Useful Recommendations to Build a Successful Remote Software Development Team

For many software engineering businesses, a dedicated remote software development team has become “incredibly competitive”. There are numerous advantages: remote teams provide access to a wider talent pool, boost a culture of diversity, assist valuable workers who do not enjoy sitting in an office, and allow them to work where and how they are most efficient.

As more professionals work away from home, businesses should find a new way to ensure work performance, communication, and overall well being while not being able to see their team in person.

Surprisingly, with the appropriate tools in place, these logistical challenges can be avoided. We’ll go over the best practices for leading a remote or hybrid workforce in the section below.

A remote software development team has become “incredibly competitive

Communication

Poor communication skills will restrict the success of any business, but it is worse when working with a remote team. Your exchange of information must be excellent, not just good and coherent.

Building great communication channels will ensure that information and notifications keep flowing. Professionals who are more used to face-to-face communication will find this more convenient.

We heavily rely on Skype for all internal communications. We can chat, call, and video conference with team members both internally and externally using a single platform.

Whichever tool you pick, it will play a vital role in improving communications, but it will be meaningless unless each individual focuses on being an effective communicator. Make sure that your employees are deeply involved with one another at all levels of the company.

Some tips for communication:

• Communicate at least twice as frequently as you might in the office.
• Inquire about someone’s day before going deep into the big question.
• To add a more personal touch, make video calls whenever necessary.

Early On, Establish A Corporate Culture

The culture of a remote company has become the center of attention. Without this, your staff will be unsure of the strategic mission and how they can contribute to their fullest capacity.

Culture should always be addressed during the recruitment process, then during the onboarding process, and afterwards, day to day.

Teamwork has always been a crucial component of our culture at Groove Technology. It’s a key component in providing extensive expert knowledge to our clients.

As employees disperse, it’s reasonable to become more self-reliant and less dependent on people you don’t see on a regular basis. To address this, we have put in place a variety of strategies over time, including hiring and training summits, video meet-and-greets for new team members, and regular monthly evaluations with the entire team, to mention a few.

Some tips for establishing a corporate culture:

• Establish your culture early on in the process.
• Everything, such as job postings, regulations, project management, and so on, could perhaps focus on corporate culture.
• Recruit people who will contribute to the corporate culture.

Contribute to the Creation of a Constructive Workplace

Every staff member will need some adaptation time to get used to working at home. Maintaining a balance will be a one-of-a-kind experience for each, particularly for someone who has never worked outside the office. Being a part of a full-time virtual team is not the same as working from home.

Setting expectations is essential, just as it is in the workplace. Team members could feel confident in what they are doing if they fully understood when to be online, what to wear during a video conference, and that everyone would be on the same page.

There are numerous good articles available that offer advice on setting up a home office, coping with interruptions, and even selecting the best paint color.

Some tips for a constructive workplace:

• Permit for an adaptation moment; everyone is diverse and will have to adapt at some point.
• Define expectations precisely so that there is no room for confusion.
• Consider offering helpful tips regularly.

Healthy employees are more productive

The routine of getting ready for and going to work ensures that we fulfill the basic activities of life. The simple fact that we will have to communicate directly with others forces us to do tasks like taking a shower, brushing our teeth, and putting on clothes.

Working from home eliminates the need for any of these items, and personal hygiene may suffer as a result. Skipping these may tend to improve productivity in the short term, although health, morale, and performance can all suffer in the long run.

Healthy routines must be promoted. Remaining healthy and active, stretching every hour, and getting mental health breaks during the day could increase employee health and success while working from home.

It is also highly crucial for employees to think about nutrition. It will be easier to walk into the kitchen for snack foods during the day because now you have a new environment.

It also makes it simple to break away from daily office habits like drinking water during the day.

Some tips for a healthy team:

• Give employees general advice on how to stay healthy while working remotely.
• Encourage having a break during the day. Get up and walk around your home, just like you would at the office.
• Consider posting recipes or sending other good tips on your internal network.

Secure Your Business

Security is a daily consideration

Even if you sit at a desk, security is a daily consideration. Working remotely raises problems and several possible scenarios to consider.

Are each employee’s device and files secure? Is each employee responsible for locking the doors to their homes when they leave or go to bed? How secure are modems and gateways?

We discovered early on that the solutions to these problems vary greatly depending on background, geographic region, technological capability, and general organizational role.

It’s critical not to leave something as essential as security up in the air.

Outline your expectations and instruct your employees to ensure that everyone is on the same page from the beginning.

Give guidance and direction in complicated cases and be willing to collaborate with individuals in order to ensure that they receive the assistance they require. Employee dissatisfaction has the most significant impact on your security posture.

Some tips to secure your business:

• Conduct security awareness training for all employees, with an emphasis on remote workplaces such as securing devices and files, home network security, and working in public.
• Review your security procedures and make any necessary changes to facilitate remote work.
• Ensure that security policies are easily accessible to remote and work-from-home employees.

Getting Your Management Staff Ready

One of the most challenging tasks of remote team building is getting supervisors and managers ready for the upcoming changes.

Members of the team will unexpectedly have relevant questions they previously understood but should take into account. They may be disturbed and appear unavailable at first.

Make certain that your leaders know how to be flexible and how to respond to staff members if there is a problem. Internal policies might not even quickly account for situations that arise, so it is critical that they understand how to handle new scenarios.

Finally, your managers and supervisors will be under a huge strain from assisting their team in surviving day-to-day operations. This can have an effect on their overall mental and physical health, as well as their productive capacity.

Consider what top management and the company can really do to lend a hand in these situations.

Some tips to secure your business:

• Maintain open communication at the highest levels of the organization. As management teams experience new situations, they should make the effort to instruct others who may experience the same.
• Ensure that leaders are kept updated on upcoming changes so that they can interact with them effectively with their teams.
• Offer techniques for teammates to submit and track feedback.

Policies Are Important

We never talked about written policies until later in the process. We had the regular employee handbook, human resource policies, security policies, and so on. We did not even consider how many of these could or should be adapted to support remote workers.

Staff members’ aspirations are established by policies in place. If those aspirations are not established appropriately, or are not set at all, it is hard for the team to know what to do and even harder to enforce the policies.

Compile a list of all the policies you have in place. Is there a formal or informal policy in place? What departments have their own policies to consider, aside from the human resources and security policies of the company? Existing policies: can they be revised, or must they be completely rewritten?

Schedule regular policy review and adjustment for changes

Some tips for policy reviews:

• A one-time update is insufficient, instead, schedule regular review and adjustment for changes.
• Changes must be communicated if they are to be implemented.
• Include employees in policy changes whenever possible. They can often focus on saving your troubles in the beginning.

Final Word

Building a remote software development team would be a procedure. You must have faith in your team, work, and the process.

We have experienced firsthand what does work and what does not. This first-hand experience, combined with our expertise in the technology solutions required to build a successful remote team, makes us a valuable service provider for your success.

Contact us, Groove Technology, for more information today if you would like to consult on how to take your software team remotely effectively!