How to Offshore Software Development? 3 Steps to Apply for a Successful Collaboration

Today’s most efficient and fast-growing tech companies leverage offshore software development. And it’s no surprise, as offshoring allows businesses to save costs while jazzing up the workflow with innovation and productivity.

Though, there is still a lot to learn about the best practices of offshore development even for seasoned executives. Along these lines, our simple actionable list will help you to:

Kick-off offshore development correctly: provide specific details and set clear goals;
Pick the right development team;
Stay involved without hindering the process.

Let’s dive right in!

1. Provide specific details and set clear goals

The more information you provide to your offshore development company from the very beginning the better product you will get. What a ‘better product’ means? Something, more or less close to what you expected to see when started looking for offshore development team, with no deadline delays, and exceeding the budget limits.

Here is a list of tasks that needs to be performed:

Describe what pains your product-in-mind should solve (the more in detail you do it the better);
Create a list of functions and mark their priorities. This is not an easy task and companies providing offshore software development services will gladly help you create a complete list;
Study the marketplace and your potential niche, learn your audience and specify the platforms you need the product to be developed for: Android, iOS, web, or all at once;
Discuss and document the support and maintenance duties you expect from your IT partner after the release;
Set clear goals and expectations. Most of the offshore development team members won’t primarily have the same understanding of your business and needs as you do. Establish clear and achievable goals to eliminate the number of common mistakes.

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2. How to pick the right development team?

There’s an incredible number of outsourcing companies all over the globe that offer offshore software development services to large and small clients. The question is how to find a reliable one?

The skillset is one of the most important factors in selecting a team, but it’s not the only one. The well-known “ask for a reference” is still a good starting point.

Don’t get too much fascinated and troubled with polished portfolios. Obviously, you don’t have to be a genius to put fake projects, testimonials, or reviews on a website. Thus, there are few things you can do to prevent scamming:

Search for case studies. While case studies don’t display what it is like working with the potential partner, you will have an idea of the results you can expect from the team. Digging a bit dipper…
Contact other companies that have previously worked with the potential vendor. Don’t be shy about calling references and hearing about their experiences, it’s important to know what went wrong and what went well in the course of the collaboration.
Get in touch with people who are quoted on the testimonials… Get a better understanding of the way your potential partners work and handle product development-related situations.

The relevant set of skills can also be invented on the go. To check whether a vendor does have an appropriate team, look up if your offshore product development company has an IT blog where they write about coding/management/outsourcing stuff. You can also check team members’ LinkedIn profiles to see their experience and references.

Set yourself up for communication success – communication is the king in any business relationship. Fluency in a shared language is vital. In the meantime, the geographical proximity is important, though manageable, specifically when it comes to the time zone differences.

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Consider that you will need to have constant and regular communication with the outsourced team. Communication problems on the early collaboration stages can lead to larger issues, so be aware.

Pick your criteria carefully. There’s an old saying worth millions of dollars.

If it’s fast and cheap, it won’t be good. If it’s cheap and good, it won’t be fast. If it’s fast and good, it won’t be cheap.

So take your time and choose the best fit.

If you go for the fast and cheap offshore services, you’re inescapably looking at a lower quality, which will turn into excessive spending for your project’s budget. And while it’s true that hiring an offshore product development vendor can reduce costs, you still need to spend time and money on choosing the competent provider and setting up the workflow.

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3. Stay involved without hindering the process

Consider that an offshore development team members are not robots and they need to know you appreciate their contribution. Great as it would be to just order up the perfect app and have it delivered, but in reality, the best results can only be achieved in cooperation.

It’s not that hard to forget about those who live and work hundreds or even thousands of miles away from you. Even though investments in solid relationships will always pay you off.

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Use technology. If you are tech-savvy, then your company must be on board with using tech tools like Slack or G Suite. The right software makes things easier as it contributes to your comfortable remote office life.

Set a clear point of contact. Instead of letting your inhouse and offshore teams communicate freely, consider hiring a Project Manager. The project manager (PM) is the glue holding everything together. The PM works with the development team to assign tasks, set processes, spot and help overcome obstacles, as well as provide a business owner (you) with timely feedback.

Believe it or not, offshore software development is an incredible way to save costs without sacrificing quality, but only if you establish the process correctly. There is no difference in techniques that enable the in-house software teams and outsourced companies, as they apply for both. Agile, Scrum, Kanban, etc. are great for integrating remote development teams as well.

To summarize

Your goals and challenges may differ in respect to the niche you are contributing in, but these three rules are just immutable:

Define your goals and expectations as clear as possible (first-up for yourself);
Carefully pick the team you want to collaborate with;
Manage the workflow and carefully incorporate offshore development programmers into your team.

How can we help?

Based in the UK and Ukraine, Synergy Way provides small and large businesses with a number of services including custom software development, UI/UX design and project management. Setting up a development team in Eastern Europe allows our clients not only to save software development costs without losing quality but also to involve open-minded and creative professionals in the project.
Ready to get started? Simply complete our contact form.

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