Today’s world is fast and furious, and you often need to speed up in order to keep up with the changing conditions dictated by customers, other businesses, and brand new technologies appearing each year. Inability to pursue this pace may cost your business a lot, because you will have more chances to miss those opportunities that can lift up your business several steps higher. But, if your company already has many plans in hand, and all your specialists are occupied with other tasks, you simply won’t have time and resources to implement a trend that popped up recently or manage a completely new idea. The lack of resources can also occur when you are leading a startup that just doesn’t have enough experts currently.

To avoid this situation, you can opt for hiring an outsourcing development team. The realization of this decision can take time, however, it has its benefits. In this article, we will give you some tips to think about before hiring an offshore dedicated development team and look at the challenges that some of the companies face so you know how to avoid them.

Preliminary Phase: Before You Hire Dedicated Development Team

Before deciding anything, it is essential to prepare and have an understanding of what you want. A hired offshore team can help you in many tasks, but it needs to have clear-cut goals. And the goals can be easily defined based on your business strategy, target audience, type of software, and the resources you have.

To know how to hire dedicated development team that will fit your criteria, first of all, you need to understand how IT outsourcing works. Choosing this path means that you transfer some of the development processes and services to another company. A hired offshore team can take the full-cycle software development process and just give you the result of the work that you can use immediately, or you can go for the extended team model, also known as staff augmentation, and temporary increase the number of the in-house team members by getting help from the experts from an outsourcing vendor. Both in-house software development and outsourcing software development have their benefits and pitfalls, which is why you need to determine if the second option is the one you need in your case.

Read Also In-house Vs. Outsourcing Software Development. Benefits and Pitfalls of Each Option

Principle Phase: Facing Possible Challenges

Hiring a dedicated team of developers is profitable for your business, however, you need to understand that difficulties can appear during the process. Therefore, you should be ready for the challenges that you can run into when choosing to go for the services offered by an outsourcing software development company.

Being lost in a variety of vendors

An offshore software development company may assist you in different software development services, including development, deployment, maintenance, and IT consulting. So, if you want to find the one that can fulfill your desires, you need to do the following:

  • Define your main goals, identify the secondary objectives, and set deadlines;
  • Gauge the level of technology expertise and decide which experts you need exactly for the project;
  • Plan the size of your capital and determine the areas where you can save money.

Highlighting these points will help you to avoid confusion, and the whole process will be a lot effective for both your company and the offshore team.

Language barriers and cultural differences

It is vital to understand that every country is different, and how people communicate with each other varies greatly from one culture to another. Thus, some cultures focus on underlying meaning, tone, context of the message and not just the words. Others expect communication to be explicitly stated, which means that a message has to be as clear as possible without having any confusion. Thus, for example, such countries as China, Japan, Brazil, and Spain, fall under the first category, while the USA, the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia fit under the second one.

To be on the same page, you need to understand these differences and discuss them at the very start to avoid miscommunication and project failure. Ask the vendor about the team flexibility as well and if it is possible to add an additional number of specialists in the course of a project in case you need. All in all, know more about the workflow of the dedicated software development team of developers that will give you the required services and the type of communication they prefer.

Time zones and distance

Working with an offshore outsourcing vendor means that the in-house team won’t be able to see their new members face to face. The lack of face-to-face communication may decrease understanding and successful teamwork, and you may not have an opportunity to visit the offshore team personally. However, you can resolve this issue by holding regular online video conferences. Small talk at the beginning will relieve the tension and give the teams the opportunity to get to know each other better and work together effectively.

Read Also When “Softer” Means “Stronger”. The Importance of Soft Skills for Software Development Team Members

Unrealistic expectations and lack of control

During the development process, you may realize that your expectations are not going to become real or you don’t have enough control over the project. This happens when you don’t clearly understand what the offshore team is capable of, and the vendor, on the other hand, has no idea what you need exactly. That is why it is important to decide which services you need, what the vendor can give you, and which contract you both are choosing to base on. The more you talk all the essential details through at the start of your collaboration, the more successful your product will become eventually.

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Final Phase: Getting Transparent Contract and Signing NDA

After you get an idea of how IT outsourcing works, prepare yourself for the possible difficulties, and find your dream team, you need to think about NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) and security measures. Decide if you even need NDA depending on the services you want to get. Determine if the company you chose offers one and find out if they use encryption algorithms to protect the data. It is also essential to discuss whether the company’s solutions are compliant with CUI, GDPR, and other international regulations.

Don’t sign the contract until all the procedures are talked through and until both sides are satisfied with the made decisions. The less blind spots your collaboration will have, the more productive and safe it will be.

Conclusions

By going through all these phases and dealing with all the incoming issues successfully, you will be able to hire a team of professionals and receive the services you have desired. Eventually, the dedicated development team may even exceed your expectations and provide you with an even better experience than you have imagined. If this happens, you can say for sure that this is a loyal business partner you can collaborate with again some time in the future.

If you want to know the services our company can provide you with or want to hire a dedicated team, you can contact us and receive consultation from our experts.