For most business leaders, offshore software development teams are no longer an unfamiliar model.
It’s become en vogue as the best way to quickly access a rich talent pool, solve technical problems, run projects smoothly and efficiently, etc.
However, before hiring an offshore development team, it is essential to understand how to manage remote employees and make this collaboration valuable and productive.
This article covers everything you need to confidently hire a dedicated development team and, most importantly, manage the process for the best possible outcomes.
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An alternative to building an in-house team, a dedicated developer team encompasses top-notch specialists assembled and provided by a development partner, commonly offshore. In other words, as a client who hires a dedicated software development team, you offer requirements to a partner.
They provide you with a complete team tailored to your project, plus an already established management model and working protocols. With a dedicated developer team, you will not have to worry much about recruitment, administration, welfare, etc.
The team of dedicated developers will technically be like your own employees.
You have full control over the workflow and determine who may be on the crew. These professionals will be primarily hand-picked based on your requirements for their experience and skills.
Hiring dedicated development teams has proven a viable solution for many IT startups and enterprises despite limited budget resources, a lack of local talent, short project completion times, and a shortage of development skills in in-house teams.
If you’re interested, check out how to build a tech team in Vietnam!
Actually, models of hiring dedicated software development teams will be dissimilar between partner companies or even can be customized based on your necessity. Nevertheless, there is the most common and extensively used models as follows:
Usually, this may be the selection of the bulk of customers, as taking gain of hiring a committed full-time development crew will assist in the velocity of the project’s completion and provide greater management over the process. Developers will work eight hours daily and focus on assignments with no distractions. This model is recommended for distinctly complex or time-constrained projects that require continuous work to keep development on schedule, accelerating productivity.
One of the top motivations for persuading tech businesses to hire a dedicated developer team is providing a technical set of skills that are lacking within the internal team. Therefore, whether it is a full-time or part-time model, a dedicated team is usually the most appropriate choice once technical or expert support is highly desired for a project.
This imparts fast, economical, and extraordinarily effective support. With the part-time model, dedicated developers work 4 hours per day; hence, to make good use of this model, companies need to construct a well-structured working process and assign tasks to each team member within a time frame.
Depending on the undertaking’s requirements, businesses might also require a time-flexible dedicated developer team model, which can increase the working time frame to more than 40 hours a week or less.
If your project is in a critical stage of development or the rush to launch a final product is greater than ever, a custom hourly development team model can help you increase working time and productivity while not having to pay overtime for each member since all costs have been paid as agreed in the contract.
The circumstances in which we work have changed dramatically. Many employees choose to work remotely and want to continue doing so. The fact that 66% of the 3,000 global remote workers surveyed in The 2023 State of Remote Work say it’s important that a new job is remote is quite telling.
Therefore, if businesses are generally used to working remotely, why not hire genuine professionals beyond borders to save costs, eliminate difficulties in recruiting local talents, etc.? Hiring an offshore development team undoubtedly advantages benefits your business. And here’s exactly how.
One key benefit of hiring offshore software engineering teams is access to a broader talent pool. Recruitment is no longer a story limited to a geographical area but an opportunity that is open around the world.
Not only does this help solve the problem of a local talent shortage, but it also makes it easier for the company to have a wide selection of talent and hire the best professionals regardless of their location.
The in-house team and a team of offshore engineers will facilitate extending your operational hours all day. Working across time zones helps speed up projects, and more jobs and tasks get done around the clock. Or even in some unfortunate server problems, no employee’s sleep will be interrupted when you already have someone always on set, thereby creating better emergency management.
Regarding the collaboration between Microsoft’s team in the US and India on a project, Scott Berkun wrote in his book The Year Without Pants: “They worked the night shift while my team in Redmond worked days,” Berkun says. “If I planned well, we’d find magic in going to bed frustrated by a missing puzzle piece, and waking to find it in our inbox. It was like having a friend in the future.”
There will be differences in overall wages or hourly rates between professionals with similar qualifications but in different countries. Choosing to hire an outsourced development team in countries that are recognized as software development hubs such as China, India or Vietnam, etc. will give you the opportunity to work with well-experienced talents at lower prices.
Besides, it is indisputable that remote working can help businesses significantly save money on office space and facilities. According to Global Workplace Analytics, the average real estate savings with full-time telework is $10,000/employee/year. Working with offshore colleagues also helps to cut recruitment and payroll costs or reduce project development costs.
