Distributed Software Development: How to Build Your Product and Create Your Team

The software development services enterprises are one of the frontrunners in the deployment of a distributed software development team globally. Hiring a distributed development team has many benefits. But how to create one? Before we dive into that, lets’ understand what distributed software development is?

What is a Distributed Software Development Team?

Distributed software development team conducts planning, designing, building, testing, and managing software development with a decentralized setup wherein teams are scattered across the globe. Such teams do not enjoy any common workspace and depend on various digital tools to cooperate and collaborate.

By now, distributed teams and remote teams may seem the same to you. However, there is a major difference. Any software development company working on a remote team’s model follows a hierarchical structure and thus looks upon the higher-ups for any decision making. On the contrary, the decision-making process in distributed development teams is shared among the team members.

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Distributed Software Development Benefits

Better Efficiency- Statistically as proven by the MIT Sloan Management Review, on the bases of the evaluation of 80 distributed software development projects teams, it was revealed that such teams perform better than local teams in dealing with the challenges of the collaboration model.
Cost- Efficiency- The model allows to save thousands of dollars on office space per employee. Organizations can hire freelancers for some roles and scale up their operations despite budget restraints.
Higher Employee Satisfaction- Distributed software development management gives your developers the flexibility to work from their choice of location and also have flexible hours of working. This leads to great work satisfaction, high productivity, and retention.

Distributed Software Development Challenges

Communication- Usually good communication is not a strong skill set among most developers. Coupling it with a distributed model of work puts up a big challenge for the organizations. Not only lack of communication, but over communication and micromanaging in anxiety can also be a real problem.
Culture- Delivering an understanding of the companys’ culture is very important while onboarding a new employee in any organization. While this task is very seamless in an actual office environment, it becomes difficult when employees are physically distributed.
Control- In any distributed software development projects, it is very problematic for each team to know the progress of all other teams. Thus, the manager faces the challenge of providing real visibility and control of all key actions being considered and undertaken by all the teams.

How to Set up a Successful Distributed Software Development Team

Right Hiring Approach- Clearly define the qualities of the right candidate. Ideally, the right developer is the one who has good communication skills, efficient organization skills, self-motivation and discipline to complete work on time. A good developer never gives up the spirit to learn new concepts.
Project Management- Just having the right set of developers is not enough unless you do not know how to manage the distribution, quality control, and ensure timely delivery of the project. The Agile technology enables small, sustained and frequent releases by different teams. Therefore, it is necessary to have able project managers in each team who ensure a seamless SCRUM process.
Distribute Leadership- Make sure to have leadership distributed in the geographies where the team is located. If the leadership is centralized at one location, the developers might feel like they are on the outskirts of the company. The distributed leadership model is more efficient in a distributed software development team.
Risk Management- To control and mitigate risk in a remote working model, you need to be pre-emptive and build the infrastructure as such. All security aspects like multi-level permissions, secure VPN service, data security tools and practices, etc. need to be implemented. Also, never forget to sign NDA whenever onboarding a new employee to the team.
Planning- Try to include all team members in planning activities for that team. As per SCRUM model, all employees should get a chance to be able to share thoughts on features, deadlines, scope, plans, etc. Mostly, the project manager takes over the planning. However, maximizing the involvement of your team members will be a much smarter move.

What is a Distributed Team in Agile?

Agile is an iterative approach to project management that helps to deliver value to customers by continuous incremental improvement through small and frequent releases.

Agile development mostly focuses on team synergy from a common physical location, distributed teams operate from different locations. Thus, applying the agile methodology in a distributed environment brings a lot of challenges.

However modern technologies coupled with a suitable approach, help companies to use technology talents globally and build a successful distributed development team.

Here are some distributed teams best practices that can help in product development-

Ensure Visibility of Project Status: In agile practice, requirements change very frequently and thus the visibility of project status becomes very essential. Any project manager or SCRUM manager must make sure that project status reports are uploaded regularly and even before starting a new sprint cycle.
Invest in Communication and Collaboration Tools: Agile can only be successful if teams quickly respond to any change. When teams operate in different time zones, this can only be made possible with consistent and effective communication. Selecting the right communication and collaboration tools such as Zoom, Skype, GitHub, etc is very essential.
Keep Track of Code Quality: To ensure good code quality agile teams must measure the stability as often as possible. They must use integration tools for continuous tracking of project quality. An active quality test team can help report bugs immediately. Pair programming can help in improving the quality and speed of the code.
Distributing Work Effectively: If your team is in one place, then you are doing what you have to. In the case of partial or full remote working, the work needs to be allocated on the bases of local expertise. Also, the work must be allocated evenly amongst the members because uneven distribution can lead to employee stress, dissatisfaction amongst distributed teams, delays in delivery, low motivation and many others.
Measure Team’s Productivity: Keeping a track of teams productivity of the distributed agile teams can give a clear image of who is working on what and what are the gaps that need to be addressed to be more effective. Here are a few metrics that can be used to measure the productivity of the agile distributed team-
Velocity- It measures the average story points that a team delivered over the last sprint cycles
Sprint Burndown- It can provide a real-time update of how many stories points your team has completed in a given sprint
Cumulative Flow Diagram- With CFD, you can keep an eye on project progress and user story changes amid different statuses

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Conclusion

Distributed software development teams offer many advantages, such as an opportunity to quickly fill the talent gap. They also bring together people from diverse backgrounds into a single project. As per research by peoplemanagement, diverse teams are 60% better at decision-making, and diverse companies are 35% more likely to have profits above their competitors.

However, there are a few cons as well connected with the remote nature of the model and the challenge of establishing communication and personal connections among the team members.