How do you keep a project moving when your developers finish their day as yours begins? It is the first thing people ask when they consider a remote development team in another country, and the short answer is that you stop trying to work as if you were in the same office. You set up the work so it can be passed back and forth like a relay, and you use whatever overlap you have for decisions rather than status updates.
How that looks depends on the size of the gap. We will use two very different cases, a company in Dubai and one in Toronto, both working with a team in India, because between them they cover most situations.
Start with the real overlap, not the time difference
India is on IST, UTC+5:30, all year. The UAE is on Gulf Standard Time, UTC+4, also with no daylight saving. So India is 1½ hours ahead of Dubai, always. A team working 10:00 to 19:00 in India is working 8:30 to 17:30 in Dubai. That is nearly a full shared day.
Canada is different. Toronto is on Eastern Time, which is UTC-5 in winter and UTC-4 during daylight saving. Canada's official time service confirms clocks go forward on the second Sunday in March and back on the first Sunday in November. So India is 9½ hours ahead of Toronto in summer and 10½ in winter. When Toronto starts at 9:00 in summer, it is 18:30 in India. In winter it is 19:30. Vancouver, on Pacific Time, is another three hours further back.
Not every Canadian clock moves, either: most of Saskatchewan stays on the same time all year, and so does Yukon. And because India never changes, every Canadian clock change shifts your overlap by an hour overnight. Put recurring meetings in a calendar that stores the time zone and check them in March and November.
There is more on hiring from us for businesses in the UAE and for companies in Canada. Whatever the hours, the workflow below is what holds the arrangement together.
With a UAE team: protect the overlap from meetings
A near-complete overlap sounds ideal, and mostly it is. The risk runs the other way: because everyone is online at once, the day fills with calls, and developers get no uninterrupted time to build.
- Keep one short daily call, at the same time every day, and end it on time.
- Answer quick questions in chat, but agree a response time (say, within two hours) rather than expecting instant replies.
- Check which days both sides work. The UAE government moved to a Monday-to-Friday week in January 2022, with a shorter Friday, and many private companies followed. Confirm your own office's days and the Indian team's, and note that Friday afternoon may be quieter on your side.
With a Canadian team: run the day as a relay
With little or no overlap, the goal is that nobody waits for anybody. Each side finishes its day by leaving the other side everything it needs.
Here is a worked example. Imagine a Toronto retailer building a stock management web app with a four-person team in India that works 10:00 to 19:00 IST. In summer, one ordinary day runs like this:
- 09:30 Toronto (19:00 India): the Indian team's handoff note arrives, with a link to the latest staging build and two open questions.
- 09:30 to 12:00 Toronto: the product owner tests the build, answers both questions in the tickets, and records one decision in the decision log.
- Afternoon, Toronto: the product owner writes up the next two tickets, attaches screenshots of the current spreadsheet they replace, and marks them ready.
- 10:00 India (00:30 Toronto): the team starts with every answer already waiting. Nobody spends the morning blocked.
Twice a week, the Indian lead works a later shift, 13:00 to 22:00 IST, which gives a live window from 9:00 to 12:30 Toronto time in summer. Those calls are for demos, trade-offs and anything that would take ten messages to settle in writing.
The cost of a relay is latency: a question asked at the wrong moment waits a full day. The workflow's job is to make those questions rare.
The handoff note that makes the relay work
It takes ten minutes to write and saves hours. Use the same five headings every day, so the reader knows exactly where to look:
Done today: ticket numbers, with a staging link for anything you can click.
In progress: what is half-finished and where it stands.
Questions for you: numbered, each with the options we see and the one we would pick.
Blocked: anything we cannot continue without you, and what we are doing meanwhile.
Tomorrow: what we plan to pick up next.
The suggested answer matters most. A question with a suggested answer can be approved in one word. An open question starts a conversation, and conversations are slow across a ten-hour gap.
Write tickets that survive a night without questions
In a relay, a vague ticket costs a full day, because the developer has to ask and then wait. Before a ticket is marked ready, it should have:
- A one-sentence goal in the user's terms ("a warehouse manager can see which items are below reorder level").
- Acceptance criteria that someone could test without asking you anything.
- A real example: sample data, a screenshot of the old system, the exact wording of a message.
- The edge cases you already know about, such as what happens with zero stock or a deleted supplier.
If writing like this feels unfamiliar, our article on writing requirements developers can work from goes through it in detail.
Decisions, blockers and emergencies
Keep a decision log. A shared page with the date, the decision, who made it and why. When someone asks in two months why the stock report rounds down, the answer is there, not in a chat thread nobody can find.
Agree a rule for blocked work. If a developer is blocked, they note it in the handoff and move to the next ready ticket. They never sit and wait. This only works if there is always a ready ticket to move to, which is why the product owner keeps two or three ahead.
Plan for production problems before launch. Write down who to call if the live system breaks outside the team's hours, how to reach them, and what counts as urgent enough to wake someone. A problem that can wait until morning in India should wait.
Share holiday calendars. Several major Indian festivals move from year to year, and Canadian and UAE public holidays will not match them. Put both sides' holidays into the project calendar at the start of each year.
When a remote development team in another time zone is the wrong fit
We would be cautious about a large time gap in three situations: very early discovery work, when the product changes shape every day and needs constant back-and-forth; systems that need live coordination with your staff during your working hours; and teams with no one who can make product decisions promptly. The first can often be handled by agreeing extra overlap for a few weeks. The last cannot be fixed by any workflow. Our guide to hiring offshore developers in India covers contracts and payments if you are still at the choosing stage.
If you already work with a team in another time zone, try one change next week: ask for the five-heading handoff note every day, and answer its questions before your lunch. You will see the difference within days.
If you are setting up a new team and want to talk through overlap hours, shifts and handoffs for your situation, have a look at the ways you can hire developers from us. You will speak directly to the engineers who would be on your project.
