6 Tips for Managing a Remote Team

Cris Pintea

Cris Pintea

Managing a remote team of developers is not an easy task. However, it can be done successfully if you know what to do. That’s why I’ve compiled some tips for managing remote developers that will help make your life much easier!

1. Communication is the key to success.

The first thing you need to do when managing remote developers is to make sure that communication channels are open and active regularly. For your team members from different locations, time zones, and cultures to work together effectively it’s vital that they have an ongoing avenue of effective two-way dialogue in place at all times. Discord is a great choice for that because, besides allowing communication at all times, it also allows for quick casual voice calls.

2. Get used to working and communicating asynchronously.

Synchronous communication means phone calls, meetings, and so on. Async is email, chat, and so on.

Synchronous communication can be helpful for resolving an immediate need, but it’s very costly, even more so for remote teams.

You can schedule sync communication in advance (and you should), but your team members have to make sure they’re available too. If someone misses a call or meeting because of time zone differences, then there’s no point scheduling another one: just set up async communication instead, it’ll save everyone lots of hassle!

To facilitate communication with your remote team, communicate primarily over email. If someone isn’t required to be in a meeting, don’t include them and inform them of the result via email after the meeting has completed.

3. All meetings should have a clear objective before the start.

It should be an unbreakable rule.

4. Explain the “why”

One of the biggest mistakes remote team managers make is not explaining what their decisions are based on. If you can’t do a hands-on walk-through, take the time to explain why.

5. make time for one-on-ones

Schedule 1:1 calls with teammates to make it easier to sense how they’re feeling and identify problems early on.

6. Go face-to-face

Go face-to-face every now and then if possible. Your team will get along much better if people have had a chance to meet each other face-to-face.

Conclusion

When you’re used to working with the whole team on-site it can be hard to work remotely and it can seem counter-productive but after you’ve been doing it for a while, you’ll realise that it’s actually a lot more productive than working on-site. I think the future of work is remote, so I hope that these tips will be helpful for you and your team!

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