You can build a technology and innovation self-managed team to boost your organization.

What is a high-performing team in software engineering?

There are different several ways to define performance.

One way that makes a big difference is how much the team is dependent on its leader. When the leader makes all the decisions, it limits the team’s potential.

You can measure the effectiveness of leaders when they leave either for a short time or permanently. If team performance declines, it’s a sign that the leader didn’t create the conditions for the team to manage themselves.

Why do self-managed teams need a leader?

You can see the top-performing teams in the world, like sports teams, for example.

• What do they do?
• What are the conditions?
• What behaviors do they demonstrate?

Is the coach on the field during the game to make all the decisions? No, coaches do most of their work before and after the game. They give feedback, share insight, give advice, and prepare their players for the next game.

Inexperienced managers often have a desire to make all decisions, even those on the front lines. They get impatient, and take most of the decisions rather than see them learn from doing or coaching them to improve.

The role of leaders is to get the best performance out of the team.

And to make the vision and goals clear for all.

What is a self-managed team?

How a team makes decisions? Is the leader approving or making every decision? The role of the leader is to make employees think for themselves.

In a self-managed team, even the most junior employee is empowered to make a meaningful decision that affects the team’s performance.

When working with your team always ask these questions:

• Is the company/project vision clear?
• Are the company/project goals clear?
• Do you understand what we’re trying to accomplish and objectives?

Everybody has to think of these answers to be a winning team.

Set the common ground and start coaching from there.

In software, teams are very common an engineer comes to you and asks, “What should I do? How should this work? Is this the correct way to do it?” You can respond by asking back, “What’s the goal we’re trying to accomplish? Which direction do you think would serve the vision and our goals better?”

Managers often decide for the person because it’s faster. Then the same engineer goes and does what the boss suggested without taking the time to think why?

It is a far better option to make the engineers think through the vision, the goals, and the trade-offs. Once they’ve done it, they can tell what options are better and why.

The coach has to point out potential flaws in their reasoning. Maybe they made an inaccurate assumption, other data, or a different approach.

Managers must teach engineers how to think about complex matters.

Engineers should consider the vision, the goals, and the data, so they can decide on doing some analysis.
When your engineers do this, you can coach them to solve complex problems, instead of solving for them. At that point, a team member can grow.

How to develop a self-managed team?

Every challenge is a learning opportunity; don’t take them away from the team. Ideally, they should be making most of the front-line decisions.

But even after deciding for your team, you can sit down with them and explain the reasoning behind the decision.

It’s worth investing time into because if everybody on the team thinks and analyzes by themselves, they all can move faster.

How do you measure the performance of management?

A manager being overloaded with work may be a warning sign. Managers should delegate more responsibility to their team and let them own it autonomously.

Strategies for leaders to build self-managed teams

1. How often do engineers ask the leader to make decisions

Watch for these types of questioning:

• Can I do this?
• Should I do this?
• Am I allowed to do this?
• Do you approve this?

2. Do more coaching

Don’t make decisions for them, unless you have to. Instead try, when they come with questions, ask back, “What would you do in my place?” make them think through the problem. Or try explaining, that you want them to think for themselves, analyze and take decisions, to become a more complete professional.

3. Encourage the team to make decisions

Growth happens when somebody gives you an opportunity and trusts you to make it happen. You need space and support to deliver a goal.

A good manager can get results. A great manager can get results and grow their people, so they can do the same for others. Most people are open to and grateful for these opportunities. They see this helps them to grow.

Communicate purpose to become a self-managed team

Set a clear expectation for them to think for themselves and to make decisions. Ask them to think about it and make a proposal.

Always clarify the vision and the goals first.

Leaders are not the right people to make frontline decisions. They must help the individual collaborators to make the right decisions.

Help them make decisions, and coach the thinking process and reasoning.

Requisites to become a self-managed team

Be patient, building technical self-managed teams takes time. Managers need to observe each team member’s thinking process and select if they are fit to be self-managed.

Some people are not comfortable making decisions. They might be slowing the performance of the overall team.

Take the time to evaluate your team and make sure they’re capable before you expect them to work autonomously. You may have to replace some people, but building a team of leaders empowered to make good decisions makes a lot of difference.

The mindset of critical thinking and growth is required.

