7 Tips To Manage Your Offshore Team Successfully

Offshore development is trending!

With the world changing dynamically, an IT offshore model is becoming more and more popular. Offshoring is a well-known practice that plays a crucial role for business in the long run. Though, one of the primary reasons is that keeping an offshore team is more affordable than an in-house team. And, that’s precisely the main reason why companies prefer to offshore.

While it’s a great move, sometimes that’s not all!

Many have concerns about managing the remote team. Managing an offshore team need not be stressful or difficult. But, all it needs is determination and a flawless strategy to make sure that everything goes well.

So, how to manage a remote team? How can you make sure that things will do well if you are not physically present to oversee the production?

If you have already mastered the skill of managing an in-house team, you might be thinking why would this not be enough to successfully manage your offshore development team too? Well, you are about to find out why isn’t it?

Certainly, there are a few best practices that work well in both situations. I have pocketed tips and tricks to effectively manage your offshore development team.

Tips and Tricks To Effectively Manage Your Offshore Development Team

1. Set-Up A Standard Communication Channel

It’s mandatory for your onshore as well as an offshore team to be on the same page. And, this is possible when both the teams use the same communication tools. To put it simply, it’s necessary to deliver a better-defined framework — ”Cooperation Constitution” describing how communication and cooperation are done daily. The framework will include:

Progress tracking tool

Rules regarding the invoicing and work management

Defined means of communication (email, skype, slack, etc)

Contact personsAs mentioned above, the cultural indifferences in most of the scenarios make communication the real challenge. So, the clearly defined rules for the team meetings, communication channel, frequency, tools used for time tracking are important and will save a lot of effort and nerves later. We, at Your Team In India, have integrated the best practices by commonly using email, skype, zoom, Trello to connect seamlessly.

2. Build Good Documentation Of Product

With thousands of lines of code, software development seems to be a challenging venture, right? Although, with changing people working on a specific aspect of the product, switching teams, and multiple reviewers, it’s no surprise that the code gets swampy. And, there is a term coined for that — “A Technical Debt”.

In simple terms, the technical debt is amassed when the company’s software is being constantly developed without a strong emphasis on the code quality and making the software future-ready. Keeping that in mind, the hidden dependencies or suboptimal solutions encompass and get hidden deep inside the code. Unsurprisingly, the value of technical debt is on average $3.61 per line of code. Is that enough? It actually depends on the size of the project. There are approximately 2 million lines of code in Hubble Telescope software, amassing over seven million dollars in technical debt.

Furthermore, taking into consideration the fact that a 30-year-old machine recently entered safe mode after a software glitch, the problem is more than that. And not to forget — two million lines of code is not that much — Microsoft Office 2013 used 45 million lines of code and the socializing giant Facebook runs on 62 million lines of code.

So, if the company wants to create a modern software product, comparable to Facebook or any other popular service, it’s important to prepare solid and informative documentation. It not only caters to the developer’s needs but also helps future team members to manage the technical debt and solve problems no one ever thought about when writing the code.

3. Make Them Feel They Are Part Of The Team

It’s important to include your offshore team in company activities and keep them informed about the company’s upcoming events, plans and announcements. Besides, it’s crucial that they know you will value them and also their career growth. Not to forget, you’ll be surprised at how much more they will willingly give to the company when they feel appreciated.

4. Stay Mindful Of Time Zone Differences

Probably, your offshore team may not share your time zone. So, ensure to inform them in advance of meetings and deadlines set in your time zone. Be mindful of how and when you can reach out to them, within and beyond their work hours. An experienced global team could start any time of the day or night according to the requirements under special circumstances. We, at YTII, work with you to arrange the best time period to make your teamwork efficient and effective.

5. Keep An Eye But Don’t Micromanage

Honestly, micromanaging is not anyone’s cup of tea. Some things might not feel right to you, but for developers, it’s just part of the process of ensuring the project’s success in the future. Therefore, you should communicate any queries or recommendations you may have positively so that the developers will always feel appreciated.

Original Article — Tips to manage an offshore team