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Sara Suarez
Sara Suarez

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5 Effective Ways to Ensure Reliable Product Development from Remote Developers

The pandemic has hit the tech domain with turbulence. As economic obstructions continue to exist, many companies have come to a standstill. But, some businesses have embraced work-from-home culture to avoid stalling out because of global lockdown and social distancing situations.

Many IT companies may not have seasoned developers with the necessary skill set to satisfy certain project requirements like migrating legacy software to the web, automating the workflow/process, etc. Besides, implementing these processes without a team of experienced professionals highly impacts a company’s productivity and quality. Eventually, the problems to deal with may become unmanageable, which will put a business's reputation at risk.

To prevent such a tragic consequence, you can either devote time and effort to employ a new workforce or simply hire remote developers for distributed software development. In a recent survey, 60% of respondents have stated that using disruptive technologies like automation and cloud, remote software teams can ensure efficient product development.

Let’s look at some of the best practices that businesses should follow for agile remote software development:

Define Business KPIs and Goals to Remote Developers

This is considered as the primary phase of remote software development. It is important to help understand your remote software development team about your business goals and expectations concisely and unambiguously. This practice will help developers to fractionalize the bigger concept into smaller processes that are time-bound, balanced, and easy to accomplish. Besides, ensure your team associate tasks are well-defined without any uncertainty so that you can eliminate overlapping activities in your project.

Consequently, it is important to deploy the business-critical communication tools and channels, in order to schedule regular meetings, check the availability of the team members, and experience trustworthy reporting.

Conduct Virtual Meetings

For active interaction, you must schedule live video consultations with your remote software team. Follow regular Scrum meetings each day to discuss project accomplishments, understand requirements, identify backlogs, and strategies for the upcoming days. Scrum meeting sessions help develop trust and collaboration among the team. Also, it helps in identifying the parameters that hinder your development productivity or performance. Some of the tools for scheduling regular meetings with remote software development teams are Google Duo, Skype, Zoom, Google Meet, Toggl, Slack, etc.

Utilize Whiteboarding Tools for Better Documentation

Sharing all kinds of ideas and expertise through a virtual meeting is difficult. However, some businesses prefer using PowerPoint slides to deliver information and requirements in a structured way. But, to develop a presentation like this demands a lot of time. Moreover, content in a PowerPoint presentation is fixed at the moment you organize a presentation. Though Screen sharing is a better alternative to interact and circulate information, it does not allow for real-time collaboration.

Therefore, it is important to use whiteboard tools for your business to keep remote developers being innovative when working virtually. Brainstorming, Prototyping, Storyboard, Mind-Mapping, Mood Boards, Picture Association are some techniques that can be developed rapidly through a few steps on online whiteboard tools. The online whiteboard tools provide built-in templates to help teams familiar with collaborative diagramming. Besides, for developing user interfaces, developers can use wireframing tools like Adobe XD, Moqups, etc.

Get Frequent Feedback

The success of a software development project is based on mutual understanding between team associates and the project administrator. This is more significant when everyone is working remotely. You should encourage remote developers to share feedback, and experiences during each phase of software development. This practice helps you find uncertainties in your project and help implement necessary measures to reduce them.

In addition, this practice will make developers feel more valuable, supporting them towards better productivity. Moreover, your business can acquire reliable insights regarding the approaches and techniques used for software development from experts who are working on it. In general, the feedback acquisition process helps improve your project’s ability by integrating more features.

Launch Reporting Instructions

The reporting guidelines must be educated to and understood by all remote developers for controlled development. Also, establishing reporting procedures makes it easier for your businesses to analyze the experimental design and the rationality of the team members’ conclusions. Establish precise guidelines regarding the timeframe, reporting setup, and other factors to ensure your software development mission is on track and expected outcomes can be achieved.

Wrapping Up

Most of the software enterprises don’t have the technical experience of remote software development services. Therefore, businesses should engage with the dedicated remote software development company, hire developers and follow the above-mentioned practices to ensure smooth product development. It is important to keep your remote team motivated the same as the internal software development team, nurture trust and transparency, and offer a workspace they are content with.

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