Engaging your team remotely: How to make it work

Illustration by Diego Zuñiga

You have gone through the extensive conversations and organizational changes that have allowed your company to work with a vendor partner and have an otherwise-located team outside the US territories.

These are some pointers on making that first contact with "offshoring" a rewarding experience for your stakeholders.

1) Get to know your Offshore Team

Face to Face contact is a must to do proper introductions and make sure everyone understands the structure of your team, the overall project brief, and who is who and who is where.

Enable open conversations where everyone gets to know their areas of expertise and strengths; you could find opportunities to advance your project work if you leverage everyone's skills to the full potential.

2) Be prepared to On-Board new members

Ensure your new team has access to all of your project information and invite them to your scheduled production-related sessions and SCRUM ceremonies.

Sometimes, documentation will not be available, but make sure that there are one or two people who know the details of your clients' work to debrief those new team members formally into the project.

3) Create a Peer-to-Peer Support System

Whether or not you have formal documentation to share, having a to-go person for your new Offshore team member to clarify questions about the work at hand will enable them to be more productive. 

 It may mean significant time investment from your team in the early integration stages, but it'll be critical to set them for success.

 4) Adjust your process to accommodate some improvement

More often than not, these professionals have worked for similar types of clients and technologies before joining your team, and they could offer insight on how to implement some best practices.

If your client and project allow it, consider implementing suggested efficiencies making both teams work together.  Shared implementations have higher acceptance when everyone is part of the decision.

5) Provide timely and relevant feedback

Let your Offshore team know what is working and what could be done better.  Your Local team will interact daily with their Offshore peers and will let them know.

However, it's in your best interest to have your Project or Client Management team talk to their peers Offshore to review that feedback, identify opportunities and make course corrections as they become evident.

 Regardless of whether your team is Near or Far Shore, you can work with your Local team to leverage the power of having technology experts with a fresh view, working alongside your client-savvy experts, to your client's advantage.  Make it happen!