How Startups Can Keep Their Remote Development Teams Productive in 2020
Thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, remote working is here to stay, and without a doubt, 2020 would go down in history as the most trying year for several businesses, mostly startups, as they try to transition their regular team into remote teams.
According to a survey by Buffer 99% of people enjoy working remotely, but this does not take away the fact that it takes a slightly different approach to manage a remote development team. Startups have to be intentional and take everything into consideration when it comes to improving the productivity of their remote teams.
And since every aspect of software development needs to be vetted by several expert teams before being released, companies need to know exactly how to maximize the productivity of these remote teams so they can meet their goals.
But, in order to maximize productivity, startups must first recognize the many problems associated with working remotely.
Problems Associated With Remote Working
As a startup entering remote working, bear in mind that some of your high-performing team members may experience a decline in productivity, mostly when they aren’t trained on how to handle their tasks while working remotely.
And just like everything business-related, working remotely comes with several challenges, and some of them are:
- Difficulty coordinating and managing projects.
- Trouble encountered with remote communication and collaboration.
- Difficulty maximizing and tracking productivity.
- Remote teams scattered around in different time zones.
- Language and cultural differences between teams.
- Strain building inter/intra team trust.
- Increased Loneliness and Boredom.
- Trouble unplugging after work.
Knowing what exact challenges your remote development team might face, both individually and as a group, would go a long way in helping you keep your team productive and motivated.
How to Keep Your Remote Team Productive
We’ve found that the best way to guarantee the productivity of your team is to tackle all the challenges involved in remote working.
So, these are some steps we recommend you follow to ensure that your development team performs at their optimum capacity.
🔸 Outsourcing and Crowdsourcing
As your business grows, one of the best ways to increase your remote team’s productivity is to augment its efforts through online outsourcing and crowdsourcing.
Outsourcing involves assigning a specific job to an organized agency while crowdsourcing involves assigning a job to several individuals.
You can outsource and crowdsource almost everything, even naming a business !
Basically, with outsourcing, you deal with another remote team, but with crowdsourcing, you deal with several individuals working remotely, and depending on what your remote development team needs, you can choose either of them.
Outsourcing and crowdsourcing on offer your startup the opportunity to gather great ideas, data, and professional opinions from lots of experienced software and app developers.
🔸 Strengthen Communication and Collaboration
One problem inexperienced startups face with their remote teams is poor communication, and in some ways, weak communication and collaboration often show up in delayed communication and slow transfer of data between team members. As a business owner, the best way to handle cracks in the communication web of your remote team is to:
Use Tech Tools
Tools like Skype, Zoom, and Google Meet are great online tools that can help you achieve quick coordinated communication with your remote teams. Also, don’t hesitate to use time tracking software like Clockify to monitor their productivity.
Check-In Regularly
You could either choose to communicate with them individually, for crowdsourced teams, or collectively, for outsourced teams. Whichever way you choose, endeavor to set up a weekly agenda, and speak with your remote team daily. Not only would you be checking-in on them, but you’d also equally motivate them.
And if they’re in different time zones, then specify a specific time for a conference meeting.
Brainstorm Together
What better way to build collaboration than brainstorming as a group. Brainstorming is a great method of building inter/intra team trust and can hasten idea generation and execution.
🔸 Motivate Through Appreciation and Encouragement
As a manager, you should understand that motivation goes a long way in enhancing the productivity of your team.
Everyone loves a little, ‘thank you,’ now and then. It’s been proven that workers who’re underappreciated have lower productivity than appreciated ones, so take the time to appreciate their efforts with kind words. The more genuine your appreciation is, the more they’ll trust and communicate better with you, helping your startup both in the short and long-run.
🔸 Keep Focus
Managing your remote team properly is crucial to the growth and survival of your startup so endeavor that your team members avoid multitasking and focus on achieving one goal a day because multitasking can reduce their productivity by 40% and eliminating distractions can also save them the 23 minutes it takes to attain the same level of productivity they had before they became distracted.
With all these at your fingertips, your startup would definitely encounter a quick boost in productivity.
Originally published at https://youteam.io on August 10, 2020.
