Drawing only on local talent to meet your core business goals is rather like using a horse and buggy to deliver groceries to your customers. The internet provides instant access to the vast pool of talent offered around the globe. The old concept of nine-to-five jobs at a single, large physical office can be cast aside. Instead, you can conduct around-the-clock outsourced product development in small, efficient satellite offices.
Global Working Hours With Video Conferencing Software
Old-fashioned office meetings often produce little more than fluffy speeches, bored attendees, and sticky donut crumbs. Ad-hoc video conferences with a remote development partner tend to be far more effective.
Managing remote teams across the globe does carry cross-cultural and other implications, though. You’ll want to ensure productive meetings with a technology partner or remote development agency:
- Daily or weekly scrum meetings can identify and praise individual and team accomplishments. Fast-paced meetings can also identify roadblocks that demand immediate attention.
- High-level monthly meetings among team leaders can help keep your project strategy on track. They can also help clarify concerns over the performance of an outsourcing company .
- Setting the agenda up front for each meeting will help keep the discussion focused. A strict 30-minute meeting time limit often works well to prevent fruitless chatter. Important questions or concerns can be raised again at the next meeting if needed.
- Designate a team member to keep written notes of real-time collaborative highlights. These notes can be later used to create a summary of important details and decisions. Cogent summaries will help bring absent members up to speed. If necessary, an absent member can review the recording of a video conference or voice-conference call.
- Recap discussion highlights before ending the session. This will reinforce the comprehension of participants. Meeting attendees can also ask clarifying questions about critical ideas or implementation details.
Highly Productive Startup Product Development
Human factors weigh heavily in the success of managing your outsourced development team. Global communications, scheduling software, task management automation, and other technical aspects are only the beginning.
You’ll want to address classic human resources concerns as well:
- Rewarding outstanding individual and team performance will boost team productivity. Moreover, a rewards program will help improve the quality of your firm’s goods and services for your customers.
- Assembling an efficient, trouble-free suite of collaboration software tools will raise morale. It’ll also help prevent costly bottlenecks from unexpected technical disruptions. Collaborative software suites like Jira, Slack, Wrike, Asana, Basecamp, ProWorkflow, Podio, Proofhub and others can help make short work of daily management tasks.