The days of app development working in separate offices may be coming to an end. There are benefits to this remote working style and if done effectively it can lead to higher productivity and reduced costs, among many others. One of the benefits of a remote app development team is getting to work from where you want to work in order to find the difficult-to-reach but highly sought after app developer that has the skills you need.

In this article, we’ll uncover the 6 tips for managing an app development team successfully.

1. Get Better Communication: When working with app developers on a remote team, it is important to make sure that everyone has the means to get into touch and stay in touch. People who work remotely generally face challenging tasks when trying to keep accurate records and documents. The ability to manage remotely is a blessing, but the lack of physical presence can create challenges in terms of communication. One of the keys to overcoming these challenges is to involve everyone as much as possible and utilize communication tools such as email, voice, video chat, and more for discussing situations that might arise during work hours.
2. Connect with Teammates: One of the most important things that remote teams lack is regular human interaction. You’ll have a better chance of building and maintaining connections if you actually reach out to other team members. Get on as many communication platforms as possible and keep real-time communications open for collaboration. It can be hard to manage a team remotely, especially if you are not in the same location as your teammates. Don’t feel alone during this experience. The Fives Network provides some great tips for managing a remote app development team.
3. Explain the app Development Process: App development is a subjective process. Teams will go through the stages of collecting ideas, writing a design document that specifies what features they wish to include, designing screens and interaction flows, polishing and creating prototypes, developing without coding and finally building a product. Building or managing this process is difficult but important to achieve positive outcomes. You’ll need to take notes so that the developers can see what features are being discussed. Upcoming milestones should be written on the board as well. This will help everyone understand where they’re at in the app’s lifetime.
4. Provide Constructive Criticisms & Compliments: It’s important for managers to ensure that the entire team is properly understanding and exchanging feedback on each other’s work. This is key because it helps teams solve problems creatively, thus increasing developer happiness. Criticisms need to be constructive and they should not stem from personal motives or be too vague. Letting developers know what additional information is needed allows them to refine their criticism and improve the overall process. Sometimes it’s the most off-handed, seemingly innocuous comments made by team members that have the most strong and lasting impact. Constructive criticism is meant to improve a process, not upset people. 
5. Giving Feedback: Feedback is an important part of managing a remote development team, without getting to know your developers it can be hard to give them what they need. However, there are scenarios where peer reviews often need more attention and that the amount of change should be carefully considered before development continues. It is important to give your remote stakeholders feedback. By providing them with your issues, you can address their concerns and effectively manage your team remotely. You need to provide them with clear feedback, gather their issues completely, support their workflow, and let them know what was done about an issue.
6. Scheduling: One way that companies can help their remote employees do well is to make sure that each person has a defined role and tasks to ensure that everything runs smoothly. For example, a manager in charge of scheduling can provide different schedules for team members so that they are doing the same things at the same time. Software development is challenging. This requires having a reliable team of people to be in different locations, separated by time zones. You need to schedule meetings and project reviews so everyone knows what they’re doing and when they have things to do. Using online scheduling tools like Boomerang or Doodle can help you ensure this happens on time.