Offshore Software Development, Page 8 Category

The trend of hiring remote software development teams for executing IT projects has fuelled up in recent years. Take a look at the interesting data on remote software development as of 2021, gathered by the online portal Review42!

Remote work undoubtedly ushers in myriad benefits for employers and employees unanimously. The key gain is of course enhanced productivity for employees and cost-reduction for employers.

However, managing a remote dedicated software development team, particularly in offshore locations, is quite challenging and requires a different management approach altogether. Therefore, I have penned down crucial strategies that will help you to lessen the gap between your in-house and remote teams, and also ensure that your remote workforce stays efficient, productive, satisfied, and accountable for their deliveries.

Check out some important insights on remote hiring and the effective management of remote software development teams!

The term remote teams generally refer to a group of professionals with diverse competencies, belonging to various time zones; working in unison towards a specified objective. Nevertheless, many software development teams/agencies have their employees working remotely from a single country or even city. These employees usually work from their respective dens and are categorized as remote teams as well.

Hiring the right set of software programmers/agency is no cakewalk and involves a series of validations and checklists. Check them out!

For validating the proficiency and engineering skills of software development firms/dedicated teams; you can go through their company profiles published on B2B research platforms such as Clutch, GoodFirms, Wadline, Upwork, Freelancer, VenturePact, Toptal, RemoteOK, etc. These platforms analyze and enlist leading software firms, mentioning their level of excellence; and as such, ease out the process of hiring an IT agency.

Check out the following aspects while hiring developers or an app development company from a remote location.

Ensure that the software developers you hire possess the following virtues.

Software professionals should be keen to work on interesting and challenging projects. They should be proactive enough to ask questions, provide suggestions concerning tasks like organizing sprints, and imbibe thought processing within the members of other teams as well.

The members of your remote team should be able to walk that extra mile and be eager to expand their skillset. Professionals who are naturally self-learners and are willing to push limits for acquiring new skills without even being asked to do so; are preferable.

A sense of responsibility is an important trait to look for in the software workforce you hire. Employers may ask questions regarding their way of preparing reports, planning their day, prioritizing tasks, dealing with unplanned fixes, and executing alignment meetings and rollbacks; to figure out this trait.

Selecting the right set of remote programmers or a development team is crucial. Coming to the first step of hiring a workforce for your project, consider the below-mentioned questions.

Once, you are satisfied that the aforesaid criteria suit your needs, check on the following aspects.

Once, you have finalized your dedicated developers’ team, it’s time for onboarding. The steps given below will ensure a smooth onboarding process.

Improving the skill set of your remote team via training sessions enables you to create a trustworthy team that will stay with your enterprise for a longer period. Moreover, this strategy helps you to deliver successful projects, grow exponentially, and hence, elevates the productivity of your business to the next level.

Since your team is working remotely, you need to effectively monitor their performances through continual tracking of the team’s performance and the project’s progress. This can be accomplished by keeping in touch, through conducting meetings, audio/video calls, etc.

Proper communication and collaboration is the stepping stone towards success. For this reason, you need to establish a robust and open communication channel with the remote professionals, and more so, if they are working from various time zones. Consider them to be a part of your team and make them feel that they belong to your organization. This way of team building ensures more contribution from your remote programmers. Besides, your firm’s processes should allow them to focus on their core competencies and deliver top-quality product/software. Furthermore, following a bi-directional communication methodology is recommended, to promote knowledge sharing, so that you can benefit from their valuable inputs and suggestions.

Whether your remote team of software developers is working remotely or virtually, convey your expectations at the very beginning. Be transparent about the working hours, communication processes, required employee availability, responsiveness expected, scheduled meetings, and the need to adhere to strict timelines.

Invest in the correct Remote Project Management Software, for achieving success. Remote management tools and software come with the following advantages.

Some of the suggested remote management tools are ZOOM, TRELLO, ASANA, G-Suite, SLACK, and ZOHO.

Now, that you are well versed in all aspects of remote hiring and management, analyze your objectives and finalize the outsourcing location of your upcoming software development project. It has been observed that most business enterprises prefer a remote software development team in India for fulfilling their project needs.

Well, this decision entirely depends on what your requirement is, what type of software product you want to build, whether you want just a single product or a number of products, your budget constraints, and similar other questions.

If you want to design world-class software products, hiring an offshore software development company would be the best choice. Besides, if you decide to hire offshore software development services in India , you will benefit all the more. You will get faster market releases, cost-efficiency, reduced team management efforts, better project visibility, high-quality products, a competitive advantage over others, and much more.

So in this blog, we have explained some practical tips and tricks for choosing the right software development firm. Please read ahead to know more.

Before approaching a software outsourcing company, you need to list down your requirements according to your goals and objectives. This list of well-defined requirements will help you to narrow down your search. For making this list, you need to keep these fundamental questions in mind- Do I need a mobile application, or a website, or both? Do I need one or more software products? Do you want a complete product or want to redesign an older product of yours?

You need to verify using several tactics whether the firm you are going to work with has the required experience, and expertise in the required services. Their core competency must be in delivering software services. This can be verified by connecting with their clients, checking their social media pages for reviews, checking their ratings on authorized sites, etc. Go for a background check by checking their credentials and certificates and see whether the company has been progressing in recent years or downsizing.

Make sure that the offshore partner you select follows the agile development process. The Agile Software Development model is essential for proper management of the project, especially during the pandemic. It ensures benefits like

You need to make sure that your software provider will develop a scalable product for you. The product needs to be future-ready so that additional features can be added to it and its capabilities can be molded as your business grows. So check if the software provider offers customized solutions. Also, enquire in advance whether there are any additional or hidden charges for this.

The tech partner must mention clearly in the agreement that the intellectual property of the project, i.e. all the project data will be given in your custody, once the project is over. This will ensure data security and assure you that your property will not be leaked in any condition.

Make sure that the company to whom you outsource your software project has an advanced level of tools for transparent and continual communication. You need to ask them questions like- ‘How often will there be follow-up calls?’ and ‘Will the company set up extra calls if required?’ This will help you understand if the company can establish strong communication with you and avoid miscommunication.

Choose a partner who offers several pricing models for you to select one that perfectly suits your needs. There could be pricing models such as-

The offshore development firm should rank high on overall performance, teamwork, scalability, on-time delivery, security, etc. across various verticals of its clients. It must offer the following services for a software product so that you can focus on your core business.

The development firm should offer end-to-end software development services right from initial architectural design to its release. Their team should have knowledge of both partial and full product life cycle development depending on the specific requirements of the clients.

As and when required by the clients, the offshore vendor (usually ISV- independent software vendor) should provide product enhancements or add extra features.

The offshore company should be capable of migrating the projects involving a complete process of a developed client-server product to web-based technology and migration from older technology platforms to advanced ones.

It is a must that the offshore vendor should provide testing and quality assurance services for the software product from modular and unit testing to integrated functionality and performance testing.

Once the development and testing of the product are complete, support and maintenance is required from time to time. So, make sure that the vendor provides product maintenance services as well.

Choosing an offshore technology partner is quite a tough job, especially in today’s competitive business world. There are countless top-notch software development outsourcing companies in India and all over the world. Yet, businesses ranging from a small company to a Fortune 500 company prefer offshoring their software projects mostly to India due to the 360-degree services that they can offer.

So, in this blog, we shared some vital tips to hire an offshore software company, along with some selection criteria. We hope that they will be helpful to you in finding the right offshore tech partner.

Do comment here and let us know your experiences on this topic.

Also, here is another post on the topic- “Ultimate Tips on Selecting the Best Mobile App Development Company in India” Do read for better insights on this topic.