5 Quick Tips For Managing Remote Agile and DevOps Teams
Remote work is transforming the modern enterprise. Empowering people to get the job outside of the traditional office setting isn’t just allowing for better work/life balance for some people, it also helps companies reduce overhead, opens recruiting opportunities beyond geographical boundaries and can bolster employee retention. However, remote Agile and DevOps work – particularly when outsourcing talent – can lead to difficulties when trying to establish a strong sense of team and driving collaboration between employees, two issues that undermine the core requirements for agile and DevOps teams.
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Organizations that rely on remote developers and want to transition to either agile or DevOps need to be proactive about creating a strong culture across remote workers. These five quick tips can help you create cohesion, even in the most complex remote dev teams.
1. Adjust recruitment and hiring
Establishing remote work policies creates new opportunities for recruitment and hiring. However, simply broadening your potential recruitment pool is just a starting point. Organizations must also:
- Develop a network of industry contacts to help them identify potential recruits in distant markets.
- Train human resources employees to manage interviews and similar hiring efforts through phone and video.
- Connect with third-party development specialists that can supplement your global teams.
- Assess cultural differences in work expectations and ensure you are adapting effectively when seeking talent.
Broadening your work strategies beyond the boundaries of the office creates new opportunities, and you can unlock them by taking a more strategic approach to recruitment and hiring.
2. Make performance expectations clear
Employees should have a clear idea of the company’s overarching goals and how their efforts fit into the big picture. This means not only communicating on high-level issues, but also for day-to-day projects.
In a report from the Society For Human Resource Management, industry expert Giselle Kovary explained that setting SMART – Specific, Measurable, Actionable, Relevant and Timely – goals can make it easier for managers and employees to establish a baseline for performance expectations. Furthermore, such a clear framework for evaluation enables all stakeholders to understand how their work fits into the larger scheme of a given project.
3. Take advantage of golden hours
DZone posited that as photographers have a few golden hours each day when light is just right, remote dev teams have a few hours where the vast majority of employees are likely going to be available to work. Managers should ensure that the most important, collaboration-heavy work is prioritized during these hours to keep projects running smoothly.
4. Leverage automation to eliminate unnecessary manual work
Coordinating complex processes can be difficult with remote teams working across a variety of locations. However, organizations can simplify many workflows by automating repeatable activities, giving workers more time to focus on the tasks that do require more attention. For example, test automation with tools such as Katalon get code assessments finished quickly with minimal oversight, ensuring that none of your projects get held up because a developer is waiting for an update from a colleague who won’t even be available for a couple of hours.
5. Don’t overburden employees
Collaboration is often among the first things to fall through the cracks when people are overworked. When your remote workers are too busy to talk with one another, your projects can fall apart. Strategic development outsourcing and consulting can help you offload some of the work burden. Furthermore, you could use a third-party development specialist to strategically bridge gaps between especially distant stakeholders, easing the communication burden.
At KMS Technology, we specialize in development in agile and DevOps environments and can help companies transitioning into new methodologies. Our solutions in test automation and DevOps offer companies a strong foundation for successful projects, regardless of how complex their workforce is.
