How to Improve Your Remote Development Team’s Productivity?

The pace at which technology is evolving has led to a significant change in how modern businesses operate. Today, many companies are looking to hire remote development team’s to either build new software or upgrade an existing one.

Hiring dedicated development teams helps businesses save time and money while completing projects faster. But to reap the maximum benefits of working with a team, you need to learn how to improve your remote team’s productivity.

Here, we will discuss the key strategies that will help you boost the productivity of a remote development team.

Why Hire a Remote Development Team?

There are significant advantages to collaborating with a remote development team instead of hiring in-house specialists. Let us look at some benefits of hiring them.

1. Access to Global Talent

Hiring remote developers or a team lets you choose IT talent from anywhere in the world without worrying about geographical barriers. You can look for experts from across the globe who are the best fit for your development project.

2. Cost-Effective

By hiring a dedicated development team, save a decent amount of money off your budget. Since the whole team is located in a faraway place, you don’t have to stress about operational costs. Remote hiring lets you save money on infrastructure, hardware & software, employee benefits, etc.

3. Reduced Hiring Time

The traditional approach to hiring developers is time-consuming and demands a major effort on your side. On the other hand, hiring a remote development team requires minimal effort and time. You simply have to contact a trustworthy outstaffing company and hire an entire team.

7 Strategies to Improve Your Remote Development Team’s Productivity

Working with a remote team is rewarding for modern businesses. However, for successful collaboration, ensure that the team is productive.

Improving productivity lets you enhance the quality of deliverables and bring efficiency to the development process. Below are the best strategies to enhance your team’s productivity.

1. Set Clear Goals For Your Team

When you work with a dedicated development team, you must set clear goals and objectives from the start. It allows everybody to understand their job precisely, which helps them be productive with their work. So, as soon as you hire a team, conduct a kickoff meeting to highlight the job responsibilities of each member and the project goals that they need to achieve.

The idea is to ensure that everyone is on the same page regarding the project’s guidelines, deliverables, etc. Clarity in goals allows your developers to perform their tasks efficiently.

2. Streamline Communication 

Whether you work with an in-house or a remote team, effective communication is the key to improving productivity. When it comes to remote collaboration, communication becomes even more vital. So, if you want your team to be productive, you first need to streamline communication with them.

By doing so, you eliminate any barriers between you and your team. This ensures that every piece of information, whether it is project info or feedback, is being received and perceived clearly. This means fewer conflicts and better planning, which are important to boost a remote development team’s productivity.

3. Promote Individual Autonomy

In a traditional workplace, managers are always around to check on their team, address queries, and resolve issues right away. But these dynamics don’t work when you collaborate with a remote development team. This is why many supervisors resort to micromanagement. They start messaging or calling remote employees repeatedly to ask about their progress.

If you want your team to be productive, refrain from this practice. Constant poking causes employees to lose their focus, which negatively impacts their productivity. So, for your team to be productive, you must avoid micro-management.

4. Prioritize Performance Over Presence

Building on the point above, along with constant poking, continuously monitoring the dedicated development team presence also affects their productivity. Managers are often checking whether the employees are sitting in front of their system and working or not. But smart managers don’t do this. They put the team’s performance over presence, which benefits the business more.

You should show your team that you trust them by not binding them, such as by being online for a specific number of hours. Instead, you should give them the space to work on their own and let their work speak for their dedication. Fostering a relationship based on trust will motivate your employees to push themselves and be more productive.

5. Invest in a Remote Collaboration Tool

A significant number of collaboration tools are available in the market. These tools are the perfect resource to maintain seamless partnership among your remote employees. Additionally, they come in handy for improving your team’s efficiency.

Remote collaboration tools like Zoom and Google Meet let you conduct video conferences. You can use these tools to conduct training sessions or explain complex projects, as they have a screen share feature. Further, tools like Trello help you assign and manage tasks, track the developer’s productivity over time, and find areas of improvement.

6. Establish a Feedback Loop

Don’t expect your newly hired team to be highly productive from day one. Give them time to know your business, understand the project, and get used to working with you. Once the team members are settled into the work, ask them for feedback and share yours as well. Establishing a feedback loop will help the members identify their strengths and weaknesses.

With regular feedback, you ensure constant improvement in your remote team’s productivity and work quality. Similarly, be considerate of the feedback to you, which might help boost your business’s efficiency in the long run.

7. Don’t Overburden Your Team

It’s easier to detect whether an employee or a team is overburdened in a traditional workplace. You see the team skip lunches, come in early, or sit till late hours frequently. But in a remote work environment, you might not have such signs to determine that the team has a lot going on. This is why you must be extra careful while assigning tasks to the team.

Overloading your remote employees with too many tasks can have a drastic impact on their productivity. With so much on their plate, they will find it difficult to focus on one task at a time. Remember that no matter how skilled and experienced your team is, they can only work as much as their potential allows. So, you must assign them tasks according to what they can realistically accomplish.

To Sum It Up

Improving the productivity of a team can be a little challenging for modern business leaders. But that doesn’t mean it cannot be done. You just have to be aware of the potential productivity bottlenecks and avoid them.

For example, not setting clear goals and ineffective communication are two major reasons for low productivity. Similarly, if you micromanage the team members or overburden them, you might hamper their output. Therefore, you need to follow the strategies discussed above to make your development team more constructive.

At Teqnovos, we help you build the best remote development team for your business. We have some of the most skilled and talented developers for you to choose from. Get in touch with us today.

Frequently Asked Questions

1. What is a remote development team?

A remote development team is a group of IT specialists hired by a company for its software development projects. This team is generally located in a different country from where their employer is. A remote development team consists of experienced professionals with expertise in different fields of software development.

2. Why hire a remote development team?

There are many reasons why businesses hire remote development teams today. For starters, working with a remote team lets you hire top talent from across the globe and complete your project faster. Additionally, you save a good amount of money on operational costs and employee benefits.

3. How to enhance your remote team’s productivity?

If you want to enhance the productivity of your team, make sure you keep the following tips in mind:

• Don’t Micromanage: Once you have delegated the task, keep your interference to a minimum and let the team work on their own.
• Communicate Clearly: Make sure you communicate clearly with your team and address their issues frequently.
• Give Feedback: Give regular feedback so that they can constantly improve their processes and enhance their productivity.

4. Why is remote team productivity important?

A highly productive team helps a business meet its short-term and long-term goals quickly. Greater productivity leads to reduced time-to-market, quality results, and hence increased profit. By working with a high-performance team, companies can thrive in today’s competitive market.