Remote Team: How It Revolutionized Patient Care
In today’s digital era, businesses across the globe are leveraging the power of remote teams to achieve seamless project execution. In this article, we’ll talk about how a remote team is a pivotal element driving the success of the project across various industries. We’ll talk about different remote team options & dive deep into real-life examples to illustrate the transformative impact of remote teams.
Let’s first begin with what is a Remote Team
What is a Remote Team?
A remote team is a group of individuals who work together from different geographic locations outside of their office environment. This type of team structure uses communication tools & technologies to collaborate & manage software development projects.
A remote team can possess employees working from home, freelancers, or professionals sitting in other countries to manage technical projects.
Now, let’s understand some key characteristics of Remote Teams
How does the Remote team characterize itself?
Geographic Distribution
Team members are located in different regions, countries, or continents.
Digital Collaboration
Use of online communication tools (like Slack, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams - Communities), and project management tools (such as Asana, and Trello). Moreover, organizations also cloud-based services to facilitate collaboration, file sharing & communication.
Flexibility
Remote team members often work flexible work hours. Doing, this allows them to work at a time that suits their personal schedules & time zones, hence this increases productivity.
Diversity
Remote teams are diverse and can bring IT professionals from different backgrounds, cultures & perspectives. Diversity in teams will enrich creativity & boost problem-solving abilities. Remote teams are seeing a high shift being magnetized toward them due to advancements in technology. Remote teams are highly adopted in various industries like software development, digital marketing, customer support, etc.
Now, let’s understand some of the factors to consider when you hire remote developers:
What are the factors in hiring remote developers
The approach to hiring remote developers can differ from organization to organization. But, there are a few factors that can affect the hiring process. Before understanding the factors responsible to be considered in hiring developers, understand these two situations.
Firstly, you might need one developer with a certain skill or you might opt to hire an entire remote team of developers. Whatever the situation, keeping the below factors in mind should be a go-to idea:
Clearly understand your needs
It becomes difficult to hire remote developers if you don’t know what your project needs are. It is vital to think about your requirements & formulate them as an exact specification.
Determine all the key technologies you need for the project to understand a specific kind of expertise. Moreover, it is advisable to decide the time frame for your project completion.
You also need to estimate how many skilled developers you would require for effective product development.
If you are developing an application, which are the platforms you are aiming for?
Lastly, this is the biggest factor. Decide what’s your budget. What payment model are you using, etc?
Defining your budget in advance
Every one of us at least has a little idea about our budget. But remember you’ll always get different options based on your search for talent.
But be cautious & know this - the price charged by a developer doesn’t define their capability. But, rather it reflects the economic situation of the region. For example, a major chunk of Americans would spend $100 per day, while an Indian would spend $12.
However, the key to hiring the best developers lies somewhere in the middle. The golden rule is to find a balance i.e. finding a skilled candidate who offers a competitive rate.
The trend in software development outsourcing has lately shifted towards India. Companies from the U.S. have found more markets in Central & Eastern Europe. The hourly rates in these regions are $35-45/hour.
read out the guide How To Prevent Budget Overruns
Establishing Communication Channel
One of the biggest challenges in remote development is communication & control.
Working on the same project in collaboration requires a strategy to work in different time zones & work schedules. Building a proper strategy here would be a difficult thing to pull off. However, you can avoid the potential issues by outlining project management & communication tools.
By using these two practices effectively, you’ll ensure work transparency even when you do not have any control over remote development teams.
Below, I have mentioned a list of a few possible tools you can use to manage your remote team.
Collaboration tools: Jira Work Management, Asana, Trello & Basecamp.
File storage & sharing tools: Confluence & Dropbox.
Who Would Manage Remote Team Developers
While defining how to hire a remote developer, it is important to first define who would be responsible for managing the team, Majorly organizations have a dedicated project manager who takes the responsibility to perform this task.
But in the case of the IT industry, if you do not have such a person in our in-house team then it is advisable to hire a remote project manager. This specialist is responsible for coordinating & overseeing the tasks done throughout the development process.
Now, let’s quickly understand how you can hire remote developers.
How to Hire Remote Developers: A 6-Step Process
1. Writing a Job Description
It is necessary to create a well-defined job posting to hire the right tech talent for your team. The writing style you use should align with your company’s culture. Moreover, it should also reflect what you are looking for in the potential candidate. There are three core elements to focus on while writing a Job Description, which are as follows:
Job Title
Role Description
Responsibilities
2. Defining Targeted Region
While learning to hire remote developers without overspending, one of the major aspects to determine is the regions that align with your budget.
But beyond cost, quality is vital in hiring experienced remote developers. Most of the organizations are shifting towards an outsourcing approach where they are outsourcing software development projects.
Nowadays, almost every region is providing software development outsourcing services. A few countries are:
China
Argentina
India
Lithuania
Poland
Ukraine
3. Search for Candidates
After crafting the job description which outlines all your requirements, it’s now time to decide where to post it.
There are several options available here:
Leverage social media platforms
Post on remote job portals
Partner with software development companies
Partner with IT Staff Augmentation service providers
The gain efficient results it is advisable to choose varied options to increase your chances of setting up a powerful remote team.
4. The Screening Process
After receiving the CVs & selecting the top candidates for remote development, it is not time to assess their skills using a comprehensive interview process.
