Remote Working has always been part of the global narrative in the modern world, especially among development teams, with vendors, developers, and clients located around the world. What’s new is the overnight shift in workplaces and Work from home becoming a mandate across all teams in an enterprise. Looks like this situation is gonna stay and a lot many companies are stepping into this unfamiliar territory, one that entirely depends on remote teams collaborating seamlessly and delivering without delays.

This change in the way of working is not only about where we are working, but it is also about how we are working, and what channels and tools are we using to be efficient. From videoconferencing, to virtual whiteboarding to online chats, the pressure to stay productive has brought about large scale adoption of communication and collaboration applications.

Across industries, businesses are finding ways to continue serving customers without glitches, from mobile healthcare apps, online classes, digital supply chain management, banking chatbots, to voice commerce. For this to happen, the processes behind the scenes are also fast changing with enterprises relying on modern tools and approaches, from employee-facing technologies to cloud- based productivity tools.

With the sudden and abrupt move to remote working, we are having to reinvent entire workflows to ensure productivity. Teams are starting to emphasize the speed and efficiency of development workflow and what better way to do it than adopting the agile methodology.

An agile mindset offers the ability to understand how to work productively in different and evolving work environments. As the very first step, teams will have to break their silos and build bridges using innovative and connected technologies. They need to have “learning workers”, with diverse skill sets and an inclination to learn and be creative. In a broader sense, there also needs to be a shift in how organizations are perceived, as dynamic living organisms instead of machines, where the approach is organic and constantly evolving in response to the change in environment.

In spite of the uncertainties around us, an agile mindset can sometimes introduce a sense of cadence. With this cadence set, teams can establish their own rhythm, changes can be made faster and the desired working mode of ‘deconstructing to reconstruct’ can be easily achieved. For remote development teams under increasing pressure to meet go-to-market targets and to release applications with speed, an agile mindset can be empowering to make quick decisions, respond faster, and ‘develop more with less’.

Once you have adopted the agile mindset, the next step is to understand the actual tools that can help you work remotely and stay productive.

How can remote development teams be Fast and Productive?

The essence of remote development teams revolves around collaboration, integration, and agility. Let’s look at a few best practices that can help with high productivity & faster delivery.

• Collaborate real-time – With a team of developers building apps remotely, the devil is often in the details of the collaboration. Most times, they need a ‘shared project workbench’ to ensure collaborative development and seamless interaction between team members from UI or backend developers, DevOps, QA, to project managers. This way, everyone on the team is on the same page and ready to collaborate in realtime.

• Build from anywhere, on the cloud – Working remotely in virtual workspaces, goes hand in hand with using cloud services. In a cloud-powered environment, development can happen from anywhere with real-time collaboration. Remote dev teams using cloud application platforms can gain not just agility, mobility, and scalability, they can also benefit from the availability of on-demand computing resource power.
• Eliminate friction between Dev & Ops – When app teams working in silos transition to working remotely, the back and forth between dev & ops often leads to friction in delivery. What remote teams need is a convenient way to create test, staging, or production environments where releases can be done as frequently and fast as required. A clean handoff and seamless collaboration with DevOps can help focus on frictionless delivery and rapid releases.
• Capture repetitive business logic and reuse components – When you are on agile mode, it helps to reduce repetitive o increase repetitive work and standardize a few components. Reusing custom integrations and creating custom components instead of developing new ones can help save a lot of time
• Assign Developer Roles and Access Control – To develop modern applications today, a global team of developers with different skills are involved. Using role-based access control (RBAC)features, app development teams can manage permission and access. Adopting the principle of minimal privilege, where the least level of access is provided to perform tasks to the maximum extent, remote dev teams can configure and assign roles and permissions to manage project assets better.

For enterprises with remote teams looking to implement some or all of the above practices, investing in an enterprise-grade low-code platform is a good idea. It will help you foster collaboration between teams, reduce dependencies on specialized skills, and achieve better productivity, as you continue delivering business apps without missing a deadline.

How WaveMaker’s Cloud-Native, Low-Code Platform helps dev teams work Remotely

To keep remote dev teams functional in today’s “new normal”, many companies are seeking out automation and enterprise platforms, so as to optimize their resources and deliver faster. This growing need for developing enterprise applications with faster release cycles has led to wider adoption of cloud-native, low-code platforms.

With the WaveMaker low-code platform, developers can build modern web and mobile applications with just a browser. In remote working setups, the challenge of setting up local infrastructure on individual machines is mitigated. By using a virtual workspace, project resources and stack can be shared seamlessly, role-based access can be set up, and with project code stored in company-owned cloud systems and no setup delays, applications can be developed and deployed securely with speed.

Here is how WaveMaker ensures remote working teams stay agile and be productive:

• Collaborate using a shared project workbench – You can collaborate with anyone and manage contribution using inbuilt version control. With an enterprise-wide component repository for prefabs, themes, templates, etc., collaborative development is made possible. Using these features of the platform remote teams can collaborate with agility and flexibility.
• Go truly location-free with distributed development projects – What remote teams need is to focus on core competencies while automating parts of the application development process. By creating modern applications designed for disassembly, remote dev teams can develop, run, and deploy distributed development projects that are truly location-free.
• Build secure applications with speed – With baked-in security features, you can build apps using security controls such as RBAC and web vulnerability protection, therefore ensuring the security of distributed development projects.
• Leverage the full-stack advantage – With a low-code workbench for dev professionals, you can leverage the full-stack advantage with reusable components and faster integrations. You can run end-to-end application development anywhere on the cloud-native platform and integrate with Rest APIs, cloud databases and hosted data services. Developers can manage end-to-end application development and own microservices components easily, thus reducing complexities and going full-stack.
• Deliver more with less resources – With intuitive toolsets and future-proof software stack, you can build leaner teams for faster iterations and quicker deliveries. By considering the low-code platform as a part of your solution, you can reduce dependencies on professional services teams with specialized skills and increase go-to-market targets with agility.

Combining declarative tooling and code-behind, WaveMaker brings low-code tools to web and mobile user experience development, allowing professional developers to customize and extend code. It also provides an agile platform to build digitally on the cloud, helping remote dev teams build and deploy modern apps without any distractions.

How WaveMaker helps build leaner remote teams, designed for speed and productivity

We live in times where future-proof technology has become more critical than ever, to help us cope with this forced reality of remote workspaces. What the COVID crisis has taught us is that this situation too can change, overnight. Dev teams that are agile and responsive are the ones that will thrive in this brave new world of remote working. Low-code platforms like WaveMaker can enable enterprises, helping them build and deliver critical business apps without delays while working remotely.

Build modern apps remotely and quickly with WaveMaker Studio