Hiring an offshore team to solve your technical problem is a great choice if you do not have a solid in-house team. Outsourcing your technological need to a more experienced team saves time for you to focus on what you are actually good at - business development.
However, hiring an offshore team is one of the most significant decisions you make for your business, and it should come with many considerations. When searching for a technology partner for your business, be ready with a checklist of your criteria, and tick off specifics before you land on the one team that matches the most with your needs.
There can be many things to consider related to the product you are developing: the skill and expertise of the team, people in the team, etc. - this is up to you and your team to decide. However, we highly recommend considering these five significant points before hiring an offshore development team for your project.
Why offshore teams?
Offshore teams are an effective solution to ramp up your technical capabilities and solve specific problems. Offshore teams can provide access to more experienced and skilled professionals who are often more cost-effective than local ones. Additionally, they can provide access to a global talent pool, allowing you to find the right skill set to solve your problem.
The benefits of hiring an offshore team include:
- Cost savings.
- Access to more experienced professionals.
- Faster turnaround times.
- The ability to scale quickly
However, ensuring that the team you hire is reliable and has the expertise to solve your problem is essential. Additionally, consider the cultural and language barriers that may arise when working with an offshore team. Ultimately, hiring an offshore team can be a beneficial solution for solving your technical problem, but only after researching and ensuring that the team is the right fit for your needs.
1. How much experience does the offshore development team have in your specific industry or niche market?
Let’s say you are developing a product related to health technology. If the team has prior experience working in the same industry, it will save you time and effort in communicating the nitty gritty details of the industry.
Your team will already know the basics of how the health industry works, the best practices, compliences if any, and other details. That way it is easier for the both parties to come to the same level of understanding.
An experienced development team in the same niche can give your project a new direction and insight, resulting in a better product. Giving instructions and updates to a knowledgeable team is also more straightforward.
2. Do they understand your target audience well and what appeals to them?
Your development team will be responsible not just for writing codes but for the overall design of your product too. The design and usability of software add a lot to the overall customer experience.
Designing and developing a product is not just a technical process but also a complex journey of understanding customers’ innate desires and meeting their needs. The key to a great product is finding your target audience, what problem they have, and how your product can solve it. So your team should be full of empathetic problem solvers with a very human approach to software development - they are making software best suited to the target audience.
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3. What is their process for managing projects and ensuring the timely delivery of results that meet your expectations?
When the team’s project management process and communication techniques need to be better, you can feel left out of your product development process. And who likes being left out? Nobody!
To make sure that doesn’t happen, ask questions about the project management process of your team. How frequent are the timely deliveries? How many times a week can you expect to have meetings with the team? How do they plan to keep you in sync with their process? How will they adapt if any change is required? Only settle once you find the team that will make the right promises and delivers them!
4. What tech stack do they excel in, and does it work for your requirements?
More often than not, a development team or an agency has a group of programmers who excel at a particular tech stack - a programming language or a framework. Many agencies have a specific tech stack, and their projects are only carried out within that.
Before starting the development project, please find out the specialties of that tech stack and whether it is best suited for your product. Because sometimes, even if the team is full of experts, the expertise might not match your development needs. In such cases, you can get an expert opinion about what tech stack might suit your requirements and find a team appropriate for you.
5. Do they have a good reputation for quality workmanship and customer support?
Before making up your mind about the development team, research their past projects, case studies, and their clients. Have they delivered what was promised? Was the product successful? What was the feedback like from the client? Are they saying good things about them? And the input should be just for the delivered result but for the entire journey and how the team handled the process.
Their website page with testimonials and past projects can be an excellent place to start the research process, and their social media can also give you an idea of their reputation. There also might be unsuccessful projects; find out why they were unsuccessful.
If you want a real insight into how they deal with people, reflect on how they treat you during sales pitches or consulting calls. Are they just focused on selling you their service, or are they making an effort to understand your problem?
6. Can they work within your budget constraints while still providing high-quality services?
In the end, you should find a team that fits your budget. How much the team charges for their service can depend on your project’s size, type, timeline, and the company’s size. The budget might be fixed or customizable, depending on requirements.
We recommend that you discuss financials beforehand and be upfront about your budget constraints. How much is your budget, and can the team deliver under that budget? Will there be any compromising on quality if your budget is low? The project timeline can get extended due to changes in requirements and processes. How will the cost be affected then? These are some of the questions that you need answers to.
Final Words
To sum it up, hiring an offshore team is a great idea, but you should only continue to it with a proper understanding of the market and your needs. We have listed six critical things to consider before making any decisions, but there are many more things to add - do your research before making any conclusions.
Gurzu is a software development company passionate about building software that solve real-life problems. Explore some of our awesome projects in our success stories.
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