By: Stan Lee Itzcoatl.
Adding offshore help to your existing tech teams can be of great benefit, but to get the most out of it do the one key thing that will make them, and you, wildly successful. The secret: treat your offshore resources exactly like you treat your local workers. That’s it. Does it sound too good to be true? It isn’t. It does, however, require a good investment of your time. Let’s discuss some of the details below and remember that all of the supporting points mentioned below revolve around treating the remote resources the same as your local ones.
My Background with Offshore Teams
I’ve been lucky to have worked with many remote team members and offshore firms. I’ve formed great friendships as a result of these work arrangements. The remote teams I’ve managed have resided in Malaysia, Argentina, Costa Rica, India, Russia and the Czech Republic. Every single opportunity was spectacular and I would do it again in a heartbeat. I’ve heard horror stories and warnings against working with remote teams. The truth is that my personal experiences with remote teams have always been great, as mentioned earlier. Is it just plain luck that my experiences have always been very good? I don’t think so. I’m not denying that some offshore firms or remote workers sometimes provide poor quality work. I’ve witnessed how unqualified offshore firms create horrific situations by either providing poor work or no work at all! That is a topic for another day. Let’s focus on how to make a competent offshore firm or remote worker successful and in turn it will make you look awesome.
Crystal Clear Responsibilities and Priorities
From the start of your projects define clear responsibilities and goals for all of your offshore resources. I recommend creating a simple one page outline which everyone can continuously refer back to. While you’re at it, also outline the goals for the project. You will be glad you did. Also, from the start define tasks and priorities. This will insure that the offshore team works on the most important tasks first. Lastly, hold people accountable for their assignments. If someone is not doing their job or not meeting expectations, call it out in a professional fashion. This can be done in a meeting with the offshore team lead or in a formal email to the lead.
Constant and Consistent Communication
You want all communication with your offshore teams to be strong from the start. To have this, start by defining who will be your main point of communication on the offshore team. It is usually the offshore team lead. Also, define who the backup will be in case something comes up. For meetings make sure that you are going in with a clear list of tasks and priorities so that you A) give the team a set of assignments and B) the team knows which to work on first. As you conduct status meetings through the life of the project, have the team report individually on their progress. I find that having them report individually creates a lot more involvement and morale than just having the team lead give an overall status. More details will surface!
When setting up the communication approach with your offshore team you will want to agree on a standard set of communication tools (Skype, messenger apps, or others). Define backup communication methods as well. You don’t want to be scrambling to get in touch, if for example, a power outage occurs. A backup communication approach will keep things moving.
How often should you meet with your team? Well, that really depends on the project and your available time. I would recommend doing a daily voice call and a weekly video call. This keeps you both in touch enough to know what’s going on from both sides. Also, keep the communication lines open. Inform the offshore team that they can reach you at any time of day on messenger-like applications in case they run into blockers. Lastly, make yourself available for basic questions/help, especially with the lead. Sometimes important details arise from just chatting about casual topics.
Give them Training, Give them Tools, Give them Self-Sufficiency
Invest time during the beginning of your offshore relationship to provide training in areas that you think are keys for their success. While you are training them, insure that the offshore team has access to all the core tools your local team uses. You will need to review which tools are safe to share with remote workers. During your training, setup the team so that they are self-sufficient. This is important since the offshore team might have the advantage of being ahead of you from a time-zone perspective. You might want to make sure they can restart development environments, run automation tests, and run code deployments to test environments. These are just a few examples that would enable them to remove blockers on their own.
Have Fun Working Together
The last point here is likely the most overlooked of all. Just as you enjoy getting to know your local team, do the same for the offshore folks. Get to know them and have fun working together. Get to know their culture by asking them about simple things. You might someday wind up in their country, as I did, and it is very awesome having a local friend to show you the sites and foods.
Conclusion
You’ve seen a number of points in this article but the overall theme is to treat your remote teams exactly like you treat your local people. The approach mentioned in this article will allow you to create a world-class team as well as identify performance problems early on. Remote teams don’t enjoy being ignored and having a video meeting once every 3 months. No one would enjoy that type of working arrangement. So enjoy creating your world-class offshore team and enjoy getting to know them. It will make you look awesome and provide you with a major R.O.I.
Stanitz LLC is a world-class software consulting firm specializing in creating websites, building mobile applications, technical SEO and software quality assurance testing. Adopting the most cutting edge approaches and continuously innovating is what drives the culture at Stanitz LLC. Contact Stanitz today.
