Remote product development is not just a trend or the ‘future of work’. It is the present and persistent reality!

A new study by IWG reveals that 70% of employees globally work remotely at least once a week - and 50% of employees work remotely half the week.

For businesses today, it is neither easy nor within the budget to bring together a team of best developers, testers, designers, and others to develop a digital product. To survive in this competitive environment, all need to be productive all time to stay ahead from their competitors.

Here, remote product development comes into the picture. It helps you get the brilliant minds all together from different parts of the world and get your product developed faster, and with lower costs.

Apart from the myriad of benefits remote product development is holding, remote development does have some myths that exist in the industry. We are going to lighten those in the given article.

Remote Product Development- A Brief Description

Simply putting, Remote product development is the process of developing your product outside your company’s premises. Remote product development facilitates you to outsource your new product developed by expert professionals sitting at remote locations.

It’s not necessary that employees can be only seen sitting working in the company’s conference room or their office desks. Remote development has made it possible for product owners to get their product developed by the brilliant minds sitting at different locations away from each other.

Remote product development is the perfect solution to supercharge your digital product in the current digital world.

It facilitates you to nurture your product idea into a full-fledged product that excels on all your expected parameters (quality, budget, performance, time, etc.), with talent scattered across the globe and bringing together a product development team is indispensable.

Why Remote Product Development?

Remote product development facilitates businesses with exceptional benefits and helps them stay ahead from their competitors. Here are some reasons why most enterprises are choosing remote product development and so should you.

1. Controlled Cost

You can easily control your development cost more efficiently with remote product development. Be it an operational cost, fixed cost, or variable cost, getting a product developed by remote teams can help you control cost a lot.

2. Expanded Capacity & Capability

Either you can choose end-to-end product development or hire developers to develop your product. Having the experienced specialists for your project can enhance your capabilities.

The full capacity of the developer or designer builds your product with better ideas and great expertise.

3. Shorter Time To Market

From conceptualization and ideation to development and launch, your remote partner will take care of your end-to-end needs for faster development. The in-depth expertise and years experience of remote developers makes it faster to conceptualize, ideate, design, and develop.

4. Capitalize On Latest Tech

Remote product development provides you access to the latest technology. We know you are never going to compromise on the technology, and technology selection for your product development is crucial. You can pick the skilled remote developers from any corner in the world while ensuring their grasp on the disruptive tech.

Popular Myths Around Remote Product Development And Their Reality Checks

While remote work has its own challenges, but, we can solve most of them by keeping your employees engaged and work synchronized and coordinated. As the remote development is trending now, it’s time to put stereotypes to rest.

Listed down 7 myths about remote development that may confuse your minds when looking for remote development.

#1Tends to Decrease Productivity

Myth: Many people find it easy to assume that someone who works remotely gets more distracted towards other things and becomes less productive. The quality of deliverables is comparatively low.

Reality Check: But, in the modern age of time tracking tools, message boards and communication channels like Slack, there are many ways to manage remote workers and monitor productivity. There is no space for less productivity or sub-standard deliverables. Remote development enhances the productivity level and team efficiency.

#2 Leads To Unsecure Data

Myth: Businesses today believe that working with remote teams will put their company’s crucial data at risk. Their confidential information is being accessed by remote employees on unsecured public platforms.

A big security breach is present when working remotely. And of course, it’s a genuine concern if your company doesn’t invest in securing the network with a virtual private network (VPN) or two-factor authentication.

Reality Check: When working remotely, businesses do invest in high-end cloud-based collaboration tools that take data security seriously. They fix employees systems with cloud-based applications that mean the security is outsourced to vetted software programs.

With this, IT teams can monitor and keep an eye on the applications/websites running in every team member’s system. These issues are more of people problems rather than location problems.

#3 It’s all about Communication lagging

Myth: Business owners think that communication oftens breaks down when doing remote development. Also, miscommunication occurs more often in newly remote teams because remote workers don’t understand what exactly is expected of them. They believe that quality of communication goes down when coordinating remote teams with in-house teams.

Reality Check: Remote development helps teams both in-house and remote to understand business expectations. It improves transparency within the business, so communication barriers can be resolved much faster. For smooth functioning of remote development, managers need to outline clear expectations and tools for communication for someone to choose to work remotely.

#4 Will introduce you to Ineffective Meetings

Myth: People often think that remote working leads to unproductive and ineffective meetings. The meetings conducted during remote development generate no output due to communication barriers and no synchronization of work.

Reality Check: With the multiple remote collaboration tools including Slack, Skype, teams, online meetings can be quite effective or fruitful. The duration, availability of the team and purpose of the meeting must be pre-determined to make meetings effective. The time of the meeting can be mutually adjusted for the remote teams and the in-house teams.

#5 Increases Costs

Myth: Some entrepreneurs believe that remote development increases cost as the hiring of remote developers with great expertise required. Providing resources to remote teams working at different locations will tend to increase costs.

Reality Check: But, the fact is that remote working saves overhead costs incurred. Businesses no need to have larger office spaces, sky-high rent, furniture, maintenance and other in-office amenities. Remote development eliminates office expenses from your budget. This is the reason why many start-ups today work remotely, to begin with.

#6: Entire Company Culture Spoils

Myth: If team members are not present physically with each other, enterprises find it more difficult to build a positive company culture.

They believe that in-house teams and remote teams do not cooperate or collaborate with each other and, in turn, negatively impacts the company culture.

Reality Check: Businesses ensure that both the teams (remote and in-house) are collaborating with each other and are able to achieve project goals together.

They utilized several tools available online that helps teams communicate, manage tasks effectively and collaborate with each other seamlessly. Business executives conduct meetings, organize events to help teams engage and interact with the team with each other. Healthy interaction and communication between them will develop a new positive culture.

#7 Remote Development not successful as teams are not on the same physical location

Myth: People often think that remote development never succeeds. Due to communication barriers, coordination problems, no positive culture and many others, remote teams unable to deliver work on time.

Reality Check: A study shows building trust and cohesion are the two greatest predictors of satisfaction and success. Businesses today implement remote development with the best tech expertise and equip them with remote collaboration tools to eliminate communication barriers, productivity tools to remain productive when delivering tasks. Successful remote work is based on three principles:

• Communication to exchange information.
• Coordination to work collaboratively towards a common goal.
• Culture is a set of customs that nurture trust and engagement.

Your teams have an increased chance for remote success if they focus on implementing these things.

#8 Remote Development Is Never-Ending Process

Myth: Some people make assumptions that remote development is a never-ending process. The to-do list is too big that even remote employees can’t even think of.

Reality Check: This claim is absolutely false. In fact, only 20% of telecommuters claim to feel overworked, as opposed to 22% of in-office employees, according to Owl Labs. Remote teams do work more sometimes because they simply enjoy what they do. They are not forced to work beyond their limits.

Last Word

Remote working is the new digital revolution taking place nowadays. The remote working trends are driving the economy leading to an increase in environmental sustainability, social mobility, cultural inclusion, and much more.

Studies exist that prove that businesses who operate outside their company premises are generally more productive, having a skilled and experienced workforce, and rich industry experience than their in-office counterparts.

Businesses today find Remote development one of the best practises to grow in different spectrums and taste success worldwide. It facilitates a rich pool of talented professionals working collaboratively with in-house teams across the globe.

It is the new norm today and is opted by most of the businesses.

So the next time if someone tries to tell you that remote work isn’t an efficient and effective working arrangement, you can quickly show him the checklist above and get their minds clear.