10 Best Practices To Manage A Dedicated Team

A dedicated team model is a great way to ensure that the focus of your entire outsourced team is on your project only and helps you to deliver faster with better results. But if you want the most out of the team, you must understand how to manage your dedicated team.

So today, let’s talk about how you can manage a dedicated team the right way for maximum effort and efficiency. If you haven’t chosen a dedicated team yet, let’s start with the key considerations for a dedicated team.

Key Considerations For A Dedicated Team

1. Nearshore or Offshore?

Nearshore dedicated teams can operate and communicate seamlessly for the lack of cultural barriers and similarity of work ethics. But the downside of nearshore comes from the limitation of tech talents available for you to choose from.

You could solve the shortcoming by going offshore, but the cultural barrier and communication delays due to time zones might set you back.

It’s a big decision, and you should weigh both options to find the right outsourcing model compatible with your business model.

2. Time Zone Differences

With nearshore, the time zone difference is nearly nonexistent since all your neighboring countries fall under either similar or the same time zone. With offshore, the time zone difference increases the further you go.

Suppose your project requires immediate implementation of feedback. In that case, it’s best to work with a nearshore dedicated team instead of an offshore one, even when you’re getting better expertise from offshore teams.

Though you can create an overlapping work schedule, allowing the offshore team to exchange information as quickly as possible, the implementations may take time due to a delayed feedback loop.

3. Language Barrier

This shouldn’t be an issue in a world where the majority communicates in English. However, not all English speakers are fluent in speaking, and different people express themselves differently.

Valuable information can often be misinterpreted or misunderstood because certain terms get lost in translation. In cases like these, you need to work with native English speakers who clearly know what they want to express and do so in the right order.

4. Cultural Barriers

Cultural barriers are often considered the biggest obstacle when working with outsourcing teams. When working with people from different countries, what is a norm to one person will shock another.

When creating your diverse team, ensuring that cultural barrier doesn’t become an issue is a great factor for success.

5. Necessary Tools

Even with the best of skills, you’ll need the right tools to complement individual team members’ skills. Vendors often provide the necessary tech stack for projects and team members.

But it’s up to you to check and ensure that all the team members get access to the right collaboration and tools for efficient development.

Why You Must Manage Dedicated Teams The Right Way

Dedicated teams are the best choice for working on long-term projects, but the dedicated team can create more setbacks for the organization than benefits if the team isn’t managed the right way.

For example, if the team delays the implementation of a new feature for too long, it can result in a higher time-to-market by increasing production time. This can cause the product to fall behind the competition and lose important market shares.

Managing a dedicated team doesn’t require additional effort since the vendor often provides a project manager who takes over the management responsibilities for the dedicated team.

If you plan to create a great product with the right dedicated team that can always deliver on the team, feel free to contact the professionals at Impala Intech.

Our dedicated team of developers can give your project much-deserved brand recognition with unique designs and can help you post-launch with constant maintenance and support.

10 Best Practices To Manage Dedicated Teams Properly

Now that we’ve determined how good the dedicated team can be when managed right let’s look at the ten best tips to manage your dedicated team properly.

1. Communicate Your Visions & Expectations With The Team Clearly

If you want your dedicated team to deliver you a meaningful product, you first have to ensure that the whole team has a clear idea of what you want to achieve through your product.

If you’re a project manager, it’s up to you to offer a supportive anatomy that can help the developers understand the requirements clearly and implement all the necessary features to give the product a form that aligns with your business vision.

Defining the app’s vision to your teammates with details and visual information, if needed, can go a long way for the future of your project.

2. Establish A Detailed Reporting System With Guidelines

There should always be a reporting system when working with a dedicated team. While the team goes on about their work, the regular updates made in the reporting system can help you keep track of the progress of the whole team.

With a reporting system, you can also avoid micromanagement, which is a big detriment to progress for any business team working on a deadline.