Plan a well-defined interview process to assess the technical skills of the candidates. Moreover, at this stage, the organization should evaluate the skills based on three skill parameters:
Soft Skill interview
Technical interview
Pair programming session
5. Making the final decision: How to hire remote developers?
Now further it is vital to assess how the candidate deals with the test tasks assigned to him, this would include:
How they accept the task,
Report immediate results & issues,
Managing Timelines
Presenting the final results
Providing a test task is a top-notch example of goal setting, this will unveil the traits possessed by the candidate.
6. Job Offer and Onboarding
6.1. Discuss the contract
The first step in the step is to discuss the project in detail. The project should be discussed with appropriate executives & your legal department. But, in case you are hiring remote developers from a dedicated organization then you can simply sign the contract with them.
6.2. Signing a Non-Disclosure Agreement
To protect the project from getting misused or to save it from unauthorized publicity, ensure that you are signing an NDA before the work begins.
6.3. Establishing effective communication
Deciding the communication platform to be used is a vital point of discussion. Tools like Slack, Skype, and Microsoft Teams are some of the famous communication tools.
6.4. Reviewing Meeting Schedules & Deadlines
Agreeing upon the meetings & core milestones to make sure each team member & organizational personnel are on the same page
6.5. Assigning In-House Developers as a Point of Contact
In this step, it is advisable to define a point of contact for each remote team member, who can answer the pending questions of the remote developer.
6.6. Ensure a Smooth Onboarding Process
As an organizational leader, it is your responsibility to ensure that the new team member is well-informed about the project & its goals.
Now, let’s see a real-life example of Hospital Note & how Remote team building helped them achieve success.
Hospital Note: An EMR Solution for Better Patient Care
Are you a hospital owner & finding patient care solutions is a tough task. Then, we would recommend you build a custom EMR solution.
What will this EMR solution help you with:
Increase the efficiency of your medical practice
Automating Repetitive Tasks
Accessing medical data remotely.
What was the project Hospital Note?
The project Hospital Note was an EMR idea of Abdirizak Mohamed, the CEO of Hospital Note.
He wanted to build an EMR solution that simplifies the tasks of all clinicals by helping them manage their tasks effectively. Moreover, he also wanted to add a feature that would allow the doctors to have medical records of the patient.
How was the design of the project?
In the designing stage, our team brainstormed to help our client meet his requirements. Mr. Mohamed wanted a feature that allows easy access to medical records. Moreover, he also wanted to have a feature that allows the users to gain medical assistance with ease.
We also built an intuitive & simple website to make the users understand what the website is all about.
What were the challenges in the project?
Performance Optimization
We are known for completing our projects on time. However, this project was quite challenging since it was necessary to overcome performance optimization. But, at last, we easily overcame this challenge by putting in some extra hours to deliver the project on time.
Storing health records
Another challenge that we faced was, storing health records to access them later. However, the expertise of our team helped us fix & issues by developing a secure cloud computing solution.
Remote Patient Assistance
This EMR solution also includes a patient portal that allows the patient to book online video consultations. This module didn’t go as expected so our team of highly professional developers found an innovative way to fix this issue.
What were the solutions we developed for the project?
We made the effort to build a feature-rich portal for medical practitioners to manage their records & more. Moreover, it also had some other features that included cloud computing technologies.
Three major solutions we developed for our client:
A simple & intuitive website
EMR portal
GDPR Compliance
What were the unique features that we built?
There were all three unique features that we included in the EMR solution, let’s learn all three:
Consultation & Prescription
Using this feature any patient can consult the clinical using an integrated video calling feature. Moreover, the prescription writing process is also quite easy as it is completely automated to ease up the process.
Scheduling
This was a special feature that we built into the solution. Using the feature, the patient can easily schedule the appointment of the clinical. By assessing the online appointment booking link from a website or social media patients can easily get medical attention.
Online Payment
We also added an online payment feature that allows the patient to make payments without any problems. Moreover, it also allows other functionalities like booking appointments, viewing results, etc. The patient’s data is safe & secure & is stored in the cloud solutions to be accessible in the future
What was the outcome of the project?
Our client was pretty happy with the work our developers did & he thanked us for it.
We were easily able to launch the website by fulfilling a complete set of requirements without any deviation from the pre-defined milestones. Moreover, the client was very pleased with the timely delivery & successful launch of the project. Additionally, they received a good response from several clinicians who were thrilled to witness this transition toward a paperless clinic.
This was how I helped Hospital Note with molding their idea into a reality. Not only this being a LinkedIn acclaimed IT Outsourcing Top voice I have helped various other industries in the past.
How can I help you in executing a hassle-free software development project
Being in the space for 15+ years now, I have been researching & brainstorming modern ways of helping my clients meet their requirements.
I can help you hire remote developers to fill the skill voids present in your existing software development team. Moreover, I can also be your software development outsourcing partner to help you build custom software that meets your requirements.
Are you a thriving business that wants to serve their customer & you also have an idea that needs to be developed?
Then, let’s talk.
Wrapping Up!
Large organizations in the U.S. have started shifting their focus toward Remote Team development. Whether it is a Finance Industry, the Music industry, an e-commerce platform, etc. almost every business is looking to build a remote team.
Why is the demand so high, you would ask? The reason is that remote teams allow organizations to avail themselves of many benefits. Using modern remote hiring models like IT Staff Augmentation, software development outsourcing has proved to be an effective way to build remote teams.
In this article, I talked about how a real-life medical solution helped doctors & patients stay connected to each other.