Building a Remote Product Development Team: Key Considerations for Success

Common challenges when building a team remotely

Keeping track of projects and managing communications with your first remote team requires a fresh approach. It’s important to identify potential pitfalls of remote operations ahead of time so you’re better prepared to face them.

Common issues include:

Reduced supervision of employees
Low productivity
Communication problems
Loneliness and isolation
Reduced collaboration and lack of cohesion
Unclear expectations

Consider some of the methods below to mitigate problems before they occur, allowing you to hit the ground running with fewer setbacks.

How to Build a Successful Remote Product Development Team

Building a successful remote product development team takes planning. The key is anticipating your team’s needs before they arise so you can create the best conditions for success.

Here are some essential strategies for setting up resources, processes, and workflows:

Set the standard for effective communication

Effective communication can be more challenging for remote teams because you lose the ‘water cooler chat’ element of working in a physical office. The inability to quickly check up on employees in a remote environment can cause managers to overly rely on instant messaging, potentially interrupting people’s workflows and taking up unnecessary time.

As a manager, building communication opportunities into your schedule and providing regular updates on goals and changes in priorities can help keep everyone on top of developments.

But what works best for communication scheduling depends on the size and characteristics of your team.

Try setting aside five to ten minutes at the start of virtual meetings for an informal catch-up. This allows employees to ask questions that don’t quite fit the meeting agenda and helps promote team cohesion.

You could also consider scheduling a short, regular meeting with each employee, providing opportunities to clarify issues and catch up on progress.

Provide team members with the tools they need

Teams can work more productively when all the information they need is easily accessible, especially as they can’t walk to another employee’s desk to ask for specific information or documents.

Creating a centralised system with crucial dashboards, reports, and other information organised logically can reduce unnecessary messaging and time spent searching for resources.

Anticipating the technologies and tools your team will need to develop products effectively (and arranging access before going remote) can prevent productivity-killing snags later on. However, be prepared for additional needs to come to light as your team settles into working remotely.

Implementing a system for reporting additional requirements and having a plan to address them can help you respond quickly to emerging resource and equipment needs.

Balance meetings with asynchronous updates

If your employees work across multiple time zones, you’ll need an innovative approach to communications.

Virtual meetings often don’t work with this setup because it can be challenging (or even impossible) to schedule a time that works for everyone. In this situation, get comfortable with providing written or video updates to help you keep everyone in the loop. Just make sure your employees know exactly where to find them.

Track productivity (without micromanaging)

Tracking your team’s productivity to keep projects running on schedule is more challenging in a remote environment.

A lack of direct oversight may cause anxiety for managers, but overbearing monitoring can take its toll on team morale. Therefore, it’s a good idea to generate a system for tracking productivity and communicating it clearly to team members so they know what to expect.

Time tracking software can be helpful in some settings because it allows you to see how employees use their time clearly. This solution can also help you assess whether you’re setting manageable workloads, although they’re less suited to tracking impromptu activities such as unscheduled meetings.

Alternatively, you can ask your employees to self-report their activities regularly, briefly outlining their progress on assigned tasks and giving an overview of their workloads.

Use remote working tools to stay organized

The rapid increase of remote working has prompted the creation of numerous tools to keep global teams connected. Leveraging these tools can significantly simplify remote team management and keep everyone organized and updated.

Flexible productivity tools such as Trello and Jira make creating custom to-do lists, workflows, and progress trackers easy. These software solutions often include features such as onboarding tools and project dashboards, and many are compatible with Agile working.

Encourage team members to set work/life boundaries

Research shows that flexibility and autonomy are highly valued by employees, with 49% of workers naming them as their most important employment conditions. However, flexibility can become problematic when employees work sporadically and allow the boundaries to blur between their work and leisure time.

There’s nothing wrong with allowing employees control over their schedules if it suits your business model — in fact, supporting flexible working often improves team morale and productivity.

It can also promote organizational diversity by making workplaces more accessible to women and people of color. However, it’s important to encourage team members to establish working practices that separate their work from downtime and prevent work from encroaching on their personal lives.

Build a company culture

Developing a warm, supportive company culture is an effective way to combat isolation and improve employee experiences.

Culture-building in a remote environment requires a creative approach — consider exploring ways to foster teamwork and relationships online, such as remote coffee mornings or games.

Adding some non-work activities to your team’s calendar can help break up the working day, encourage deeper collaboration, and help remote colleagues get to know each other.

James Parkinson