Managing team of remote developers

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• Managing team of remote developers

No money, but a lot of passion! How to start
growing your business from scratch.
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Die ganze Welt in einer Hand
Nurnberg
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World of outsourcing
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Balanced Scorecard Designer
Software designers from Russia and US
Graphical design from Saint Petersburg
Research of KPIs from US and Canada
Technical support in Russia and Czech Republic
Sales with partners all over the world
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Why remote employees? No-money Situation

• You are just starting business
• You have you passion, your laptop and almost no
  money, but great ideas
• You dont want to pay for office
• You dont want to have employees right now, but
  you have job you need to be done
• Hiring remote employees might be a solution
• You need Guru, but dont want to pay for
  relocation

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Terms and definitions

• Remote employee person who works remotely, not
  in your office.
• Outsourcing team team with organized
  management, that works off site.
• Outsourcing companies have their own management
  and quality control, but still need to be managed
  correctly at your side.

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Finding remote employees

• Start with recruiting websites
• If your goal is to find guru start with
  professional web communities, visit conferences
• Post task, not job offer with test-task
• Ask your colleagues to share their resources I
  do share my marketing resources

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What people you dont need

• He writes emails with grammar mistakes
• He is not on time
• He dont know how to do the project, but ask for
  more money
• He did not read your task offer post carefully
• He dont want to do task job, it is too easy for
  him, he wants to have all technical task for
  project
• He dont answer your emails in 1 day
• He suggests to use some new development tools
  because he knows them better
• He has hour rate, but not agree budget
• He is not able to divide large task into smaller
  tasks

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Hiring people

• They should believe you will pay
• and you have to pay
• Using escrow services or organize job in the way
  you dont need them
• Test jobs will save your budget

200
500
50
100
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Finance and legal

• Always have an agreement in writing
• Agree on all rights, including but not limited by
  rights to reproduce, distribute, translate,
  modify your software or its parts
• You should be more sophisticated about legal
  aspects keep emails log, deposit code, ask for
  NDA and non-competing agreement
• Payments how should they be made
• What is financial responsibility of employee in
  case of delays

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Legal issues again

• Your key assets make sure you own them
• Domain names
• Code of you software and all 3-rd parties
• Trade name of your software
• Know-hows of your software
• Your accountant and finance advisor should be
  people you know in person

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Managing People

• Tasks in writing
• Tasks and expected results. Steps and stages
  should be small (2-5 days)
• Timeline
• Budget. Payment should agreed be for each stage
• Its all about communication
• Define communication means
• Agree on communication timeline

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Optimize your business

• Create requirements for repetitive jobs
• For sure, you need SEO requirements
• Create templates as a part of requirements
• Learn something from your employees
• Outsource not the task, but problem
• Ask to record with Camtasia what they do

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Grow your business

• You are self-employed grow to hire your first
  employee
• You are manager describe what you do in a form
  of algorithms (tasks control)
• remove I-do-tasks
• You are director provide managers with your
  algorithms. Develop new task control algorithm
  for managers
• You are investor learn to control your director

Combination of outsourcing and work in office
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Save your time and save your money

• Agree on budget and timeline before the project
  starts
• Divide project into parts
• Always start with legal side sign some papers
  or just agree in writing
• Tips
• Always ask yourself what if employee will leave
  tomorrow
• Implement standards and templates
• Outsource more payroll calculations and task
  design

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Your questions, please

• Aleksey Savkin
• alex-savkin_at_aks-labs.com