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How IT works from a distance: tips for managing distributed teams

It is believed that IT companies in Russia were virtually unaffected by the pandemic crisis. They are one of the few who were able to quickly transfer their business processes "home". How to effectively organize remote work with distributed teams, Nikolay Sokornov, director of the software development department at Reksoft, shares his experience.



Today, in software development, a distributed or hybrid team is the norm. In Reksoft (and any other developer), about 75% of teams work on this principle . Our offices are located in five cities: St. Petersburg, Voronezh, Rostov-on-Don, Moscow, Stockholm. We also attract individual developers from other cities, for example, Tver. In addition, customers who oversee tasks often join in work on projects from around the world. We have a standard situation when the project manager is in Moscow, and the developers are in St. Petersburg and Voronezh. And even if they are located in Reksoft offices, in fact it is remote work.

Why distributed commands are needed


There is a lack of qualified personnel. Companies involved in the development, this problem leaves no choice. The main thing is that there are good specialists, and where they are is already a secondary question. There is no turning back. In the near future, all teams will be distributed.

How to manage a distributed team


The basic principle in managing distributed or hybrid teams is that the process is built as if the entire team is working remotely . It is not necessary to take into account that one of the colleagues is sitting nearby in the office. The leader should perceive all participants in the process as members of a distributed team. For all project participants, uniform objective performance criteria should be introduced.

What I mean. The manager is always tempted to put someone near him to constantly monitor, or assign the most important tasks to the employees nearby, to always be able to personally discuss the situation on the project, and, for example, to assign tasks to identify problems in the code to remote colleagues. This approach leads to the collapse of the team.

In addition, one ofThe main temptations for those who work in the office are to get together for coffee and quickly discuss something. Naturally, those who work remotely fall out of this discussion. Therefore, work in a hybrid team requires more strict adherence to all procedures, documentation of all stages and decisions in systems and mail. This allows remote team members not to feel information hunger.

Another important element for creating an effective distributed team is regular personal meetings of the whole team. In my opinion, such face-to-face meetings are more correct to do once a month, but at least once a quarter. This allows not only to strengthen the team spirit, but also smoothes out the difference in communication with remote employees, to understand how the employee breathes, how he feels in the project.

A feature of remote communication is to “cut off” the channels of information transfer. From a distance, as a rule, we communicate in writing or voice. Sign language, emotions are leaving. A good leader not only listens to an employee or reads his reports, but tries to understand the mood and motivation of an employee, to catch hidden problems that colleagues are not always ready to discuss openly. Finding out such things in person is a lot easier. Yes, and the employee in a personal conversation is likely to identify the issue of concern to him.

In what situation in development is a complete udalenka impossible?


Today, all the tools and platforms used in joint development have remote access via the Internet, so the working environment does not change much from where the developer is in the office or on the remote.

The exception is projects when it is necessary to write an application for some specific equipment or customer equipment. For example, Reksoft was doing a similar project for Roskosmos. Such a stand can be organized only in the office, and part of the team must be present at the workplace. The situation is the same with testers working with a huge number of devices. The company is simply not able to provide such a set of equipment for each employee.

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