Hiring Offshore Developers in 2021: How To Know You’ve Found The Right Partner
Offshore application development is getting really popular in the IT sphere nowadays. What it means is basically entrusting the whole development process or a part of it to a professional third-party service. The hired company provides you with the workforce that perfectly suits your needs and can do everything in the best way possible.
In some cases, offshore development services are hired as additional power, so that the project can be finished in time. And sometimes, they are the core of the whole team, bearing all the responsibilities. That’s because usually, such businesses have employees with extremely high levels of expertise in different spheres and crafts.
That means, they can do the whole cycle of creating an application, starting with interface design and outlining, and ending with the programming itself and digital marketing. An offshore software development company is kind of an all-around solution for any of your software needs. Doesn’t matter if it is a creation of a program, marketing strategy, or updates for an already existing app.
However, all that also implies that one needs to find the right company, who can be trusted. Because there are many such services on the market, yet not all of them manage to provide the needed quality in the shortest terms. What’s more important, finding a good offshore development company should be considered as the start of a long-term partnership, not just a single deal.
Search For Feedback
Searching for feedback about a company’s operations is probably the easiest and one of the most important things you could do. With all the resources available on the internet, finding some information about a business is not a problem. And if you have a hard time finding any mentions and feedback at all, then it’s suspicious and can mean two things:
- A company is so “traditional” and conservative that it doesn’t need any digital interference at all. Today, it’s an extremely rare occasion, because such businesses are at least mentioned in some sources or documents, and can be tracked from there. So, that’s not the reason in most cases.
- A business has just started and has no example projects. Yet, most of these are suspicious, and hiring them can be risky, as most aspiring outsourcers have at least a basic portfolio of examples. Also, try to validate the portfolio’s originality, as fraudulent services usually steal someone else’s projects.
So, gather as much data on the service as you can, and read all the reviews and articles about them. Not all of them are honest and true, but most will provide you with a basic image of the company and its reputation. Of course, sometimes the new services don’t have any reviews at all, so it’s up to you whether you’re ready to risk by collaborating with the newly born companies.
Analyze Locations
One of the best things about outsourcing development is its cost-effectiveness. How is it achieved? Well, if you look at this market even for a second, you’ll immediately notice that most of the companies are located in eastern Europe, South America, and Asia. The most popular countries are:
- India
- China
- Ukraine
- Poland
- Romania
- Argentina
- Mexico
- Brazil
The average salaries in these regions are a few times lower than, for example, in more prosperous West European and North American countries. That doesn’t mean that the former is lacking quality, though. IT education in these lower-paid countries has been given a lot of attention in the late years, hence why they’re able to provide the same or even higher quality of the software.
That means you’ll get the top-quality product for twice less the price. What is the trick, you may ask? There is none. It’s just a simple difference between average payments in different regions and the lack of differences in expertise levels and quality.
Check The Strategy
Every respectable business has a strategy and a ton of backup plans. If an enterprise doesn’t – that means they’re risking going down after even the slightest shift on the market. And they’re risking not only becoming bankrupt and losing the company along with their funds but also losing clients’ investments.
Needless to say, avoiding such businesses is a must. So, ask the service you want to collaborate with to provide you with their strategy and business continuity plan. It may look different sometimes, but in most cases, it will involve the general direction and main goals of the enterprise, as well as predictions of all possible scenarios and the algorithms to solve any issues.
For example, such scenarios include but are not limited to:
- Technical failures (power outage/natural catastrophes and such)
- Security breaches
- DDoS attacks
- Business failures (poor planning that leads to losses, marketing failures, etc)
- Legal issues
- And so on
A truly professional service has specialists who are able to predict all these potential problems and create many different paths to dealing with them. Also, the reality is that the ones that have such strategies, also have much fewer chances to allow such situations to occur too.
Test Experience
Portfolios and reviews are obviously important, but worthless if not backed up by skills and experience. To find a worthy partner, one should test the service’s management capabilities and professional skills. No need to go all-in and test them by assigning the main part of the project, though.
Most of them already have some sort of trial program or something like that. If not – a simple conversation with the right questions may help to reveal the level of expertise. Also, pay close attention to the management and communication skills, as they are the key to a successful project.
In some cases, even such basic things as time zone and language differences may become serious issues. So, it’s crucial to reveal them as early as possible, especially if you’re planning a long-term partnership with a certain business. Experienced offshoring services usually know how to organize everything efficiently, including communication with the clients and the internal one too.
Prioritize Methodologies
A software development methodology is basically a set of rules and algorithms, which developers must follow if a particular one was chosen for their project. They aim to simplify the whole process and make it more effective on each step, according to the goals and requirements. For example, the most well-known ones are Agile and DevOps.
Agile, as its name suggests, is very flexible, and suits the rapidly changing environments best. These are, for instance, innovative projects that are planning to occupy a certain niche and/or create a new market. In such situations, the conditions and requirements tend to change rapidly, and Agile is aimed to reduce the negative impact of such fast-paced changes to a minimum.
The main goal of DevOps is to minimize all the unnecessary efforts by fulfilling the demands and requirements by 100%. IT depends heavily on wise planning, constant quality communication between clients, testers, and devs, and immediate adjustments. Of course, it also means a lot of risks, but it’s also an extremely efficient methodology for those who are confident in their skills and experience.
Wrapping It Up
Now, you should have at least a basic understanding of what to pay attention to while looking for a perfect offshore development company. Keep in mind, though, that these are only the most basic aspects, so try to analyze and test as many aspects as you can. After all, the quality of the future project and the long-term partnership opportunities depend on your choice. So, good luck!
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