How we overcome the challenges of remote management projects

Remote project management can provide tangible benefits for any business if it is done right. IT Svit has ample experience with executing the remotely managed projects. Here is how we do it.

We are living in the era of remote collaboration, as technology advancements make it possible to speak to your colleague across half the globe without delay — and commit the code for your mutual project simultaneously. Remote project management enables the whole industry of IT outsourcing when the customer and some part of the team resides in one country (marketing, sales, billing, business analytics, managerial staff) — and the other parts of the team (DevOps, web developers, data scientists) are spread across the globe.

Such approach ensures multiple tangible benefits:

1. Lower project costs. Outsourced specialists cost less while providing the same (and in case of top 15 MSP’s worldwide — supreme level of expertise and skills, as compared to an in-house IT team)
2. Decreased time-to-market. Quite often the tasks given in the evening are accomplished overnight, which lowers the software development time significantly.
3. Better work/life balance for the team. Employing experienced specialists increases the chance of timely achievement of the goals set, equally reducing the need for long hours for the rest of the team.
4. Increased product performance and efficiency. When your product is developed by top-notch professionals, they are able to address all the details from the start. This way, you are able to avoid many hidden challenges altogether and enjoy increased product efficiency and positive end user experience due to built-in product scalability, automated infrastructure provisioning and management, in-depth logging and monitoring solutions, etc.

However, aside from these benefits, remote project management poses certain challenges, which have to be dealt with to ensure a successful execution of a distributed project:

1. Gradual loss of productivity. Without the constant “feeling of the friendly shoulder” quite many IT specialists lose their concentration and the will to continue doing the hard work, no matter how dedicated and devoted to the project they are in the beginning. This is especially true for freelancers, yet might impact the remote project teams as well.
2. Issues with team member availability due to various location or connection issues. Different time zones might mean the impossibility for the team members to communicate efficiently, the Internet access might be absent sometimes, the team members might have to go on a trip and lose access to their computer, etc.
3. Cultural and legislative barriers. When the teams work in distant countries they might have different cultural traditions (including religious and state holidays) or have to deal with legislative barriers (like the GDPR or the USA PATRIOT Act).
4. Communication issues. English is not native for many remote developers, not to mention the difficulties with getting the meaning of the slang expressions, intonations or body language, which might alter the meaning of the conversation significantly. This might quite often lead to miscommunication and affect the project outcome.
5. Access to technology and data security. The whole team should use the same tools and follow the same practices when using the company resources and data. Otherwise, there is of a bottleneck in product development or a security breach, which might be even more damaging.

IT Svit has ample experience providing DevOps-as-a-Service, Big Data solutions, the full cycle of services for startups, web development and QA for such remote projects. We have developed countermeasures for all the challenges mentioned above.

1. A small, motivated and efficient team. Our company forms a team based on the customer’s requests and the technology stack needed. If the PM remains at the customer’s location, our Team Lead assumes the role of Product Owner and helps the team to understand the project requirements in full, provide correct estimates and delegate the tasks appropriately.

Every team member delivers the daily plans in the morning and the daily reports at the end of the day through the project management system. Thus said, both the Team Lead/Product Owner and the remote Project Manager are aware of the project progress, as well as any possible challenges and bottlenecks. This helps the team remain efficient, and solve any issues as soon as possible.

2. Full-time employment and remote access. We employ all our specialists full-time, so they are always available during the business hours. We have 2 backup Internet uplinks should the main office uplink go down, and every team member has a VPN access configured in case they have to come online from home or from a business trip.

Finally, as we are located in Ukraine, our work hours largely intersect with the EU business time and we are able to deliver the results overnight for the US customers.

3. Culture and legislation compliance. Our work calendar meets the EU and US businesses schedule almost completely as our religious and official holidays mostly correlate. In addition, our business culture is built after the best examples of US and EU business, which is often mentioned in independent 5-star reviews on Clutch from IT Svit customers.

We also follow the legislation demands by heart and work according to ITSM/ITIL requirements, under NDA and SLA to ensure our customers are on the safe side.

4. Direct and on-point communication. Our team has ample experience communicating with the customers form the US and EU. We have the extensive knowledge of the business culture and practices of startups, small-to-medium businesses, and enterprises, and we are always able to come on the same page with the customer.

Conclusions: you will succeed managing a remote project team with IT Svit

Thus said, we are sure: remote project management with IT Svit will be a success for your business. Positive outcomes of any project with IT Svit are guaranteed by 13 years of experience, 600+ accomplished projects, and our solid position as one of the leaders of IT outsourcing market in Ukraine, according to the international business review and rating agency Clutch, from Washington, DC.

In case you want to accomplish software product development, infrastructure optimization, transition to the cloud, building CI/CD pipelines or simply need DevOps-as-a-Service — contact IT Svit, and we will be glad to help!

Initially, I’ve posted this story on my company’s blog — https://itsvit.com/blog/how-it-svit-handles-remote-management-projects/

How we overcome the challenges of remote management projects was originally published in Hacker Noon on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.