributed teams from far-flung places.

Within a few weeks, platforms like Google Meet, Microsoft Teams, Zoom, and Slack have gone from useful collaboration tools to the key enablers for day-to-day coordination with fellow team members. Workspaces have changed from company locations to fully-functional home offices.

Working from home during the pandemic has introduced new strategies, formats, challenges, and even opportunities for thousands of organizations worldwide.

In this scenario, what steps should you take to maximize remote work participation and deepen trust? How can you help your teams learn to reorient based on the new realities of work?

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02 Well, in this eBook, we’ll cover the best practices and strategies that can help you bridge all gaps and manage distributed dev teams effectively without a drop in productivity.

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03

CHAPTER 1

Hire the Right People To start with, bring the right remote workers on board. To successfully hire the right people, keep the following do’s and don’ts in mind: Look for self-starters.

Conduct skills-based tests.

Remote workers must be

Share a scenario where your

self-starters because they will

candidate needs to

not have someone looking over

pseudo-code an approach to

their shoulder every time and

resolve a problem. Since you

delegating every detail. So, while

cannot "whiteboard" a problem

interviewing a candidate, always

quickly while interviewing your

ask questions about how he

candidate remotely, use a

takes initiatives, organizes work,

shared online tool to conduct

communicates, and deals with

skills-based tests. Skillsz.com is

bottlenecks. For example, ask

one such tool that enables you

him to role-play a scenario where

to assess your candidate’s

he is on your tech team and

technical expertise, knowledge

dealing with someone who

of frameworks, and

disagrees with his decision.

problem-solving skills.

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04

Think about the 'team' fit.

Don’t overlook diversity.

Remote workers must be

Set data-driven goals. That is,

self-starters because they will not have someone looking over their shoulder every time and delegating every detail. So, while interviewing a candidate, always ask questions about how he takes initiatives, organizes work, communicates, and deals with bottlenecks. For example, ask him to role-play a scenario where he is on your tech team and dealing with someone who disagrees with his decision.

whether your goal is design changes committed, reports generated, clients contacted, or conversions reached, establishing a metric will provide you direction, clarity, and a path to success.

Make sure both organizational and individual goals are clearly defined and communicated. Let your teams chalk out a strategy of how you're going to get there to effectively help your business stick to a plan for consistent progress.

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05

CHAPTER2

Set Clear Project Goals

After you’ve hired your remote dev team, you need to set clear project goals to keep your business running smoothly and on an upward trajectory in 2021 and beyond. Here are some practical ways to set measurable goals for your fully remote dev team:

Break your long-term goals down into sub-tasks.

Break down larger objectives into smaller tasks or subgoals to easily manage and measure progress. This breakdown of larger goals into smaller chunks can help you develop key performance indicators (KPIs) that reveal whether you are on the right track towards achieving the desired target.

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06

Identify measurable goals with metrics.

Set data-driven goals. That is, whether your goal is design changes committed, reports generated, clients contacted, or conversions reached, establishing a metric will provide you direction, clarity, and a path to success.

Make sure both organizational and individual goals are clearly defined and communicated. Let your teams chalk out a strategy of how you're going to get there to effectively help your business stick to a plan for consistent progress.

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07

CHAPTER3

Clearly Define and Share Your Expectations The best way to set expectations is to co-create them with your teams so that they are aware of precisely what you’re looking for and vice-versa. This will help your teams weigh in on what their capabilities are and how to fill gaps.

It’s better to pick the top few expectations you have on your mind and be clear about them. Have open conversations to set crystal-clear expectations such as how will the team: Share information

Manage projects and deadlines

Make decisions

Define standards

Execute tasks

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08 If required, set up a daily “stand-up” in scrum terms. This is a short and straightforward discussion of not more than 15-20 minutes, usually the same time every morning, where your remote dev teams can answer questions like:

What did they accomplish the week before?

What are their current projects?

What are the hindrances that are restricting work progress?

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09

CHAPTER 4

Schedule Meetings Once you have set project goals and expectations, it’s essential for you to carefully communicate around them by scheduling meetings from time to time. However, do remember that every call needn’t be a meeting.

Facilitate casual conversations as well on Google Meet or Slack. You can even schedule “getting to know you” calls, in which new team members share information about themselves. Make connections through video conferences to forge stronger bonds. It’s vital to encourage participation, ask questions, and tap someone during the meeting to give a project update. If required, share your screen, and have a team member pull up documents to keep data handy while you continue to run the meeting.

The more opportunities team members get to participate in remote discussions, the less they will drift off.

If required, extend a one-hour meeting to 75 minutes. The additional 15 minutes can be worth your time. And in case you don’t have enough time, book another meeting within the next 24 hours to avoid losing the momentum.

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10

CHAPTER 5

Facilitate Open Communication

When you’re interacting during virtual meetings, facilitate open communication to ensure transparency. Remote teams don’t get to have any social contact with their colleagues. Communication with remote teams may not happen as spontaneously as sitting next to one another within an office space. Therefore, frequent check-ins with the remote team should be a priority. Heightened communication can keep your remote team members productive.

Communicating openly with your remote teams can help you: Establish a sense of community.

Clarify expectations.

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11

Develop team norms.

Provide structure in an unstructured team situation.

Occasionally, you can organize a team reset meeting to identify how to best work together in this new reality so that employees can transition through this change efficiently and support fellow workers' well-being.

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12

CHAPTER 6

Use the Right Online Collaboration Tools To openly communicate, share information, and allow departments to work seamlessly, you need the right online collaboration tools. Some of these may include:

ProofHub is a perfect project management tool that offers clear visibility of team and client discussions within a single space for better planning, collaboration, and project delivery.

