In our last post, Three Important Questions to Ask Your Potential Site Redesign Team, we discussed what to look for when hiring your design team. At this point, you should be ready to start working with your designer/developer or firm. Working with an off-site team can be difficult. To help you out, we’ve included the top three aspects to focus on to ensure that working with a remote team is as painless as possible.
Communicating with an off-site team will inevitably be more difficult than walking across a room to speak with someone. There are, however, ways to work around this. Solutions such as Google Hangouts, Go To Meeting, and Skype are ways to connect to your team and collaborate. Tip: It might also be beneficial to set up weekly meetings so everyone can get on the same page and you can discuss any goals or milestones.
Accountability is another important but difficult aspect to manage for anyone overseeing remote teams. Not knowing if projects are being completed can add a lot of stress to the redesign process. Tools such as Basecamp, Lighthouse, and ActiveCollab allow teams to collaborate while also keeping track of what is being completed.
Organization is key to working with off-site teams. Using programs like Dropbox or Google Docs allow you to share files without having to send an e-mail each time a document needs to be accessed by another member of the team. Files are easily available and your team doesn’t have to waste time sifting through their inbox to find the attachment they are looking for.
Whatever solutions you decide to implement, addressing these key elements will ensure that your remote team is communicating, staying organized and being productive. In the next post we will discuss how to wrap up your project – including how to maintain your site after your design team hands it over to you.