This is worth expanding on. As stated in Deloitte’s report, The Global Outsourcing Survey, cost reduction is the top reason companies outsource (70%). Hiring a dedicated software development team is also a cost-effective alternative to assembling and building an in-house team.
It is extremely difficult to build an in-house development team of independent experts and top talent, which entails many challenges and budget constraints that businesses face. The most typical expenses are recruitment, administration, employee benefits packages, office and facilities costs, etc.
Expenses are always carefully considered, especially for startups; overspending early to recruit talents can lead to many turns, but a larger percentage will lead to failure due to tight budgets in the first place.
In contrast, hiring a dedicated software development team helps businesses access and leverage the best talent at the lowest possible price and get the talent they want quickly with the necessary technical skills without much effort. The offshore partner pays and takes care of all administrative costs related to personnel. Thus, technology companies can save a large amount of money or use this money to better invest in creating MVPs.
To reach a tech talent, the difficulty lies not only in the budget but also in the time. Getting all the developers you need for your team will depend entirely on the recruitment process’s efficiency and the availability of local talent, or you can start the project immediately with a team that is already built and ready to go, an offshore dedicated developer team. Your recruiting time effort will be cut down completely as you can now shoot multiple arrows at once!
Plus, the speed of project implementation is even more important. The dedicated software development team is a collection of the most outstanding experts and talents, all development skills, transitions to working styles are accurate and highly effective, avoiding errors, thereby saving time. Your project will be delivered on time or even sooner.
An offshore development team is undoubtedly the perfect complement to the development skills lacking in your internal team.
Thus, it helps diversify your team’s technology stacks while also allowing members to exchange and support technology skills or experiences during project implementation.
This diversity helps explore a wide range of skills and expertise. It also helps integrate different perspectives on projects, resulting in better solutions.
With each stage of product development, you will likely need to change the size of your team or upgrade and expand technology products.
Many related technical skills can arise at this point, and an additional developer is a must.
However, if you cannot immediately change the personnel involved in the project due to a limited budget, a dedicated developer team should be your choice from the beginning.
You can flexibly shuffle the developers by just making a request to the partner, and more importantly, the talent will be available immediately to join your project.
Though managing teams remotely is perfectly viable, some established team management methods in the workplace may not fit well for a remote environment. Either way, managing an offshore software development team has drawbacks due to the lack of face-to-face interaction.
Hence, you must identify some inevitable challenges of managing a remote team to come up with feasible and practical solutions. Here are some common challenges that you may encounter in leading an offshore team:
It’s much easier to be on the same page with your team as you are always in the same office or know each other well.
However, this is not the case with teams that work remotely. The difference in time zones is the first cause of interrupted communication during work.
An exchange message sent in the morning but may not get a response until late at night or a casual video meeting call to identify system failures can be extremely early for one person but late for another if there is a large time difference.
If you manage a global workforce, language and cultural differences can also present potential communication challenges. These barriers can interfere with employees’ communication and interaction.
For example, cultural differences in the meanings of basic words can sometimes lead to misunderstandings. With just one sentence, “That’s not bad!” others can understand it as “That’s good,” but for others, it is “That’s poor.”
This is exacerbated by small misunderstandings, and losses in this communication can lead to different results than expected.
Communication is always the key in all success, most especially, today due to the influence of the pandemic, face-to-face interaction is very difficult, therefore, understanding and respect in communication should receive even more attention. Those barriers, if not managed well, can easily lead to feelings of confusion and frustration, which do not easily foster open communication nor make the workflow efficient.
Communication challenges inevitably lead to difficulties in team collaboration and workflow management. Even when working side-by-side in the office, employees sometimes face difficulties in sharing knowledge and collaborating, so working remotely in a virtual environment is no exception or even more complicated.
Full-time cooperation when running a project is a necessity, IT teams always need to exchange and share teamwork, otherwise this can become quite a challenge. Remote collaboration can also make connecting, keeping track, and sharing technical information difficult, leading to disjointed team practices.
Besides communication, trust is also a factor that needs to be addressed first. Geographical distance also creates a gap in trust among members.