Whether it’s possible to turn your team into a self-managed team, depends mostly on the team members.

What should I do now?

If you are interested in hiring a self-managed tech team from Mexico, contact us for a free consultation.

Our engineers have deep knowledge of web development and cloud, with many success stories building e-commerce, marketplaces, mobile apps, fintech, payments, banking, and retail.

Learn Why Towa Managed Teams is the right fit for your company, book a 15-min call with us now.

So we all know about Offshore software development teams, they can be found abroad, usually foreign countries on the other side of the world.

Current technology enable collaboration of teams, everyone works remotely now so it is easier to outsource skills and engineers to help you build your product or service faster, at lesser cost than building a tech team locally.

Mexico, Colombia, Argentina, Chile all have cities with technology hubs where your company can find the right skills and engineering techniques for your project.

Many companies and startups find that outsourcing software development offers more benefits than hiring developers in-house or locally, mainly because today’s most demanded skills are related to computer sciences and there are certain IT skills that are hard to find, so the costs rise up, and there are no guarantees.

When researching a place to outsource, there are basically four types of IT outsourcing to consider: locally, onshore, nearshore or offshore?

So, which is the best option for outsourcing tech teams for your business?

Hiring locally, Onshore, Nearshore, etc?

There are pros and cons to all of them. So it’s important to define what are the main differences between them. To determine which options of IT outsourcing is the best for your company.

• Onshore or nearshore means that outsourcing software development is located in the same countryor region and have similar and compatible timezones.
• Offshore indicates that the company you hired is in another country with a different time zone, maybe 12 hours.
• Hiring locally can be expensive, and some skills required are hard to find.

The awesome about today’s technology is that. There is no need for an in-house team. Instead, you can find the right partner to help you build and scale a tech team, both onshore or nearshore, outsource in a neighborhood country.

Onshore Tech Teams

Onshore is often known as local outsourcing. In this option of software development service, a company has the opportunity to focus on its core business capabilities.

While quality is ensured, the required work is still done in a connected manner, with regular or daily meetings.

Your dedicated team will speak the same language. Onshore and nearshore outsourcing offers some benefits:

• No language barriers or many cultural similarities.
• Timezones are the same, or have many compatible 9 am to 5 pm labor hours.
• Constant communication, daily meetings and same day responses.
• An onshore development team is easy to nail and scale.
• Less expensive labor than locally

Nearshore Tech Teams

Nearshore software development is consider to be between onshore and offshore.

Nearshoring is when the team is located close to your company headquarters, perhaps in a neighbor country (Canada or Mexico)

Nearshore outsourcing has similar benefits to onshore and is far better option than what offshore can offer.

Weather you choose a nearshore or onshore partner company to build your tech team, the pool of talent is exponentially larger and labor costs can be reduced.

In addition, there are other advantages for nearshore tech teams:

• Time zone are mostly the same or lightly different.
• Many Latam countries share cultural or lenguaje similairies.
• Being more able to travel, if you really need to.

Most of the time. it would probably be a little higher cost than offshoring your tech team, but it is many times less riskier and more likely to success when you hire a manage tech team in a neighbor country like Mexico.

Onshore Tech Team: What you need to know?

Onshore tech teams are located in Mexico, in cities with the top talent coming from best Universities in the country.

An Onshore tech team can maximize a successful business with quality, engineering and technology at a lower cost.

From Onshoring a Tech Team, both parties benefit from the partnership.

Advantages of Onshoring a Tech Team

Some potential benefits of an offshore software development team:

• The project accesses a larger pool of talent
• Hiring a top talent for you team at lower costs
• Dedicated Tech teams can handle your technology services
• If you find the right partner to build your Tech Team for your company, they can assure to deliver and meet deadlines

Disadvantages of Onshore a Tech Team

There are some risks if you outsource your technology. While planning to hire a dedicated team, you need to consider the following:

• Watch for similar time-zone , the less difference the better.
• Transfering too much critical activity too fast.
• Analyize the working culture of the neighbor country
• Find partners that is located in a 3 to 4 hour flight to visit the production team, even that now almost everyone works remotely from homeoffice.
• See for cultural values like accountability, hierarchy, scheduling, responsibility.

Talk to us to evaluate our company skills to help your business build a successful technology core competency.