Trusted by over 20000 companies, Teamwork is a simple and powerful tool that helps manage multiple complex projects and customize workflows with ease.

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13 Zoom is a reliable platform that makes audio and video conferences, chats, webinars, and cross-platform instant messaging as flawless as one can imagine.

With its secure-by-design infrastructure and built-in protection, Google Meet helps remote teams stay connected through encrypted and frictionless video/audio meetings on-the-go.

A capable project management tool, Basecamp helps leaders have a better handle on their business and enables teams to remain in sync on one page, with fewer weekly meetings.

Asana lets you bring your teams’ goals, plans, tasks, and files together in one shared space, hit your deadlines, and view your work the way you want.

Used by over 750,000 companies worldwide, Slack streamlines work, automates mundane tasks, unifies systems, and brings context into your conversations.

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14 Github provides a complete and configurable dev environment for developers to build, ship, and maintain their software collaboratively within a secure space.

JIRA is the #1 tool designed for agile teams to track projects, identify issues, and release software with 100% visibility and control.

With these online collaboration tools, your dev team can work together (apart) just as well as they did within an office space.

Note: Gartner estimates that collaboration markets will reach around $4.9 billion by 2021, with 70% of employees relying on online collaboration platforms to work.

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15

CHAPTER 7

Track Team’s Progress Using the most robust online collaboration tool can help you effectively track progress and accomplish goals.

However, it can be challenging to monitor big teams' performances and progress.

In such situations, it is better to eliminate team silos with squad-based development.

Squads are small, flexible teams that are responsible for the end-to-end delivery of specific products. It becomes much easier to manage each squad and figure out what’s holding up progress.

Kanban principles can also help you identify how the backlog is growing, which team members are overloaded, and the tasks that require reprioritization. You can use the Kanban graphical board to manage tasks in progress and make workflows visible. This visual board will help you sort deliverables, eliminate iterations, pull deliverables when ready, and incrementally release software, thereby improving productivity and agility.

Moreover, daily huddles, weekly syncs, and monthly meetings can foster close collaboration, allow progress tracking, minimize project delays, and help you adhere to a roadmap.

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16

CHAPTER 8

Build Trust with Teams In high-trust companies, employees report:

76% more engagement

50% higher productivity

74% less stress

40% less burnout

29% more life satisfaction

*Source: Harvard Business Review

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17 However, working remotely may pose specific challenges to building trust since there aren’t in-person communications with colleagues or watercooler conversations strengthening bonds. So, how can you establish trust with your remote dev teams? Well, there are systematic approaches to it. For example, you can:

Improve your teams' level of trust through benevolence, follow-through on commitments, and intentional relationship building initiatives.

Dedicate time to virtually meet with remote teams and connect to see how they're doing.

Encourage informal interactions between team members.

Take some time at the beginning of a meeting to engage with people before diving into project discussions or tasks at hand.

Provide transparency and clarity on company procedures and policies because no one wins when teams are left guessing.

Ask for help from your team members because this draws them towards your humanness and helps create trust.

Through these deliberate acts, you can build faith, integrity, and confidence within your distributed teams and unlock higher productivity in the process.

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18

CHAPTER 9

Create a Positive and Inclusive Work Culture Apart from creating a transparent work culture that deepens trust, you must also focus on developing an inclusive workforce. An inclusive culture is: 8x more likely to achieve positive business results 6x more likely to be innovative 3x more likely to be productive 2x more likely to exceed financial expectations So, create a workplace culture that builds a sense of community and cohesiveness among all. Invest in a culture that supports employees from diverse backgrounds, genders, ethnicity, sexuality, and geographic locations. Be flexible, give back, communicate more, and empathize so that teams feel motivated to contribute to larger business goals.

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19 Remember, transitioning to a remote workforce isn’t merely a temporary fix. It is much more than only allowing employees to work from home. It’s a lot more than just a COVID-19 trend. It’s a significant cultural shift. So, develop a positive work culture with a balanced mix of talents, skills, ideas, and personalities, which is instrumental in bringing success to a company.

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20

CHAPTER 10

Focus on the Little Details Finally, never forget the little details because they can go a long way in creating a strong workforce. For example: Organize a surprise virtual celebration to highlight the teams’ success.

Engage in small talk before diving into a plan.

Celebrate employees’ work anniversaries or birthdays.

Boost employees’ morale for their unparalleled contributions.

There’s a tremendous opportunity for companies to re-engage employees through these little efforts. Not overlooking such moments can fuel connection, strengthen relationships, and help each employee feel like an integral part of company culture.

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21

CONCLUSION

Closing Thoughts As the world’s largest work-from-home experiment continues in 2021, the above points can help you reshape and manage your remote dev teams better.

The key is to lean into the right project management and collaboration tools to engage the workforce while remote and steer the boat successfully. Companies that are equipped for this change will be able to override hurdles and succeed despite disruptions. Organizations that are still trying to adjust to the new normal need to invest significantly in their digital infrastructure and IT systems.

An Enterprise Technology Research (ETR) survey shows that the percentage of workers permanently working from home will double in 2021. As per a Mercer report, 94% of employers said productivity is higher than before the pandemic, even with their teams working from far-flung places. A recent Gartner report reveals that in a survey of 300 CFOs, over 74% plan to permanently shift employees to remote work even after the COVID-19 crisis ends. What’s clear from these numbers is that the global shift to remote work is not merely a short-term solution but a permanent transition that every organization must embrace.

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22 If you want to equip your business for this historic shift, implement the above best practices to keep your teams connected, empowered, and productive remotely.

With the right technologies, strategies, and mindset, you can, too, write the playbook on how to successfully operate remotely during a time of intense and often a welcome change.

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