Hiring a Remote Developer? 5 Reasons Why Project Management Tools Are Essential

Imagine the following scenario — you manage a team of six people. Everyone has their tasks and are working together to achieve a common goal. Your job is to monitor them, assign tasks, and track their progress.

Now imagine if those six people lived in six different countries and in six different time zones. Project management just became much harder. How are you supposed to keep track of who’s doing what when you can’t even get everyone to work at the same time?

So what do you do? Do you hire in-house developers? Not necessarily. In-house developers are more costly in almost every way. It’s true that they can communicate face to face with you and work in your time zone. However, the speed and scalability of remote teams still outweigh the benefits of a single in-house developer. Plus, remote teams don’t need vacation days, costly office space, or benefits.

They simply need management and communication. Which brings us to:

How to Get the Most From Your Remote Developers

Figuring out how we will communicate and manage remote developers is a genuine concern. Getting projects done on time is hard enough even without the added complications of having to communicate and lead people who aren’t in the same space as we are.

Still, not hiring remote developers would be a huge mistake. When hiring remotely, we have several advantages at our disposal.

• Access To Global TalentHiring remote developers is a fantastic option. It gives us access to developers around the world. If you’re struggling with a high turnover rate with developers or paying a salary isn’t a good option for you, or you need a good developer who will get things done at half the price, it’s time to outsource. Hiring remotely gives us access to global talent and broadens our hiring capabilities.
• AffordabilityHiring remote freelancers can cost up to 50% less than hiring in-house, full-time employees. So even if we are on a fixed budget, we don’t have to compromise on the quality or skill of our employees.
• SpecializationBecause the global market has been heavily relying on freelancers over the last decade, remote developers are now highly specialized. Thus, even if we are looking for a highly skilled developer, we are bound to find one. We just have to broaden our search — and include remote development firms.

  A good remote development agency or firm will actually hand pick, vet, and manage the developer for you. That’s what we do at Capital Numbers, and we have a stringent interview process in place to make sure you get the developer that’s best for you.

• FlexibilityThe fact that your developers are not available during your working hours might seem like a disadvantage. But let’s consider it this way — they’ll work while we sleep. What’s more, the flexibility of remote developers goes even beyond that. We can hire remote developers on a project basis, and engage them only when we need additional help.

  Plus, good remote partners will ensure that even if a developer has to leave or take a sick day, they can quickly be replaced. For example, at Capital Numbers, we use small, fast, and responsive teams. If something happens to one developer, their team members can take over for a while until they come back or are replaced.

But, the question remains — how do we manage them?

Project Management Tools — Management Made Easy

Working with remote developers doesn’t have to be a hardship. Communication, collaboration, and cooperation can be as smooth as butter. All we have to do is employ one of the many project management tools at our disposal.

Project management tools (PMTs) like BaseCamp, Asana, and ActiveCollab can help us coordinate our remote team efficiently and quickly.

The Advantages of Project Management Tools

With project management tools (PMT) we can manage all projects that are under our domain. What’s more, we can check in on how other teams are doing, and see how far they are progressing at any given time. Thanks to the real-time updates and open lines of communication, managing remote developers isn’t such a hardship anymore.

Keeping the lines of communication open is crucial both for monitoring and for providing a clear, bigger picture both for us and for all those working under us.

Communication

PMTs help us communicate both on an individual and team basis. With just one tool, we will be able to get a clear picture of who’s working on what and when they will deliver it. What’s more, project supervision is much more comfortable with PMTs. They allow us to regularly receive daily summaries of completed work.

Teammates and different teams can also communicate and coordinate work. If one project requests the involvement of more than one group, the organization will be much easier with team-wide communication and a project management tool.

Work Organization and Team Cooperation

Let’s say we hire a team of five remote developers who are working on software development for us. Each developer has one task, but they need to deliver the tasks consecutively. So to avoid getting tasks #3 and #4 before we get #1 and #2, we need an effective tool that will help us coordinate.

With a project management tool, we can delegate the work. We can allocate tasks as well as set deadlines and timelines for individual projects. We can even divide different tasks if needed. That makes delivering the entire project much more straightforward.

Task Tracking and Delegation, and On-Time Delivery

Sometimes, things go sideways. Deadlines get pushed forward, a team member gets sick, or we simply have a bigger workload than we planned. That’s precisely when project management tools can save our work day.

With PMT, we can easily prioritize tasks, as well as keep an eye on the overall timeline. That’s how we can make sure that the entire project isn’t delayed due to one mishap. What’s more, with these tools we can flag what went wrong in the first place. Thus, we can learn from our mistakes in the future.

Visualizing the Timeline

We can closely monitor each activity and communication. Thus, project managers have no trouble visualizing the entire project. We can also time our team members and see how productive they are. Thus, we can deduce how much time they would need for future tasks. Alternatively, we can coordinate the work and delegate it if we see that they are struggling.

Check-Ins and Feedback

Thanks to daily reports and notifications provided by most PMT, we no longer have to check in with each member to see how they are progressing. We will get notified each time a task or a portion of a task gets completed. What’s more, we also have weekly and monthly reports at our disposal. Those come in handy not only for management but for improving the overall team performance.

Furthermore, with the chart feature, we can visualize and present said information to our team members and our superiors.

Another great feature of project management tools is milestones. Those allow us to set short and long-term goals for a team, project, and the entire company.

Conclusion

Hiring remote developers is essential. So make it a more enjoyable process with the help of project management tools. In the end, these tools can help with so much more than profit. They allow us to keep track of our productive hours, and value both our time and the time other people spend working. Plus, they reduce headaches.

PMTs leave no room for miscommunication and confusion. With information being available in real-time to everyone, managing remote developers will be a breeze.