Remote game development team management requires real-time coordination of skills and strategies to facilitate efficiency. Collaboration is critical considering that game developers are in different jurisdictions and work from home rather than in the traditional office.
Involving an experienced, knowledgeable and skilled team is crucial when dealing with how to manage a remote game development team.
Game Design Documentation
When looking at how to manage a remote game development team, laying down the framework for the united purpose is fundamental. Ensure everyone involved work towards the same goal, keep all documents up to date and set deadlines. A manager should ensure the provision of a Game Design Document (GDD) as a constant reminder to the team of their shared purpose.
Motivate the developer team to be productive by availing documents and a list of priorities that facilitate production. You will be working remotely and therefore you may not be readily available to answer the teams’ queries on phone. GDD is a one-stop solution where remote teams can refer to it whenever they are unsure of something. Proper documentation promotes the fast onboarding of startup teams.
Monitoring and Evaluation
Monitoring and evaluation of performance is essential if you really want to succeed in managing the remote game dev team. Know the current performance status of events and how you can make it better. Evaluate teams independently, one team may be demonstrating excellent performance while the other might be in need of extra support to measure up to your set standard. Make use of automatic alerts to grease up your efforts in remote game development team management. If you’re learning the ropes of how to manage a remote game development team, use evaluation tools to monitor the real-time performance of your teams. Such tools let the remote manage to visualize trends, review performance and respond pro-actively, limit downtime and allocate resources easily.
Emphasize on Long-term Goals
In remote game development team management, you should emphasize long-term goals rather than short-term objectives. Get the developers to understand the project by communicating the overall view of the project. Setting specific aims and milestones and making sure it fits into the general plan makes remote game development team management easy and effective.
Normalize e-Meetings
As you look at how to manage a remote game development team, consider prioritizing some types of communication over others. Video and audio conferencing come first before considering using tools like chatting, texting and emailing because they are faster and efficient in delivering information. Holding virtual meetings at set times could help you in remote game development team management. Make use of Zapier or any other communication tool and ensure you keep records. Meetings bring all team players on board and ensure they are on the same board. As a manager who’s probably struggling on how to manage a remote game development team, ensure every group member attends your e-meetings and present a report on their performance. Employ the use of video conferencing applications like Skype and Zoom to communicate with your team.
Strengthen Communications
In remote game development team management, it is vital to ensure that information availed is timely, relevant, accurate, clear, and adequate for its purpose. Ensure members speak clearly and use tools to integrate communications from various platforms in one place. This helps avoid misunderstandings and miscommunication that may make the remote game development team management frustrating. Effective communication is a good managerial tool as it promotes understanding and eliminates uncertainties that may arise in the remote game development team management.
Track Time for Key Projects
There is no trick or shortcut when learning how to manage a remote development team. Setting specific time frames for every task is essential as deadlines keep your employees on toes and eliminate laziness. In case of genuine delays, reporting to the manager prior to the deadline is considered, in case of this amend the deadlines. Persistent delays among any of the development team may indicate incompetency of some members or in other cases, gaps in the processes that need to be investigated and optimized.
Skills and Duty Delegation
When demonstrating your skills on how to manage a remote team, ensure you delegate tasks based on the skillsets of your teams. Failure to delegate duties makes it challenging for your team to eradicate backlog. Be equipped with conceptual skills, communications skills, people skills as well as technical skills. You need to have the technical know-how of every task you assign to members and be skilled in what you are delegating. Teamwork is key when assessing how to manage a remote game development team. Spending time selecting the right team will prove fundamental when assigning duties. Recruit people who challenge you, as the ultimate goal is to release the game and not about who is better than who.
Encourage Teamwork and Collaboration
Game managers who know how to manage a remote game development team, know that the secret to success is relying on teamwork and collaboration. Collaboration enables team members to demonstrate great results by uniting efforts when working for shared objectives. Teammates should feel valued and have control over their work. The team environment should expect openness from each member – discussing issues and coming to a consensus promotes a sense of ownership and encourages the workers to work even better. A team that works together fosters the success of the project. Motivating the team-players is important when deciding on the best methods on how to manage a remote game development team. Transparent employee performance appraisals as well as giving incentives and retreats help motivate your crew.
Understand Your Team
For a remote game development team management, it is reasonable to be aware of who your employees are, their likes and dislikes, skills and preference. Knowing favorable conditions for your employees when learning how to manage a remote game development team. Have occasional physical interaction with them and hold small group meetings to understand and empathize about their concerns.
Successful game developers know the best ways of how to manage a remote game development team. If you don’t have time to manage your game development project, consider outsourcing game development services from Israel IT. We are successful and industry leaders in managing remote teams with high rates of success in all of our projects.
