Startups Stack Exchange Archive

How do you manage offshore teams?

How do you manage offshore teams effectively? I plan to hire a virtual team for my small marketing firm.

Answer 11759

Well!! This is a somewhat broad issue and will depend on several factors. Regarding the team, see, they are humans, and so both have different characteristics and different personalities. In addition:

  1. If you need a meeting, will both be at the same time?
  2. Everyone speaks the same language

These are basic and primordial questions. I believe that you should consider adopting some practices such as:

  1. Standardize reporting dates
  2. Frequent and well-defined meetings
  3. Know each other well
  4. Individual follow-up

I would also recommend some SCRUM tracking methodologies for this.

Answer 11760

This can be a complicated challenge to overcome. To help address the distance issues:

  1. Make use of available technology to help connect the team. Slack like communications tools, video conferencing, etc can all help bridge a great distance.
  2. Face time. Nothing can replace the value of face time when building a team. Travel to the offshore team frequently, at least a couple of times a year.
  3. Regular standing meetings. Standing meetings should be scheduled at least weekly if not daily. Time can be a challenge depending on timezone offsets. Try to accommodate the remote team’s normal schedule even if you need to get up early or stay up late for the meeting.

Depending on where the offshore team and your background you may face additional language or cultural issues as well. As an example people from some cultures may be more likely to try and avoid conflict, or may communicate in a very brusk style. Develop approaches to help address these issues.

Hope that helps!

Answer 11954

There are a lot of factors to consider while managing an offshore team,

  1. Time Zone It is a very important factor because all your communications will depend on this. Accordingly your meetings, standups, reports should be aligned.
  2. A strong and experienced Leader/POC at the offshore team Someone you can rely on whenever required.
  3. Resources You need to have really good resources like high speed business lines with parallel backup for internet as most of your communications will happen over internet - google hangouts, skype, goto meetings, smartsheet etc. With all these in place, you can have timely reports from your offshore team.

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