Effectively Managing Remote Tech Teams

Remote working can provide vast benefits for tech teams, such as reduced stress and anxiety, an improved work-life balance and increased productivity. It can also be very challenging for those who manage multiple employees, especially if team management isn’t something they have done remotely before.

Riccardo Cocetta, Senior Engineering Manager at Auth0; a remote-first company, and Royd Brayshay, Founder of software development specialist; NewRedo, used their own experiences to highlight the challenges of effectively managing remote tech teams, suggesting solutions to these along with some helpful tools and resources.

Royd has spent 25 years building and running software teams for a living. Riccardo has vast experience of managing remote teams, currently managing four teams spread out across the world at Auth0. The tech company employs 660 people, spread around 35 countries, and 60% of its staff are remote. This is how the company was founded and Engineering is 100% remote.

What are the challenges of effectively managing remote tech teams?

1. Communication is asynchronous, can often be misunderstood, assumptions are sometimes made and there is a lack of informal communication
2. How do you ensure that your team is being productive? There are knowledge transfer boundaries and it’s much harder to establish social relationships and the company culture.
3. Working alone as an individual can make people feel isolated, as well as fearful of their job security. The ability to focus can be a challenge, as well as autonomy and ensuring health and safety standards are met.

What solutions can we look to in order to address these challenges?

1. Improve communication through recording meetings and taking notes for reference, implement processes for differing time zones, spell out the obvious to ensure that expectations are aligned and organise social meetings with team members.
2. Set clear objectives and utilise deadlines when working as a Trust your team, removing obstacles and use Agile practices to support you. For increased alignment, implement initiatives to encourage collaborative working and social relationships through virtual spaces where bonding is the objective. For culture retention, utilise your company values when praising and rewarding employees.
3. Provide frequent feedback to each individual in your team and ensure focus through setting clear expectations. Hiring with autonomy in mind can be beneficial for those who will be working remotely. To ensure health and safety measures, check that your employees have a good working environment.

In terms of the tools and resources that we can use to help us with these, there’s:

• Video conferencing
• Instant messenger/chat
• Static documentation sharing tools
• Creative collaboration tools
• Agile tools

A detailed version of this guide including the tools and resources recommended by Riccardo and Royd can be accessed here.