Working with an outsourced development team could be quite overwhelming. However, with the right approach and tools, a strong, productive relationship can be created that gives a feeling that they are a few steps away rather than across the globe. So some of the most effective strategies for working alongside your outsourced team are discussed here. This process involves technical alignment and sets the stage for a successful, long-term partnership.
Communication is the key element, especially when working with remote teams. It is essential to choose the right tools and platforms that everyone will use to stay connected. It is important to maintain clear communication between your in-house team and outsourced partners. Effective communication is a cornerstone for the success of any project. Chatting online, catching up daily, fine-tuning your project plans, reviewing progress, or meeting in person are all aimed at ensuring the outsourced team feels like a natural extension of your business.
Create a conducive environment.
All your big ideas and projects will go in vain if a conducive environment is not created for collaboration. Your efforts will stall no matter what you do to prompt your teams. So an environment that helps build teamwork and success must be fostered. This primarily begins with the foundation of trust. This trust not only needs to be developed among the employees and the outsourcing team, but they also need to trust in your ability to keep things running smoothly. Once this is established in creating a conducive environment then only can collaboration move to the next level.
Daily Catch-up Calls
Constant messaging could be cumbersome and time-consuming for some so a time allotted for calls on a daily basis can actually work wonders. These calls can touch base on the progress of the project and also address urgent matters. This is a focused time, and should not exceed 15 minutes to connect directly with the team or a point person. This should be separate from their regular stand-up meetings where things are discussed at length as per the requirement.
Backlog Refinement
In Scrum frameworks, a regular backlog refinement session is very essential and plays a significant role. These meetings give an opportunity to review requirements, revisit time estimates, and identify any potential roadblocks for the establishments that are using this methodology. This method keeps the team primed for the upcoming sprints and ensures they are always aligned with your top priorities.
Sprint Reviews
Must consider using Agile methodologies no matter how your team is structured. There are many reasons why agile is very popular. It aids the team to work faster, the development process is clear as it provides a level of transparency, and can adapt quickly to market changes, and problems that come in the way are solved more easily. Sprint reviews are where the magic happens in Agile development. Held weekly or every alternate week, Sprint reviews offer an opportunity for the team to show off what they’ve built. You have a key role to play here, as you need to provide the necessary feedback and ensure that, what they are creating aligns with your vision and business goals.
Visits and Face-to-Face Meetings
As your relationship with the outsourced team matures, try to have some in-person meetings. In-person meetings would be useful for bigger discussions, on the progress as well as the challenges that the project is facing. It will show you a roadmap for the next quarter. In-person meetings can strengthen the partnership and the success of the project despite the fact that it is an effort that needs to be put in. It would be preferred that you have a dedicated Product owner in your internal team, that could handle daily communications. So as a client, you have the flexibility to decide how involved you want to be.
The service delivery manager who oversees your outsourced team can provide you with regular check-ins which could be of great help to track the progress. These regular calls, with the frequency of time that you have decided, are your opportunity to discuss broader aspects of the outsourcing relationship. Here topics such as team effectiveness, feedback, and strategic planning are primarily covered. At times you need to step back and look at the big picture, ensuring everything is on track and aligning with your larger goals.
Encourage creativity
Creativity is a rare talent nowadays. Everybody is following the rat race. There could be few members within your organization or the outsourced team that has this talent of creativity but they would soon feel as though this talent is stifled instead of simply getting the work done. Developers should sort after creative solutions by encouraging and letting them express themselves. One creative idea will blossom into another until you find every team is thrilled about what they are doing and ideas flow like water.
Conclusion
To strike the right balance for successfully managing an outsourced engineers development team is a skillful dance between keeping yourself informed and trusting the team to do their job. Maintaining open and consistent communication is crucial. This would ensure that your outsourced partner is in line with your business objectives leading the path to a fruitful and efficient collaboration.
Deciding to work with an outsourced development team is a strategic move leading to building a partnership and achieving amazing results. Today, we tried to explain how you can manage these teams effectively. The key to managing an outsourced team boils down to a few essential things can be summarised;
Be clear and consistent in your verbal and textual communication.
Getting the hang of how the team works together.
Using the right tools and methods.
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