The days of working with only in-office teams are long behind us. Now, millions of organizations worldwide are employing remote teams. Remote work has been around for a while and 85% of managers believe that having teams with remote workers will become the new norm.
But when it comes to managing a team of remote developers, you need more than just tips and tricks for small business management. If you’re used to only managing in-office teams, you might be struggling with this new structure and finding it hard to keep your team in check.
However, if you use the right set of tools, you shouldn’t have any issues.
Jira
One of the first things any remote developer manager needs to do is install Jira and create a team. A Jira team can consist of up to six people and it’s a great place to keep everyone you’re working with on the same platform and on the same page.
When you start working with someone, you assign a team to them based on what position they have and how important it is, as well as how much responsibility they hold. Each unit on Jira has a Command Manager, who is responsible for managing that specific team’s tasks.
Jira is a collaboration tool that is completely cloud-based, which makes it ideal for setting up tasks and tracking your team member’s progress regardless of where they’re located.
Developers can ask questions on Jira, receive advice from their fellow team members, and get notifications for project deadlines. Also, each team member can effortlessly check their work and ensure they’re moving in the right direction.
If you want to make your development projects even more efficient, you should use GitLab and integrate the two platforms with a GitLab Jira integration. This will give you full visibility into your team member’s productivity, as well as options to record time logs, assign and review commits, and much more.
Freelance management tool
Freelancers are an amazing resource for today’s businesses, but managing them can be a struggle, regardless of how long you’ve been working with remote employees. Luckily, you can use a freelance management tool that can help you manage your projects and employees simultaneously while cutting down the time you spend on administrative tasks.
Here are just some of the things you can do with a freelance management tool:
- Find new talent. The world is filled with talented freelancers and it can seem like an impossible task to find the one who is perfect for the open position you have in your company. But with this tool, all you need to do is state your key requirements and you’ll get access to a plethora of qualified workers.
- Ensure simple onboarding. Your freelance management tool will come with features that allow the employees to input their timesheets with ease and manage their projects right off the bat.
- Track time. If you pay employees by the hour, this tool will help you sort out how much money each team member has earned thanks to its time tracking capabilities.
- Make simple payments. You can forget about administrative errors and communication issues when payday comes around. This is because a good freelance management tool comes with features that ensure making invoices and payments is simple and efficient.
So if you want to make management easier for you and your employees, you need to use management software for your freelance workforce. This tool comes with a user-friendly interface and is very intuitive so you and your employees can perform all of your tasks without a second thought. It comes with creative resource management, global payment processing, editorial content management, and many more useful features.
Google Suite tools
Google is much more than just the world’s best and most used search engine. It also provides you with amazing online collaboration suits that remote workers use every day.
The most useful Google Suite tools include:
- Google Docs. A word processor that has similar features as Microsoft Word that you can use to create documents, take notes during meetings, collaborate on documents, keep track of changes, and more. And if you’re looking for a replacement for Microsoft Excel, look no further than Google Sheets.
- Google Drive. A cloud-based storage platform that you can use to store all of your important power. It comes with a simple interface as well as robust permission options.
- Google Slides. If you need to create presentations for your remote team, this tool that works similarly to Microsoft PowerPoint will provide you with all the features you need.
Slack
Finally, we need to talk about collaboration and communication. When it comes to communication with your remote team, you can’t go wrong with Slack.
The Slack application is used across 600,000 organizations worldwide because it’s simple, universal, and can easily capture vital information. It’s a simple messaging app that is used only by businesses and has a phone app as well so you can be sure that you won’t have any issues reaching out to your team members.
Conclusion
Back in 2020 when the pandemic started, millions of organizations had to adapt to a new regime of working. But two years later, now most people are used to working from home and managers are creating the most efficient teams ever thanks to a plethora of useful tools.
