In my previous two posts, I discussed the first two keys of successful application development in a remote workplace. This final post discusses the last key that will really round out your team and close the gaps you may be experiencing since the “great work from home migration.” Key #3 is a concept you are already familiar with: DevOps.

 
Donovan Brown, a principal DevOps manager at Microsoft, defines the DevOps methodology as “the union of people, process, and products to enable continuous delivery of value to users.”

Common DevOps practices include:

• Continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD), in which developers make small, incremental changes to the code base that are immediately ready to be released into production.
• Automation from start to finish, from code generation and testing to deployment and monitoring.
• Version control that records all modifications to the code base over time, dramatically simplifying the task of change management.
• Agile planning and lean project management to help DevOps teams collaborate and organize work into shorter, focused “sprints.”

 
Studies have shown that when done right, DevOps can bring tremendous improvements to tech-oriented businesses. In one study, organizations that have “fully embraced” DevOps increased revenues and profits by 60 percent, and were 2.4 times more likely to be enjoying rapid business growth than their competitors.

Many companies have already recognized the immense value that DevOps can bring to their organization but are struggling to implement it in practice. According to a 2019 survey of Harvard Business Review subscribers, 48 percent of respondents said that they “always” use DevOps practices to build software, while another 21 percent said that they “selectively” use DevOps. However, just 10 percent of respondents agree that they can quickly build and deploy software—suggesting that when it comes to DevOps, there’s a significant gap between ideals and reality.

In order to implement DevOps at Datavail, we use Microsoft’s Azure DevOps suite of technology solutions. Azure DevOps includes all the software and solutions you need to successfully bring DevOps to your own organization:

• CI/CD pipelines
• Kanban boards, team dashboards, and backlogs
• Software package and artifact management
• Custom reporting and analytics
• Private git repos hosted in the cloud

 
For example, with Azure DevOps, our remote AppDev team members can easily understand the work on their plate simply by looking at their task boards. By updating these boards as they complete their work, users can keep others in the loop in real time. This allows our team leads to quickly course-correct if team members’ progress falls short of expectations.

For many businesses, the transition to remote work has been jarring and abrupt, disrupting their standard application development workflows. But with these three keys – collaboration, communication, and DevOps – your team can begin to thrive again.

To learn more about the three keys and their implementation strategies, download my white paper, “The 3 Keys to Successful Remote Application Development.”

Managing remote workers is a delicate balance. Team leaders need to give people the solutions and the independence they need to thrive, while providing opportunities for collaboration and team synergy.

Working together when in a physical office is as simple as walking over to your coworker’s desk. But how can you replicate this effortless collaboration in a remote-only workplace? In this blog post, we’ll discuss key #2 to successful remote appdev: Communication.

No matter how talented your employees are, and how independent-minded they may be, trying to get them to work together without communicating is like herding a group of cats with their eyes closed.

What’s more, it’s undeniable that some personalities are better suited for remote work than others. Certain people truly thrive when they’re in a familiar and comfortable place like their home. Others, however, do better in a structured environment like an office that provides discipline and face-to-face interactions.

Counteracting this challenge, and enabling the human need for social interaction, is one of the top priorities for ensuring the success of remote work. In order to facilitate collaboration, remote AppDev teams need to link up early and often, maintaining open communication channels. This may include:

• Stand-up meetings on a frequent basis (e.g. daily or twice a week) where team members discuss their recent progress, their current status, and their future plans.
• Stakeholder meetings for important roles to receive updates on the status of the project.
• Team meetings led by the product owner to give team members face time with each other and build camaraderie.

 
Communicating early and often also provides more transparency and accountability. When team members know what each person is doing, there’s a complete “paper” trail of how each task gets delivered, from concept and development to QA and deploying.

Remote work also provides different challenges and opportunities for how team members choose to communicate. Real-time instant messages are more effective for getting a quick answer than asynchronous methods like email, while meetings are best for long-winded discussions and complex ideas.

At Datavail, we use Microsoft Teams to manage communication between the members of our remote AppDev workforce. Teams is perfectly suited for our workflows as a communication tool:

• Teams is fully integrated with Office 365 and other Microsoft products such as Outlook, OneDrive, and SharePoint.
• Teams lets users create individual channels for a certain topic, allowing team members to cut down on long email conversations and get answers faster.
• Teams is available on a wide variety of devices, which makes it ideal for a remote workforce: desktops, laptops, tablets, smartphones (iOS, Android, and Windows Phone), and more.

 
Enabling effective communication for your team will take you a long way in building a workforce that can develop applications effectively from afar. But it’s only one piece of the pie. To learn about the other two essential pieces, download my white paper, “The 3 Keys to Successful Remote Application Development.”