3. Adopt Compatible Project Management Templates

A proper project management plan is a must when you’re trying to outline a highly effective action plan, track project duration, and progress, and manage the workload capacity of each team member.

A few of these templates include:

• Agile Project Plan Template
• Capacity Planning Template
• Weighted Shortest Job First (WSGF) Template
• Team and Technical Agility Template

4. Schedule Regular One-On-Ones

A one-on-one is a meeting between a team leader and a team member. The larger meetings where all the members are present are more useful for solving issues that affect the entire team. But for a one-on-one, the goal is to help each member contribute their best to the project.

One-on-one meetings are not just about talking business. As a team leader, you can also use this opportunity to ensure employee well-being. We are all humans, and employee well-being is just as important as the progress of any project.

If you ensure employee well-being in a way that helps you connect to them personally, you can boost their morale and increase their project efficiency.

5. Support Your Development Team With Creative Freedom

Dedicated team members are professionals who come from a long line of experience with similar work in relevant industries. The team members are often self-organized and know exactly what to do to make the project successful.

When you leave the team alone with their space and freedom to independently make decisions and resolve different issues, the strategy will always result in a high-quality application.

However, while you’re giving them space by letting them do their work, remember not to ask if they need any help or support they can use for performance improvement.

Dedicated teams are mostly self-reliant and equipped with the right ability to complete any assigned task. All you need to do is ensure they are always confident in their abilities.

6. Maintain Regular And Detailed Communication

“Communication is key” is a phrase that applies universally where it requires two or more people to collaborate. Dedicated teams are self-sustained and can mostly operate independently once the objectives are defined.

But for that, you need to be in constant communication. With proper communication, you’re making sure that the team understands the specific requirements and they can offer constant deliverables.

7. Always Be Open To Queries

If your communication isn’t detailed and the requirements are unclear, the dedicated team will approach you with queries frequently. As a team leader or product owner, it’s up to you to respond to all possible queries.

There can often be situations that can come out of thin air, and questions may arise that you have never faced before.

As the leader, you must be ready to answer any question the developers have so that the developers feel that both your orders and their actions are justified.

8. Have Faith In Your Team Members

We all know the saying, “If you want something done right, do it yourself.” While it can apply to different situations, it doesn’t apply to a situation where you work with a team. A leader should always trust their team members to deliver high-end goals in productive and helpful ways.

Two of the biggest trust factors are responsibility and transparency. All team members and you should always own up to mistakes and take responsibility for correcting them. You should also be willing to let the team members test out the extent of their skills to fix all possible mistakes from time to time.

9. Emphasize Quality Over Deadlines

Meeting a deadline is a crucial business practice. But most of the time, developers lose sight of the actual goal when trying to meet the deadline, which is product quality.

“A delayed game is eventually good, but a rushed game is forever bad.”

-Shigeru Miyamoto, Former CEO, Nintendo

This quote applies to product development, too. A dedicated team may need additional time to implement high-quality features that can increase customer satisfaction but might miss the deadline while doing so.

In such times, you should always support the team to emphasize quality over deadlines. Even before the project begins, you should always prioritize app quality over anything else.

10. Ensure Your Team Comes With QA Capabilities

Quality Assurance (QA) ensures that the final product meets the current market requirements and is functioning properly without any bugs, glitches, or issues. But waiting for a different team to come in and perform a QA audit can be time-consuming, and delay the time-to-market even further.

To make the process more efficient, you should always choose a dedicated team that also has QA capabilities aside from development.

This way, the team can ensure the quality of the application even while the development is in progress and optimize the delivery process accordingly.

Manage Your Dedicated Team The Right Way With Impala Intech

The idea of managing a dedicated team can be a daunting one. Why not let Impala Intech take all your worries away? Our dedicated team models are designed to suit the needs of any scale business.

We’ll always put our best effort into integrating our teams within your organization and culture by fostering a strong relationship between your internal and dedicated teams.

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