The survey conducted during Covid-19 of Harvard Business Review pointed out that many managers sometimes struggle to trust that their employees are actually doing the job. Because of these doubts, managers can begin to raise unreasonable expectations that team members are always ready, ultimately disrupt work-life balance and cause a lot of tension, reducing employee motivation and further reducing productivity.
There are literally thousands of offshore software development teams vying for your business. And if we’re being honest – we are, too! But we want to ensure any partnership is a win-win for all – so let’s review some key tips when making your decision.
Offshoring development is often designed to be long-term, so before you start finding an offshore development partner, it’s compulsory that you define your business goals clearly, or else it will be difficult for you to make a decision, as well as the offshore service providers, to propose what fits you best.
It’s strongly advised that you have a clear view of what you expect, such as offshoring time, expertise, team size, skill level, and other key details.
When you already have a clear overall picture in your mind, accordingly, you can come up with the criteria that an offshore software development company should have to fit your needs.
For example, if you’re anticipating offshore for 3- to 5-year, your partner should offer proven stable growth, high-quality development, flexibility, and adaptability to your requirements.
Referrals are always the best way to choose something because you’re getting the real feedback from trusted sources such as your friends or colleagues, especially people who are also working on digital products like you.
If you can’t find anyone in your network, you can try contacting the clients of your potential partner directly and asking about their experiences. If they’re also introduced by another one, then you’ve found the bright candidate. Remember to note all the comments carefully so that you can compare options later!
Whether you find your potential list from referrals or on the Internet, it’s essential to explore their case studies in detail. You may prefer to work with providers who have had experience working with projects similar to yours because it will shorten the familiarization process, but it’s not compulsory.
You should also expect to see the highlights in their excellent expertise and top-quality deliverables that significantly contribute to the success of any product they have worked on. You can also check around their current employees’ levels to see if they’re excellent and skillful to your expectations like their average years of experience, awards, etc.
A recent study by Professor Shamsul Sahibuddin from the University of Technology, Malaysia, alongside Dr. Mohd Hairul Nizam Nasir, reveals that 94% of offshore development projects fail because of the ineffectiveness in remote working environments, especially poor management that is not strong enough to handle typical offshoring challenges such as time zone and language differences.
To ensure the project’s success, it’s crucial to find a partner who shows you how they work successfully remotely. Explore what makes their management capability robust and convincing enough for you to feel confident working with them.
Fram, for example, helps clients leverage top Vietnamese talent but follows a European management style and works in English daily to increase cultural fit and teamwork quality.
Talking about the cost, it often depends on the offshore development models that you choose, and there are currently three popular of them:
This model is often suitable for small trial projects that have a clear and detailed plan in advance. This can keep you far away from any budget fluctuations, but on the contrary, it will prevent you from any changes or additional requirements needed in the middle of the project.
This model works similarly to the above but would be adjustable along the way to meet your requirements. However, there is still a limited range of flexibility that requires clear required functions and technical details of the projects.
This is the most flexible, scalable, and currently chosen working model.
You’re provided with a software development team that is dedicated to you and recruited with the skillset to your needs. They will work with you directly daily, just like an in-house team, but can be changed flexibly to your needs.
Also, as they’re dedicated to one project, they will better understand your products and contribute more ideas to its success.
Every business solution will finally come down to the price but let’s consider cost in the right way. If two providers offer different costs, don’t just choose the cheaper one. What matters is the value. Let’s explore why the cost of one is higher than the others, they may offer you a strong team of senior developers with the best skills you request. The quality of your product will surely be much higher at the end.
So we’ve gone over important tips for finding the best teams. But now comes the essential task of leading them!
So, we assembled research-based practices for managers to successfully lead offshore development teams.
This way, the geographical distance and harmonization between in-house teams and the workforce can make this collaboration effective and satisfactory.
The challenges in communicating with teams of offshore developers can be easily dismantled, and making good use of these suggestions will undoubtedly bring desirable benefits.
Schedule “golden hours” meetings
To solve the problem of time zone differences interrupting communication and exchange, the first thing is to not worry much but take advantage of it to achieve ” round-the-clock” efficiency.
Establish a schedule with “golden hours” that will be convenient for both parties involved, including daily face-to-face meetings and weekly or monthly progress reports.
Importantly, adhere strictly to scheduled meetings, avoid rescheduling appointments, and take notes or record meetings to ensure that others do not miss any information. If you cannot hold regular meetings due to a lack of golden time, then maintain written communication via email or text daily and hold conference calls.
