Remote Software Development – Team Management Playbook
Last week Wework Labs invited me to give a talk to some of their members – tech. startup founders, CEOs and CTOs – based at Wework buildings in London.
We planned this with Wework Labs to share how best to recruit, manage, motivate and retain remote software development teams.
Q&A surfaced some of the issues faced by these talented leaders: IP security together with the risk of subpar quality and late delivery.
HISTORY HELPS
Believe it or not, across Europe and North America, Japanese cars such as Toyotas, Nissans and Hondas were once routinely dismissed as second rate knock-offs. That was in the 60s and 70s.
Toyota’s quality and productivity improved significantly as a result of their use of lean production techniques. Early forms of Kanban and Scrum agile frameworks helped Honda. By the 1980s, Japanese automakers required half as many workers to produce a car as their US counterparts. By the 90s JD Powers had positioned Japanese automaker brands as the yardstick for high quality delivery.
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Remote software development – the made in Eastern Europe and/or Asia variety – seems to be following a similar pattern. In fact, large organisations, with demanding quality standards, have quietly been using remote teams for decades. Their success is linked to the use of appropriate management practices and adoption of agile scrum.
According to the Standish Group, a research organisation with a portfolio of 50,000 projects, agile projects are 3 times more successful than non-agile projects. By using management best practices, developed specifically for remote teams, together with agile scrum, we systematically de-risk our clients’ projects.
To share our playbook and learn how to get quality software delivered within your timeframe and budget, through remote teams, join our next live event or online webinar here.
