Offshore software development is a practice of outsourcing the software development tasks to third party vendors based outside of the country. Typically, an offshore software development company represents an organization that performs tasks from another country.
The companies choose offshore software development as a strategy to reduce costs, boost efficiency and speed up time-to-market. This model is beneficial for both small and large businesses.
In today’s competitive world, entrepreneurs and business owners are looking for ways to cut the expenses. Offshore Software Development is such model that makes it possible to reduce operating costs and overheads. It helps businesses maintain the quality of products and services while reducing expenses on hiring additional staff in-house, purchasing equipment, training employees etc.
Here are the 10 best practices for profitable offshore development that may assist you to keep and enhance offshore software development efficiency:
1. Carefully Choose Your Partner
Choosing the best group is one of the stepping-stones to profitable offshore software development. Explore all available choices and consider the potential providers. Choose a associate who understands your enterprise requirements, has prior expertise in your business, and employs strong project administration methodologies. Always check for references, perceive their communication model, and carefully study their SLAs.
2. Always Stay in the Loop
An offshore project should never be a select-and-forget solution – though it’s good in case your offshore software development partner can work independently, it’s all the time a good idea to remain in the loop. A wholesome dose of collaboration is important for updates about the present progress of the project, and for understanding issues or concerns. Assign a person or a team who works in shut tandem with the provider and achieves business goals collectively.
3. Be Clear on Expectations
When crossing any organizational boundary, a mismatch in expectations is frequent. What is taken into account good or acceptable by you, may not maintain true in your offshore software program growth companion – particularly in features similar to high quality, safety, and person expertise. Document everything in detail, be clear on the expectations, and enhance the pace of supply, ownership, and subsequently high quality. Share values instead of documents as a way to guarantee expectations are nicely understood.
4. Agree on Ownership of Application Architecture
Having one other group dictate utility structure may be disempowering. If your offshore group is just not allowed to make necessary architectural choices, their engagement and feeling of possession is most probably to be lowered. Agree on the possession of utility structure from the start, and witness a gentle improve in process effectivity and software efficiency and quality.
5. Employ a Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) Model
A BOT model lets you offshore all of your development work when you concentrate on your enterprise. By offshoring your software development, you’ll be able to achieve vital cost savings through the initial development stage. And as your product reaches maturity and begins bringing in sufficient revenue, you’ll be able to transfer the crew to an entity of your own.
6. Account for Time Zones
While offshoring software development across a number of time zones, it’s potential to end up with only an hour or two of overlapping working hours every day. Make sure there definitely are overlapping working hours, and ensure decisions are taken, and issues are resolved within price range. Be aware that you’ll want to adapt your workflow to accommodate a small overlap in time.
7. Encourage Shared Values
When local teams have robust values and distinctly different working types or professional etiquettes, there may be challenges in sharing these values with the offshore groups. This might lead to frustration when working with a remote team that has a dramatically different style. Make sure your offshore software program growth partner is culturally alike, with the same approach to work – if not the same. Encourage teams to collaborate with one another, and work collectively to achieve shared solutions.
8. Communicate Frequently
In order to get the most out of the partnership, it’s best if the onshore team lead communicates to all offshore developers— not simply the offshore group lead – around as soon as every week. Often, such direct communication with the offshore developer helps in identifying points earlier slightly than later. Look for methods to construct a relationship with the offshore group via social and collaborative activities.
9. Develop Small, But Highly-Skilled Teams
When it comes to group measurement, the smaller the better – a small team of very highly skilled offshore developers shall be more effective than a bigger group of average software developers. If the offshore team begins growing in measurement, cut up it into a number of teams and identify a group lead for each of the small teams to get the required accountability, visibility, readability, and concentrate on the development process.
10. Reuse Components
Reusability is an important attribute of a high-quality software element. By constructing a library of regularly used elements, new software could be developed shortly from current parts, enabling higher schedule and energy savings. Create a repository to store reusable components – not just code components, but in addition design, data, documentation, take a look at materials, and specifications.
Maximize Engagement
The best work is always done by individuals who really feel inspired and motivated in their job. Maximizing the effectiveness of an offshore team entails recognizing their efforts, contributions, and successes, as well as holding them accountable for roadblocks and problems. Make the effort to foster relationship with the offshore team, maximize engagement, and achieve major milestones and breakthroughs in a collaborated style for successful offshore software development.