How to Manage a

Remote Team

Tools To Optimize Your Software Outsourcing

Technology is getting advanced, so do the workforce! Working remotely is the new growing trend that was initiated during the COVID-19 pandemic. In this article, we’ll discuss how managing remote work can become efficient for your organization and what tools you can use to optimize your software outsourcing.

Virtual team management seems difficult in the beginning but keep in mind that it is solvable. We know challenges are more, but why should we allow challenges to overtake or hamper our work? Rather, make it your biggest strong point. Think of all the positives.

You will read below how working remotely is becoming popular than ever. Let me tell you how we manage our team for our client-

• Spending up extra time in the planning phase is the initial step we follow
• Frequent discussion with team members regarding the goals in the project
• Planning of work schedule/meetings
• Tracking of key metrics of the project
• Overseeing the challenges

During the amidst of COVID-19, Buffer conducted a poll asking people whether they like working remotely or not. And guess what, the Buffer report states that 99% of the people opted yes. Here is the screenshot of the report-

This kind of overwhelming response from the employees ensures the satisfaction and productivity of their workers. As per more information gathered from Hubspot, it states that-

• In developed countries like the US, 3.4% of the workforce (means 4.7 million employees) works remotely at least half of the week.
• Buffer states, 44% of employees mention that part of their team is full-time work from home.
• If we roughly take a look at the workforce statistics, 62% of employees between the age of 22 and 65, state that they love working remotely at least occasionally.

Well, the above statistics show that working remotely is not a bad deal! The only insecurity of a few employers regarding remote work is that they just don’t want their employees to stay disconnected from in-office employees. And completing daily tasks and projects on time through working remotely is the biggest challenge of the employees. Therefore, to overcome this challenge, let us discuss various tools to manage a remote team.

There are many revealed and unrevealed rules at in-office organizations. Going remote implies that huge numbers of those rules need to change — they basically don't apply any longer. You should make an entirely different standard of the system. For instance, what might be compared to a "tap on the shoulder" when you work remotely? As a manager, it is essential to set up these standards at an opportune time to guarantee appropriate and successful communication over your team. Let us now walk through some very important tools that you need to look upon:

Regular team meetings are very important to discuss project strategy or update on the progress. Consider the following preferred tools for meeting and instant messaging:

Skype is Microsoft product for calling and instant messaging, Skype is a specialized tool for official meetings. After signup with Skype, for meeting you get a permanent URL to send to your guests to whom you want to join a group meeting. Here, you are provided with several options like a whiteboard, PowerPoint mode, Screen Share mode, etc.

Zoom Meetings is another tool for business meetings. You can pre-schedule your meeting and send a meeting URL to the people to whom you want to join for a discussion. Host and co-hosts can be made in the case of a large group of people. It has similar options like Skype Meetings but here you can record your whole meeting in audio or video or both formats. 

Slack is a one-to-one or one-to-many instant messaging and meeting tool. It allows the bot to schedule a meeting. You can even allow your participants to vote on the best time for a meeting. (Cool!)

Task management and task control tools are the most used tools of the software house. Here are a few recommendations for the same:

It was originally designed for software development-related tasks. But because of Kanban (agile methodology), it has been used as task management software by various project management teams. Primary tasks and sub-tasks can be created using Jira which can be optimized as per the Agile process of the company. 

Asana software helps to work remotely at your ease by being focused on the entire organization and its goals, projects, and tasks. You can even set your task priority using Asana. 

It  is utilized to create task lists and keep your work organized and manageable in one centralized location. Task monitoring status, setting task dependencies, sending email reminders, and project tracking are the features that you can utilize with Zoho projects.

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Time tracking is the most important thing when working remotely. The reason behind is that some people are immensely disciplined and want work done on time. In a completely virtual environment, it becomes tough to manage or track time. Some tools are:

Clockify is an amazing time tracking tool that tracks the time spent on the project in real-time. It provides a time tracker and timesheet app for the teams to analyze your team’s productivity.

Toggl is the time tracking tool that is utilized when you want to manage your productivity by setting aside all the distractions. It provides you the real-time report to learn how much your time is worth.

Whether your team is working in-house or remote, the key indicators of each successful job are the productivity of an employee. Magic spell for working remotely is the team’s happiness and work-life balance! If you want to hire remote teams in this time of remote-working, then you will get all the benefits with Valiant Technosoft. Contact us for your project.