Member-only story
10 Important Tips for Managing a Remote Development Team
Software development is hard. Working with remote developers is even harder.
In this article, we will share our top 10 best practices for working with a remote development team. This guide is based on my experience of being a remote developer, working with and managing remote developers, and running a company that provides remote development teams. I’m sure it can even help onsite development teams as it has lots of caveats and gems delivered as pro tips, learned over many years of experience on both sides of engineer and managing engineer positions.
1. Share Your Product Vision and Company Culture
I think many people make the mistake of just assigning easy work items to remote developers and then integrating the work on their end. Don’t make the mistake of not giving them the full product vision.
All developers need to understand what the goal is and where the project is going, and how people work within the company culture. Paint them a picture of your product vision and company mission effectively, so they can make smart choices as they work on the project and be a true extension of your company culture.
Pro Tip: Make sure any all-hands meeting caters to a Zoom (or Google Hangouts or Skype etc) session, even if remote members just listen in, so you maximize remote workers’ participation in vision and mission-shaping moments.
They also need to understand and be able to see the upcoming work items to do. They want to know they have job security and where the project is going. Be sure to include them not only in all product lifecycle rituals such as release and sprint planning, but also with any other important meetings held by other parts of the organization and key decisions made as time passes.
2. Over Communicate and Re-Engage
Under-communication can cause huge issues whereas over-communication can only be beneficial. Anytime you are working with a remote team it is easy for them to be left in the dark about a lot of things.
Don’t just talk to them once a week or once a day during scrum standup meetings. Be sure to engage with them 1 on 1 daily to really make sure they…
