Don’t count your developers before they’re hatched. How to be sure that you’ll build a successful remote software development team? First, set your baseline by having a clear understanding of the product you want to produce. Second, hire the right people for your future software development team. Read on to find out how to take a perfect crew onboard and lead them on the path to continuous excellence.
Here are 8 well-tested tips that will help you build a software development team and empower them to deliver great results remotely.
- Hire the Right People for Your Software Development Team
- Learn How to Build a Successful Software Development Team
- Define the Roles and Responsibilities in Your Remote Software Development Team
- Ensure High Performance and Secure Remote Cooperation
- Plan Focused Coding Time
- Promote the Сulture of Mentoring
- Foster Innovation and Continuous Excellence
- Provide Tools Your Team Needs
1. Hire the Right People for Your Software Development Team
Hiring is never easy. And it’s even trickier to hire a software development team remotely just based on their CVs and a few Zoom interviews. Still, there are some qualities that can shed light on the ability of a candidate to become part of a great software development team.
So what to look for when hiring a software developer?
- Good software developers are team players
The era of software developers who just write quality code is gone for good. Especially in software development, you need talented engineers who are also good communicators.
The success of your future product depends on effective communication and the team members getting along well. Try spotting candidates who gladly share their experience of achieving a goal with a team, handling controversial opinions, and recognizing the individual input of their peers.
Look for people who not only build great software, but who strive to make things done and succeed as a team instead of just collecting stars for their crown.
- They’re proactive
Software engineers you need to look for won’t sit around waiting for a task to be thrown at them. They’ll want to join your company not only because of compensation, but also because of an interesting and challenging project. This is where motivation comes in. They’ll ask questions, they’ll suggest their vision on the best way to organize sprints, etc. And even if their ideas aren’t great all the time, they’ll spark the thinking process in other team members. And these are the developers you’ll need to hire for your software development team.
- They take responsibility
I bet that ‘responsible’ is the most common soft skill you’ve encountered on CVs. And while it’s nearly impossible to guess if a candidate really is responsible, you should still try to figure it out. Ask how they plan their day, prioritize tasks, make reports, and deal with unplanned fixes, alignment meetings, or even rollbacks.
- They’re eager to push the limits of their comfort zone
Ideal members of a great developer team (and those you definitely need to find) display genuine self learner attitudes and enjoy picking up new skills. They’re fine with embracing new tasks that require going out of their comfort zone.
Ask what they would do if suggested to temporarily take on the responsibilities of their colleague in an X field and see how easily they would agree. Watch out for those who will say that unless a certain task isn’t on their responsibility list, they aren’t going to do it without being paid extra. You’ll end up having endless debates about who does what and for how much.
2. Learn How to Build a Successful Software Development Team
Healthy environment, shared working principles, and common goals are the pillars of building an effective software development team. There are no other golden rules.
To deliver great software, a developer team is not required to sit in one room and can be distributed geographically. What’s more important is a straightforward onboarding process organized before the start of the release to make sure that everyone’s in position for the adventure of building great software.
Ensure a smooth development process and the most productive state of each team member and the team as a whole. Learn how to build a software development team based on the principle of three Es:
Educate
- Make sure everybody knows their role in achieving the common goal.
- Put down precise points of your release plan with regard to deadlines, goals, and resources needed.
- Align on the solutions to possible risks and ways to manage them.
- Make sure everyone’s on the same page with regard to the way you communicate, knows who to address with questions, and understands the flow in case of unexpected issues, etc.
This document should be available to all members of the team for self control and as a standard routine for prompt actions in the event of problems.
Engage
Encourage a strong team spirit where everyone’s welcome to share thoughts and concerns without the fear of being criticized, either by you or by peers. Invite key team members to join strategic planning meetings, authorize them to drive initiatives and handle some parts of the release.
Empower
A sure sign of a healthy software development team is that if needed it can function as a self-organized entity that knows how to manage itself even in harsh times. Team members function on their own, everybody knows their role in achieving the common goal. And how this goal will be achieved is decided by the team too. The only true manager of a highly productive software development team is their goal. Outline the boundaries within which the team can make their own decisions.
