The world is going mobile and so do the businesses. A lot of global businesses are investing a lot in website development or custom mobile app development for various reasons. This is where the core question that is related to this article pops up. Who do I hire for my next software development project? 

Many companies today move their software development activities offshore to achieve various benefits and avail guaranteed benefits. However, unlike traditional teams, collaborating with an offshore team comes with its own tricks and management challenges.

In doing so, not only you, as a company or an entity, realise what your strengths and weaknesses are, but also enhance your ability to be efficient and flexible while reducing operational costs. To make the introduction conclusive, here are some of the vital benefits of hiring offshore development company for your software application development project.

• Highly Cost-efficient
• Saves time
• Optimizes project process 
• Gives access to discover a wider range of talents
• Flexibility and agility

What is Offshore Development?

In general terms, offshore software development is the process where the contracting company or business hires a third-party software development company, located in foreign waters, to outsource some or all of the software development tasks. 

For example, an offline restaurant fashion outlet chain in the USA looking to develop a custom website or a mobile app, hires a dedicated Ecommerce app development team from India, to develop and launch the website or a mobile app.

The basic idea is that businesses want to outsource anything that doesn’t fall squarely within their core competencies, or inhouse expertise or they simply do not want to waste their time, efforts, and money in finding and recruiting the right resources in doing so. 

List of requirements, as an example, could be the designs needed for business visual elements like logos, business cards, and brochures. It could be your website development or it could be the content required for your social media platforms, press releases, and website blog. Beyond this, information technology like system development and financial services like taxes and payroll are also common areas that are outsourced.

When Businesses Shall Hire an ODC?

There are 3 main scenarios in which businesses should think rightfully to hire an offshore development company (ODC). They are:

• To achieve the required exposure in foreign country.
• Stringent budget or capital for software development projects.
• Lack of available resources.

Things to Consider Before Hiring Offshore Development Company

Confidentiality and Professionalism

Maybe the first few things to look at carefully if your company is dealing with trade secrets and intellectual property. The offshore development company needs to be open to signing NDA and other intellectual property protection policies including an employee confidentiality contract, in case the employee leaves the company and the existing resource is replaced by a new one.

Hiring Process Must Look Familiar

The resource hiring and onboarding process must be somewhat similar to your in-house methodologies. When there is somewhat similarity between the two, you can think about the ODC’s culture, values, and technical skills. More importantly, you may rest peacefully that there will not be any clashes in the future. The main purpose for you here should be knowing that the offshore team will gel up in no time and in a smooth manner with your in-house teams in a close collaboration.

Explore & Evaluate Proven Track Record

Clutch and GoodFirms are examples of reliable platforms where you can search for offshore software development companies. Lookup for the ratings, rankings, client reviews of their website, domain expertise, etc. 

For example, search the category of top-listed web development companies on GoodFirms, their ratings, and even their work or portfolios. This is a good step to start.

A Linkedin business page is another thing you can have in your checklist where you can see internal insights like company profiles and employees. Clutch is considered to be the best source for reading the client testimonials and feedback.

Evaluation of Competency, Experience, & Expertise

It is wise to stick with your purpose of hiring an ODC, at all times. You are hiring as you don’t have that expertise or resources in-house. Hence, the main thing is to look, analyze, and decide whether the ODC team is expert and professional to fit your requirements. 

Check if they have the technological capability and expertise in testing Proof of Concept (PoC)/Trials. To find this out, ask about various development tools they use, cloud platforms they are experienced to be working with, the full technology stack they have experience with. 

There are hundreds and thousands of them out there and it’s You who need to confirm your way if their core services fall in the category of software development. Ask for the similar or previous work, references, case studies, or a demo to be showcased to you. Never choose a company with average work history. No one can simply be good enough overnight.

Flexibility in Long-term Contracts  

You want to take a look at what type of policies the ODC has in place for long-term partnerships, annual maintenance contracts (AMC), and employment. Depending on the software product or software application, ensures that you will have consistency in the work produced for your company.

Know Working Methodology with Transparency

Every software development project comes with different challenges and needs. And hence every project must be treated in a special way. Understanding of the methodology will allow you to have an idea in balancing the time, cost, and scope of the software product or application that is going to be developed. 

Another factor to consider is implementing transparency while working with the offshore team. Primary thing is to get access to the latest source code. You may have heard instances when the source code is not released by the dev team due to unwanted conflicts liable to various reasons. 

Nevertheless, request the development team to make you the admin of your project on any of the trending project management tools like JIRA, Basecamp, Trello, Slack, etc. These tools will help in implementing transparency on a daily basis. Project management tools will allow you to have control and access to monitor development tasks and analyze progress.

Also ensure if they are okay to handle extra work on short notice in the worst case scenario or emergency comes up. Confirm before you sign a contract and hire them if they are flexible and really okay in taking on additional work.

Communication is the Key

When I say communication, it is all about the knowledge sharing session at the start of the engagement, where you lay down the business objectives, purpose, and requirements in front of a dev team. 

You can find out from the first few sessions with the offshore team. Always remember that no team is a good team if they don’t ask questions and agree to everything that you say. Good teams tend to come up with better ideas as they are the experts, not you.

Communication is vital. Poor communication can trigger mistrust, poor work quality, and create difficulties. Even after you hire the team and the development starts, you want weekly meetings held, be in contact with a program manager, and have a trusted and vetted method of knowledge transfer. Communication refers here to not only the language and vocabulary but also in turnaround times and response of the dev team and the client.

Understanding the QA Process 

Ask your ODC partner to explain to you and make you understand about the QA process and the importance of it. It will help you identify whether the developed product holds everything specific to the current market requirements.

It will help you and your company to develop and market versatile products efficiently. Your understanding of the quality assurance will help you gain better confidence in the software application or product that you are planning to release into the market.

Summing It Up with A Quick Tip…

Never fall for the cheap quotes to save money while looking to hire an offshore development company. The reason is, you may end up paying a significant amount of money in the latter stages post development, if the quality is compromised. This will affect your timely pre-launch marketing strategy too. 

Software development is a witty yet expensive affair. Make sure to invest your knowledge and focus into it along with the capital to get better ROI.