As a leading software development in United States and Mexico, we have huge experiences in many fields including e-commerce, marketplace platform, fintech, payments, banking, retail and many more.

You can contact us at support@towasoftware.com or via +1 (210) 787 4525 for more information.

Don’t hesitate to contact us.

React Native for Building Great Cross Platform Products

W

hat is React Native?

React Native is a Javascript framework that was built by Facebook and re-licensed for use by third parties in 2017. It allows developers to create apps for both iOS and Android web stores using a single codebase and a single programming language. With React Native, developers have the ability to write one React code that compiles to native applications on both iOS and Android, rather than having to construct parallel codebases in multiple programming languages.

What are the Benefits to React Native Development?

Time and Cost Savings

Prior to the release of React Native a company was required to either find engineers that had experience with both iOS Android programming languages, or to hire separate developers to work on each platform individually.

In contrast, React Native allows you to have a single team of developers experienced in one primary programming language who can work on both platforms simultaneously in one single codebase. Depending on the functionalities of your app, at least 90% of the codebase can be shared across both platforms and since all the versions of your software are written in mostly the same code, updating and adding features becomes much faster and easier.

Though there are some differences between iOS and Android that need to be accounted for when using React Native, the time and cost savings of having one codebase are a huge benefit.

Open Source Libraries and the React Community

When using React Native you are taking advantage of the wider open source community and ecosystem that exists around React and Javascript.; A tremendous number of libraries exist that can be used for common mobile application features, meaning you won’t have to spend so much time writing code to add extra features to your app- it’s likely that that functionality has already been built and shared with the community.

Additionally, the number of engineers employed by Facebook, as well as a big open source community means a continued improvement in the platform over time.

Shared Web App Code

If your mobile app also calls for a web browser/desktop application, React Native can provide some reuse and sharing of code between those platforms. Because React Native is just React and JavaScript code, an experienced development team could get a head start on a web application.

Additionally, Electrode Native is an open source tool that will allow you to migrate existing React apps to React Native.

Who Uses React Native?

Because it’s such a reliable and powerful cross platform development tool, React Native is being used by many top companies to develop their mobile apps.

Facebook uses React Native for their social media site as well as for Facebook ads manager and Facebook analytics. Instagram was able to share around 85% of code between its Android and iOS apps by using React Native, allowing their team to deliver the app much more quickly than would have been possible using a Native solution. And Tesla’s app, an integral part of its user interface that enables users to remotely monitor and control their Tesla car or Powerwall from their iPhone or Android, was developed using React Native.

With React Native, developing and supporting apps for both iOS and Android is less effort it once was. From the ability to develop apps across platforms using one codebase to the benefits of utilizing the open source community, React Native provides an optimal framework for developing awesome cross platform products.

Recently we had given a mindset workshop to a group of engineers who were participating in Engineering Warriors Training® (EWT). We constantly seek to strengthen our training process, where learning is not only technical, but we also aim to provide tools that enrich the engineer’s personal and professional life.

We found in the book “Mindset, The New Psychology of Success” of Carol Dweck PhD, that by cultivating a growth mindset the person becomes more open to learn through new experiences; instead of being intimidated by a new situation or something that may be considered difficult, the engineers (people like you and me) will feel attracted and interested, so that they are willing to try harder than they would normally do to overcome the challenge.

People with this type of mindset are excited when they face a problem or something unknown; this is seen not even as something negative but as an opportunity to grow and learn. They have greater resilience and therefore greater perseverance.

We may think that someone that has born with this mindset has a great advantage over others; however, in Carol’s proposal she shares that mindset is something that can be trained, just as you train your body for a marathon or for any sport.

The “growth mindset” is a choice on how to see the challenges that arise in your life: you can see them as big stones that stop your progress, or as learning bridges through which you will have to stretch your capacity and once reaching the other side you will be stronger and bigger than before.

A strategy to cultivate the “Growth mindset” is known as “The power of yet”, this is the power of believing that you can improve. Just by putting the word “YET” before any of your thoughts about your ability to solve something, this way you will open the possibilities for yourself, accepting that you are in a process of growth and learning, from which you will come out bigger than how you began.

Small changes that we make in the way we see professional and life challenges, will open us up to greater possibilities and better results.