7 Practices A Remote Software Developer Need To Follow

7 Practices A Remote Software Developer Need To Follow      Remote developers should be confident about their talent and skills and to make the best out of them, there are some practices which freelance developers need to follow.    Tuesday, November 04, 2014:  It's not easy for a developer to work from a remote location as it requires special discipline and unique qualities to have special contribution to a software development project. Employers are also not very familiar with the concept of working with a remote programmer. Sometimes remote programmers suffer from complex that they know lesser than their clients or employer. But it's not the case all the time. Remote developers should be confident about their talent and skills and to make the best out of them, there are some practices which freelance developers need to follow. 1. Get the right tools:  Remote developers should have the right office set-up to make out the best out of productivity and appear more professional. Get some tools handy to make the job easier like headset for online calls, stable internet connection, Skype for conference calls and instant messaging, Skypeout to make calls from your phone contacts to Skype contacts, AwayFind for urgent emails, time zone converter, bug trackers and so on. 2. Bug tracking:  Remote developers should be well aware about the nitty-gritties of their ongoing project and all the possible bugs in the programme. The developer should be ready for all kind of bug fixes and should have knowledge about all the releases of the software for bug tracking. 3. Team Communication:  Team communication is one of the most important characteristics of working remotely. Your co-workers should be informed that you are on your desk. So establish the right communication process. Always stay and keep updated about progress reports. If you need to provide feedback then play it clear and simple and if you give your feedback through a video chat or email then summarise it well. 4. Make your presence felt:  Always keep using IRC to say regular Hello kind of messages. Never go invisible and keep your chat status updated so that people know what's going on at your end, like if you are away, put an 'away' message on the status bar. Build relationship with people through IRC clients and in this way you will never go invisible. 5. Know the culture of your organisation:  It's not about your skills and programming results that matter for a company. Being a remote developer, you should learn much more about your organisation too. In this way a remote developer can work smarter by building more trust with counterparts. If you know the culture of your organisation, then it creates a non-verbal mode of communication too. Be pro-active in all the occasions getting celebrated in your organisation, remotely. 6. Escalate issues whenever required:  Remote developers don't feel at ease to escalate issues, which is not a right thing to do. To be more successful, remote developers should be fearless while raising issues. You can also think about possible issues in a program and get them flagged by your project manager. Issue escalation also requires rapid communication from the developer's end. 7. Never lose consistency and reliability:  Always maintain your promises about time management in your daily work. Though a freelancer enjoys more freedom but they should be serious about their work schedules. This practice maintains a developer's reliability and consistency. Remote developers should be always available via email and Skype for prompt responses.