What Is Offshore Software Development Outsourcing?

The Basic Concept Offshoring is simply a form of outsourcing where you decide to have your workload transferred to companies or freelance professionals overseas.

Taking into consideration the fast pace of the software development industry’s growth, offshore software development outsourcing for technological and cost-reduction purposes is a natural business move. When you decide to offshore a range of software development tasks ranging from simple coding to custom development, mobile application development, and software support and maintenance, you are not only ridding yourself of the burden of hiring and empowering skilled staff, but you are also simultaneously ensuring that you get the best quality software delivered to you in the shortest amount of time possible. This will eventually reduce the development time and improve your product’s time to market.

Helpful Tips to Conduct Offshoring

Set Quality Standards

By setting your company’s quality standards in unambiguous terms, you are ensuring that there will be no setbacks in the project because of any misconceived notions. Moreover, you need to conduct audits on a regular basis.

Negotiate Rates and Set Deadlines

You need to discuss developer rates. This does not imply that you go for bargaining, rather you should get a company or an individual to prove their capabilities to you. After agreeing, you need to set strict deadlines for the completion of each stage and make sure that the other party takes those very seriously.

Track Progress

Although weekly reports are undoubtedly necessary, face-to-face two-way conversations and meetings can leave both parties with a lot more knowledge.

Protect Yourself

All the team members should sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA). Intellectual Property (IP) rights and confidentiality terms should be clearly known to every single team member. Also, you need to set up a private repository for the code, e.g. GitHub.

Best Practices to Embrace Offshore Software Development

If you are interested in offshoring some of your company’s software development, then you nee to be aware of the following practices in order to reach your goals:
While you’re offshoring a major portion of your software development, it is recommended that you introduce yourself and your in-house team to all the offshore team members, not just the team lead. Building a strong partnership with your offshore software developers is key to ensuring a successful outcome.

Build Small, Highly-Skilled Teams

Instead of going to a large number of team members as you normally would while constructing an in-house team, you need to prioritize quality over quantity. You should insist on having a smaller team but with more professionally-skilled developers. The smaller the size of the team, the more enhanced the visibility and the healthier the communication.

Have Full-Time Onshore and Offshore Team Leads

Having both the team leads ensures timely communication of business priorities. These team leads can effectively establish the necessary coding standards as well as the underlying practices to help solve technical challenges, review the code, and effectively train and guide the offshore team through every step of the development process.

Schedule Regular Videoconference Meetings

Through frequent communication and effective collaboration between both the onshore and offshore team leads, you will be able to meet your project goals efficiently. You should make it a priority to arrange daily status meetings, preferably through video conferencing, so that all the issues are addressed promptly.

Employ the Appropriate Software Development Tracking Tools

By employing the right software development tracking tools such as Jira, you can efficiently plan out tasks, distribute them evenly across the teams, and also prioritize your work accordingly.