Offshore software development is the practice of hiring an independent developer, team, or company located outside your country (typically on a different continent) in order to delegate your project or its parts. This practice enables customers to stock up on the right talents at a reasonable price, extend their internal team, and, at the same time, save their in-house staff’s time for other important tasks.
Due to the high cost-efficiency and other benefits of this practice, it has been extremely popular in recent years. Yet, finding the right vendor is never an easy task. But, we have you covered. This article will be your guide to using offshore development services the right way and getting the most of it!
Why Opt for an Offshore Development Company?
One way to outsource your project is to find an independent contractor, for instance, a freelancer. But, this approach has a few significant drawbacks and risks. Therefore, it is typically much wiser to hire an offshore software development company in order to mitigate risks and ensure smooth workflow. There are several benefits of this method.
To begin with, what is an offshore software development company in the first place? In a nutshell, it is a third-party vendor that will help you find, hire, onboard, and manage a dedicated development team.
Why is hiring an offshore outsourcing software development company better than recruiting a freelancer? First of all, finding a freelancer you can rely on is hard and time-consuming. Basically, you can never have 100% quality assurance when you contract a freelancer. With a reliable company, on the contrary, you will get a number of guarantees, including the guarantee that your project will be completed on time and at the top level.
Another big reason to contract a company instead of a freelancer is that some projects require more than one specialist to be handled well. Let’s say, you are interested in offshore application development services. In this case, you will likely need at least one skilled designer and one expert QA engineer on top of an app developer. Of course, you could contract several freelancers to fill these gaps. But, turning to a company that can provide you with the whole team right away is less time-consuming.
Lastly, one more benefit of outsourcing your projects to a specialized company is that this way you will likely have a more smooth and stress-free workflow. When hiring someone offshore, there are always many challenges such as different time zones, difficult onboarding, etc. Managing all these issues yourself can be hard. However, a reliable vendor will help you establish an efficient workflow and help with creating and managing your remote team.
Now that you know why it is better to turn to a specialized third-party vendor, let’s look at the key steps you should undertake on your side in order to use the needed services and get the most of them.
Step 1: Get the Work Done on Your Side
First of all, in order to ensure the best outcomes, you need to understand that there is a lot you need to take care of before contacting your vendor.
Namely, as a stakeholder, you should start by researching your target audience and analyzing the competition. This step is vital for creating a clear image of your future product.
Then, based on your research and analysis, you have to identify your needs. Most importantly, before contracting an offshore development company, you should have a clear idea of what specialists you need to hire and what technologies you want to use. Apart from this, it will be good if you can provide developers with clear and achievable goals. This is vital for your project’s success.
Step 2: Find Your Potential Vendors
After you’ve dealt with defining needs and goals, the next step is the choice of a good offshore development company to match your expectations.
Here are some of the most common strategies for discovering the options that are there:
- References
- If you have colleagues or friends who have used such services in the past, it is a good idea to ask them for references. This way, you can get a first-hand assessment of a particular vendor.
- Search engines
- Probably the most obvious way to discover your options is to look for companies in search engines. If you do so, be sure to track reviews, rankings, and records in order to identify whether each particular vendor is trustworthy.
- Software development directories
- Lastly, one more way to look for available options is to check industry-related directories, such as GoodFirms and Clutch. On such sites, you can discover thousands of companies from all over the world. Best part? There you will find honest ratings and reviews about each company.
Step 3: Selecting the Best Partner
Using the methods described above, you can create an initial list of potential partners. What’s next?
When you have a list of options, it is time to get to know each vendor better in order to make the choice. First of all, you may want to contact each company on your list. Scheduling a call with each of your potential partners will help you reveal some of their most notable weak sides and, thus, narrow down your list.
If after contacting different companies you still can’t make up your mind, it can be a good idea to start a few mini-projects with each to see how they work. It can be something really small and quick. For example, you can ask your preferred candidates to fix a bug or build a specific feature.
The working process, as well as the obtained result, should help you identify the winner.
Step 4: Get Started on Your Project
Finally, the last step is to create a contract with the selected vendor and get started on your project. From this point on, feel free to actively participate in the process. But, at the same time, be sure to trust your team.
Here are a few additional tips that will help you build efficient communication and ensure success:
- Define the differences in time zones and establish fixed overlaps that you will use to stay in touch with your offshore team.
- Define what kind of technology and tools you are going to use. Most importantly, define task management tools and communication channels in the early stages in order to avoid any challenges.
- Feel free to communicate any concerns, questions, or worries.
- Write down or otherwise record all important information, such as meeting summaries.
- If you are not too tight on budget, be sure to consider hiring a project manager for your offshore team. An experienced PM will help you streamline the process and ensure the ease and effectiveness of communication with your team.
The Bottom Line
Using offshore software development services is known to be effective and beneficial. Nevertheless, despite its popularity these days, there are still plenty of myths revolving around it.
Hopefully, after reading this article, you have a better idea of the basic concepts of offshore outsourcing, as well as of the process of such partnership. Use the tips from this article to choose the perfect vendor for your projects and set yourself up for success.
