Disadvantages of working with remote teams and how to fix them
A common situation in the modern world is when clients are located in a different city, country or even continent. With ever increasing globalization the remote cooperation model becomes more and more popular, though it has own positive and negative sides. While positive sides are obvious, there must be a way to avoid the negative impact.
Let us investigate the major disadvantages of working with a remote software development team and ways of solving them.
Controlling a remote team
When a team is working remotely, it is hard to evaluate how effectively people do their job (and whether they are doing it at all) or why they don’t respond quickly enough. That suspicion can easily grow into distrust and uncomfortable communication with the team.
Of course you can handle this by installing the software that allows you to see people’s screens or by requiring to send reports every day, or by controlling them in some other even more sophisticated ways. But what actually turns a remote group of people into a team comfortable to work with, is the way they (not you!) handle such problem.
Usually every project has it’s own milestones. So when the product gets some visible functionality that can be presented to and tested by the client, delivering such results according to the plan agreed with the client is a great way to showcase team efficiency, keep the communication positive and build relations.
In RubyGarage, when the product is already designed and it’s time to set the scope (tasks, goals, deliverables, deadlines and cost), the team’s project manager additionally defines how to make you stay aware of what is going on. We believe that a great leader should always worry about how to communicate properly with the client, bring constant feedback and show achievements of the team.
