In this day and age leaders have to do things a little differently in order to keep their teams functioning efficiently and harmoniously; it’s like a new rule book had to be written or at the very least a new interpretation of the old one was needed.
When we have people working under one roof, supervising and motivating is part of the daily routine, and the social aspect of team building is taken care of on its own. But what happens when everyone is scattered? How does a leader keep a remote software developer team on track? Well, at Developers.Net we decided to give you some tips on how we manage our developers so you can profit from our experience.
When we had people in a physical office, the norm was to arrive at a certain hour and work together for 8 or 9 hours. During this time, supervisors and bosses were able to see what their developers were up to all the time so it’s understandable that some might feel uneasy with all the freedom that an unsupervised workday allows. The knee-jerk reaction is to try to keep tabs on every activity your team performs, however, giving people the trust and liberty to work at their pace can be a huge motivator. Evidently, you will need your software developers to be available for meetings and regular communication, but it’s not necessary to go full Big Brother on them to squeeze out their best work.
Set goals for the short, the middle and the long term and make sure everyone knows what success looks like. One of the main reasons why people like working from home is the freedom of a flexible workday, 76% of people consider this as a major reason for staying with their current employer, so stop trying to make Home Office like a Regular Office and remember that getting ideal results is more important than micromanaging people.
For obvious reasons we’ve all felt like this pandemic lockdown is an extraordinary situation which will eventually come to an end. Back in early 2020 when it all began, there were foolishly optimistic predictions as to how long Home Office would go on for. Fast forward to the beginning of the spring of 2021 and not only is there no end in sight, but many are now considering, given all its advantages, to keep home office as part of a blend if not the entirety of their work plans. This requires things to “go back to normal”, and that means training as well. If you put off any courses or training sessions for “when we get back”, well, maybe it’s time to pull the trigger on them. Remember that training in a Software Development Team is paramount so don’t neglect it.
We said previously that you should allow people to have their freedom and work at their pace as long as they render the proper results, and we stand by that. However, this means that your communication has to be crystal clear so that every time you have a conference call or communicate through chats or platforms like Slack, people get the right information; you must avoid misunderstandings and misinterpretations at all costs so make sure that messages are getting received properly. One way of doing this is starting off with smaller goals, to gauge the team’s understanding, and then move on to longer objectives.
While we are on the topic of communication, remember that your team is most likely feeling isolated after working from home for so long, so it’s important to keep to a socializing schedule that builds rapport and engagement among your software developers.
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So there you have it, a few recommendations to keep your team working at a high level and for you to stay on top of things without stifling your developers.
Remember you can always give us a call if you need any further information on how to manage your software development teams.
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