This way, you can promptly capture and resolve all bottlenecks as they arise, plus easily track teamwork and productivity. Take advantage of these meetings so members can freely communicate and share their thoughts, thus increasing engagement and connection.
Establish a common development culture:
The team’s cultural diversity will lead to many different ways of communicating and handling work. Therefore, you must create a unified development environment to avoid unnecessary misunderstandings or conflicts. Accordingly, ensure members communicate clearly and in various ways to keep conversations on track. Set clear guidelines for sending reports or fixing bugs to make it easier for members to monitor issues, etc.
Most importantly, ensure there is no discrimination between your internal team and the remote team. Promote a culture of openness, fairness, and transparency. Establishing a culture of trust is also necessary to foster the quality of the relationships: trust between a team and the company that it works remotely for, trust between members and a leader, and trust between one team member and another.
According to Harvard Business Review, “studies have shown that trust can indeed be actively accelerated and maintained on virtual teams even when they have to be assembled on the fly with employees scattered across the globe.”
Leverage communication tools to foster collaboration
Working beyond the border is nearly impossible without technology. Hence, there is no better way to collaborate and communicate with an offshore development team than leveraging the right tools. Here are some great tools that can help your teams have seamless communication. Make the best use of these!
Not all the above tools will be perfectly suited to managing your team. Take time to experiment and consider before making the most suitable choices. Then, make sure to give your members clear instructions on how to use them consistently and maximize their benefits.
Set priorities and objectives
Before starting work, specific and achievable goals need to be outlined. This is extremely important to ensure everyone knows what they aim for at the project’s end. Thus, all team members have clear expectations of responsibility and commitment to the organization’s overall goals.
At the same time, to maintain high productivity, members must have clear personal objectives in the work process. As a manager, you must better set goals and development orientations for the whole team. Thus, offshore team management will be more efficient and smoother.
Ensure a clear assignment of responsibilities for each individual
For the teamwork process to be fair and favorable, the first prerequisite is to have a clear division of responsibilities and positions among team members. Avoid overlapping duties or abuse of power, as this will inevitably cause work conflicts. Assign clear control and tasks to each team member based on their strengths and inclinations.
Build a process
There are many approaches to building an effective project management process in software development workflow (Waterfall, Scrum, Agile, Lean, etc.). You need to determine which is the best approach for your team’s performance. Agile, which is adopted by most IT companies, refers to a software development approach based on iterative development.
The agile approach helps the team respond more quickly to and handle project changes responsibly. With the Agile framework, project delivery speed will be accelerated while improving product quality and ensuring on-time delivery on target.
After all, the success of a project will be determined by people, so serious and effective investment should be made in the participants. This includes the leadership qualities and talents involved in project development.
More Mentoring than Managing
A leader’s talent mirrors the team’s effectiveness and productivity. Managing a remote team is not easy, but with an outstanding manager leading the team, the road to achievement is not far away.
According to a recent report, 95% of IT leaders have focused more on listening to employees since Covid-19 began. “Listening to feedback from distributed teams and taking real-time action has never been more important.” – Qualtrics statement. Even without a pandemic, listening to the thoughts and acknowledging stress, employees’ anxieties, or concerns is extremely crucial.
Also, empathizing with their struggles is the way to connect with them and inspire them to collaborate and contribute. As stated in the Global tech leadership study conducted by Deloitte, 54% of CIOs from leading tech companies agreed that empathy and emotional intelligence are valuable skills for collaboration and management.
Besides, be more flexible in managing the teams, presenting yourself as more of a mentor than a manager. This creates a feeling of trust and respect and brings closeness to people you cannot meet face-to-face. Give them the encouragement and motivation to work from the people who lead them.
Hire a talented offshore development team with the right attitude and commitment
Make sure you learn about an offshore development team before deciding to collaborate. Are they talented engineers with a positive mindset? Are they responsible, enthusiastic, and have a great work ethic? Can they align with company culture?, etc. Therefore, set proper expectations even before the interview stage.
“The biggest challenge is finding people who will be self-starters who thrive well in a remote environment. When you’re together in an office, you can do more in-depth training and handholding, but a remote team requires people who will speak up when they need help and keep their projects going” – says Megan Berry, VP of Product at Octane AI.
