6 Tips To Ensure Your Offshore Developers Are Productive

1. Share Your Product Vision

It is important to define and share the delivery plan at the inception of the project. Don’t make the mistake of not giving them the full product vision.

All developers must understand what the objective is and where the project is going. Paint a picture of your product vision so the offshore developers can make smart choices as they work on the project.

2. Communicate

When you work with a remote team it is easy for them to be left in the dark on a lot of things. Make sure to over-communicate with them on what is happening with the business. Take an interest in understanding their strengths and weaknesses. Conducting daily meetings through any video calling tool or phone during the beginning or end of the day is useful to discuss and clarify a requirement or design gap, learn about the showstoppers to be communicated to other teams, and put up a different approach. This can create trust and clarity between the teams.

3. Set Clear Guidelines

To ensure constant and flawless communication, you must make sure that you have rules in place and set a time for employees to communicate with the company. Ask for suggestions from your employees about when they think communication should take place. Provide guidelines and expectations for communication before you even begin to have remote employees. This can help you make sure that all of them is on the same page before work begins.

4. Overlap Your Work Schedules

One of the biggest challenges in working with offshore development teams is the vastly different time zones. My team is in the USA and my offshore team is in India. They are 10 and a half hours in the future from us. But this issue can be sorted out, talk to your respective team, and find a solution.

5. Simplify Your Communication

Make sure you make it simple. Depending on the location of your company and your offshore team, odds are they may not be as fluent with your language as you are. The best thing you can do to solve this issue is to simplify your communication. Make sure that both parties were able to grasp the right points.

• Simplify it by limiting your vocabulary.
• Avoid metaphors, and cultural references they won’t understand.
• Get straight to the point and state the obvious.
• Be very clear with your directions.
• If they are not good with the language, get to the point, and don’t make them assume anything.

6. Assign Them “B” And “C” Task

There will be times when your offshore team may get stuck and need help from someone else. There are so many reasons that developers get stuck in the middle of their work. I suggest you assign them multiple work items in their queue so if they get stuck, they can start working on the other and don’t have to waste time. So make sure that if they get stuck on their “A” task, they have a “B” or “C” priority item they can work on in the meantime.