How to Build a Successful Remote Startup Development Team

It's no secret that remote teams are the preferred method of working on software projects for many businesses. Major tech companies like Alibaba, Skype, Basecamp, and GitHub all employ remote software development teams to build their websites. In addition, it has been proven that outsourcing may help a business succeed.

However, establishing a successful remote software development team takes forethought and undivided attention to detail.

"Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships." – Michael Jordan.

Building a remote software development team takes planning and constant hard work. It can take a long time to find the best talent to work for a company. However, putting together a skilled and talented remote team requires little more than common sense and experience as a manager.

How Do You Build a Remote Software Startup Development Team?

In this article, we will discuss proven tips that Aspired, as a remote agency, has learned in building up successful remote development teams for its international clients. The knowledge gained addresses the following points in detail.

• Employ a professional project manager (PM) before building a remote development team 
• Onboard competent team members when creating a remote software team.
• Hire professional and skilled developers 
• Organize and manage the work system with a software development team 
• Setting up effective communication with the remote team.

Hire a Competent PM

Software development is difficult even with in-house teams, so imagine how challenging it is when members are located worldwide. A competent PM that displays the following capabilities can handle this chaos:

• Putting the customers' needs in the center.
• Maintaining the remote team's focus on delivering customer value.
• Maintaining strict adherence to project management protocols, guidelines, and best practices.
• Effectively communicating with customers, internal stakeholders, and the remote team.

Employ Qualified Team Members

Skilled personnel matter everywhere! Even more so on a team that works remotely. When you try to find such team members, look for the following:

Professionalism: Working in a remote team might be difficult. Trust is important, and people with high morals can establish and maintain it.

Technical skills: They need to know enough about your cutting-edge technologies, including "Artificial Intelligence" (AI), blockchain, etc. You also need skilled business analysts (BAs), user interface designers (UI designers), testers, and DevOps engineers.

Knowledge of software engineering: Hire people well-versed with SDLC models. One way to do this is by asking potential candidates, "What is the software development life cycle, and how do you plan for it?". It’s a no-brainer that an adept development team must possess relevant software engineering knowledge.

Knowledge of Best practices for development projects: You need people on your team that possess the skills needed to complete software development projects, such as:

• Successfully Choosing the Right software architecture.
• Dealing with the security risk of app development.
• Familiarity with development tools .
• Cloud computing.
• Collaborative ability.

Roles and Responsibilities of The Team Members.

Depending on what your business needs, the people on your remote software development team can be made up of different people. On a typical software development team, you'll find experts like:

• Product Owner: The one who turns the needs of the business into software requirements.
• Product Managers: They determine the product's value proposition, how well it fits the market, and the plan for its future development.
• Software Engineers: They are the people that take care of the front-end and back-end of the software project.
• QA engineer: A specialist who ensures the software works as the instructions say it should.
• UX/UI Designers: These experts make your app or website colorful and appealing and ensure that the app is user-friendly.
• Business Analyst: The business analyst is in charge of figuring out the product and what it needs to do.
• Chief Architect: If you have a big project with many different departments and teams, you will need an architect to ensure that everyone works well together.

Hire Remote Developers

When you hire remote software developers, it's important to keep the following factors in mind:

Look at a wide range of hiring options: Building a remote team with skilled software developers takes time. Therefore, you should look at different ways to hire people. These include companies that make software, job boards, LinkedIn, etc.

Relevant experience: Technical skills only tell part of the story about what a developer can do. You need software engineers who have worked on complex projects before. During the interview, you should look at the candidates' relevant experience.

Competencies: Getting complicated projects done on a remote team requires hard work. Competencies like teamwork, caring about doing a good job, listening, etc., are important. Check this out when you interview the candidates who made the shortlist. Make sure the developers fit in with the way your business works.

Establish the system and structure for the remote software development team

Streamline the work process with three steps

• Describe the idea
• Provide the communication media
• Clear up the requirements and expectations

Explain Your Idea

Organize the working process to help your software development team work together. You must give the team clear instructions, deadlines, and documentation for the best results. In particular, you can provide the following:

• The history of your product and what you hope to get from the collaboration.
• Your business objectives and ambitions and give an overall picture of where you want to end up.
• The domain where the final product will work.

Equip team members with the best communication media

As simple as it seems, choosing communication and project management tools that work well for your team is important. Many apps and devices can do this, which have become popular during the pandemic lockdowns (Zoom, for example). Here is a short list of the ways we at Aspired communicate with each other:

• Slack is for day-to-day operations.
• Zoom and Google Meet are for video calls.
• Jira is for managing tasks.
• Miro is a whiteboard for real-time teamwork.
• Plai is a performance management tool that helps remote or distributed teams agree on the company's strategy and the team's part in it.

Documentation

The documentation for a project is a list of all the functional and non-functional requirements and restrictions that developers need to know before starting work. So, make sure you've listed all the requirements for your project and have a clear vision and values that everyone agrees on.

Effective Communication to Forge A Successful Remote Team

Remote teams require strong verbal and written communication skills. Consider the following details:

Communication with customers: Developers must talk to customers to determine what they want from the software. Use tools like video conferencing to make communication easier for customers and the remote team. Doing this also gets the team motivated, which is another benefit.

Communication about the organization: Ensure the remote team knows how their work fits the organization's overall mission, vision, and strategy.

One-on-one communication: Different team members may need help and direction. Respect each person's feelings and set up one-on-one conversations to help and guide them.

Cultural differences: Different cultures have different words and phrases that mean different things. Consider cultural differences when talking with a remote team.

Make a schedule of meetings. Good communication means regular communication. Therefore, systematic thinking is very important for business or any part of it, whether it's the routine documentation, marketing, or distribution of outlets.

Here are the kinds of regular meetings we have at Aspired that help us stay on the same page with the Scrum method

• Backlog Grooming conferences. Here, we discuss the items left on the backlog and plan what will be done during the next sprint.
• Retrospective. During retrospective meetings, the team meets casually to discuss the sprint, figure out what went wrong and what went well, and decide what to do next.
• Check-ins every day. These meetings are needed to keep in touch with each team member personally by discussing daily tasks and offering help if needed.
• Demo. The sprint demo is an important step where the team shows the client a finished part of the work.

Closing words

Describe your aspirational vision to the development team along with your plan and the team's role within it. Do this regularly, as teamwork is enhanced by the feeling of being a part of something noble.

Building such a team requires nothing less than an organizational transformation endeavor. While executing this transformation, you may require assistance with ongoing software development projects. Contact us at Aspired.io if you need to gain all the skills and knowledge you need for your project. We'll get back to you with answers to any questions you have.