Prepare for interviews in various ways to provide a preliminary assessment of the team’s potential. For instance, review feedback from former customers to find out if the quality of their work can meet your expectations; learn about the partner company that will provide you with an outsourced development team.
And nothing is more important than how you approach and ask questions during the interview process to unlock the candidate’s potential and assess their suitability for the project. After all, if you’ve decided to work with an offshore development team, trust them.
Surely your employees will be more motivated and productive at work if they receive the recognition and praise they deserve for their dedication.
Bring positivity and start meetings with encouragement and reward for individual or team accomplishments over the course of the project. Even the smallest recognition can give remote workers a huge boost in morale, help relieve stress and difficulties, and create a greater sense of belonging. There are many ways for you to show your appreciation like giving away a team t-shirt or badge or even cash bonuses,… Believe or not this is an investment that never fails!
Just in case there is any confusion or hesitation still, we just want to take a bit of time to highlight corrections of some myths we’ve heard about this industry.
With the technology available today, there is simply no excuse for poor communication. If it is an issue, it reflects the vendor, client, or both parties. Clear communication channels that make sense for everyone should be established at the outset of your project.
It is impossible to offer a generalized answer about what these should be, as the needs of each project are different and require varying degrees of communication. How much back and forth does the project need? Is the dedicated development team an extension of your current team, or are they working on something entirely separate from your in-house activities?
There is an abundance of communication tools being widely used by professional vendors that can cultivate respect, ideas sharing and understanding between distributed teams. From video calls and instant messaging software to integration tools for task management and code repositories. It is up to the parties involved to establish a system that satisfies their own set of needs, the tools are available.
Many vendors in offshoring hotpots have teams of top software developers fluent in English and supported by an international managerial team. Daily planning, sprint reviews, and retrospective meetings are all part of the development process; there is no reason why your offshore team cannot implement all this.
If clear and open communication channels have been established, the client sets the standards they expect. If the project uses Agile development, it is a transparent approach with measurable milestones every step of the way.
Stakeholders can be as closely involved in the process as they desire. This extends to the hiring process for a new team being custom-built for the project; clients can oversee the selection criteria and conduct their interviews via Skype. The closer the collaboration, the closer the final product will be to the customer’s expectations.
An easy way to understand a vendor’s competency is by looking at its track record with previous clients. Were they satisfied? What was the life-cycle of the software produced? Are they a company similar to or greater in size and stature to your own? These records should speak for themselves. It probably is if something seems like a cheap, quick, shoddy option. However, the right offshore partners can allow you to build an entire dedicated development team for your project. The cost of such a custom-built team may be prohibitive onshore.
If you treat your remote team as a lesser entity that is only up to the job for trivial tasks, that is all you will get in return. By being involved in the recruitment process and establishing the project standards, clients can understand who their remote team is and what creativity and experience they bring. A well-organized vendor will be adept at helping manage offshore development team members and onboarding them into a cohesive unit.
The job of an offshore software development team does not end at the product’s launch. It often requires the ongoing maintenance and updating of the software. A greater understanding can be developed between the parties involved by re-framing your relationship with your vendor as a partnership rather than simply a one-off service contract. Given time, the vendors can attain a deep understanding of the technology and your business needs and have this reflected in the culture of your standing team, regardless of whether there are personnel changes during the project’s life cycle.
You motivate and challenge the remote team by sharing the project’s ownership and responsibility. Their future success is tied to your own.
The offshore development team will need clear requirements and team priorities to deliver technology that fulfills the project’s aim. When a business is looking for a software development company in Vietnam (for example), finding one they can collaborate with in the long term is crucial. It has the soft skills to manage offshore development team members while effectively liaising with the clients.
There will indeed be challenges associated with managing an offshore software development team remotely, but fortunately, these can be overcome very easily.
Ensure you don’t miss out on any amazing benefits an offshore development team can offer your business. Hopefully, with those well-thought-out strategies for cultivating effective remote management practices, we’ve written about above, you can establish a healthy and productive collaboration with a great offshore development team.
And if you are ready to build your own team, we are happy to assist you here at Fram^. Our talented and dedicated developers are always ready to help you create perfect products. With years of solid industry experience and high expertise, our offshore development team has successfully partnered with many global technology companies to release mature products and generate great profits. Let’s collaborate today to take your business to the next level!
