As stated in the KPMG CIO Survey 2021 (the world’s largest annual study on IT leadership), of the more than 3,000 technology leaders across 83 countries surveyed, 65% of them expressed that hiring challenges are heavily affecting the development of the industry. Compared to last year’s survey on the same issue, the number of people agreeing with this sentiment increased by 6%. “CIOs may have great ideas but if you can’t get the IT talent, that’s a growing problem.” – CEO of Harvey Nash USA, told the Wall Street Journal.
To recruit high-quality engineers, businesses will have to trade off with a methodical recruitment process that accumulates time, efforts and even a large budget, primarily due to a shortage of technical talent. Not to mention the widespread problem in the technology and engineering industry that is arguably the first bottleneck many businesses face, the ability to attract and retain strong developers and IT engineers. Therefore, it will soon come to a stage where issues related to tech talents must be solved urgently.
One of the best solutions to this situation often sought by leaders is external help, more specifically, choosing a remote development team. From there, this article will focus the analysis on the business tipping points that lead to the need for hiring a remote team, some practices for effectively managing a remote development team and where to build one.
Trends in technology development are constantly changing, so for many IT businesses, they are still in a state of needing talent to join their team of developers and contribute to solving special projects that require skills they do not have in-house. In fact, a report by Statista revealed that 46% of companies hire a remote team due to a lack of skills found in internal teams.
At the same time, this solution is also highly recommended because it significantly helps free up resources to focus on their company’s core business. Or in other words, it helps not to distract their existing core team and relieves them of the tremendous pressures of constantly maintaining multiple projects.
Correspondingly, location is also one of the challenges that IT businesses face in attracting local developers. Many reports show that fresh graduates, programmers or even genuine talents tend to move to technology hotspots and focus on finding work in high-tech fields leading to the limited availability of local tech talent. For example, in the US, Silicon Valley is always the most attractive place for programmers and software developers, when it is a paradise for technology startups and also the playground of many giants such as Facebook, Google, Apple, etc.
With these problems, the solution of hiring a remote software development team is more necessary than ever to help your business get early cooperation with the available talent pool, increasing the chances of reaching project completion.
Admittedly, to hire a real talent you will have to attract them with extremely attractive salaries and possibly even higher than what you have budgeted for. Not to mention the characteristics of the information technology industry, when the talent supply is limited but the demand is always high, it is obvious that the expected salary of excellent developers is not small, when their sought by the many other businesses are indisputable. This in turn will also lead to the cost of hiring tech talent for your in-house development team taking up a large portion of the total operating costs.
Besides, the complexity of getting certified people on the payroll will cost your business a lot of time and effort. In this case, hiring a remote development team will definitely be the most effective solution, meeting all your expectations both in terms of development skills and saving your budget on the hiring processes.
As mentioned in the early section of this article, it is not surprising that besides the shortage of technology talent, most companies will also face retention problems. If a team member suddenly ups and leaves, this problem will be more severe especially when your business is in the process of implementing long-term and complex projects. The departure of a member will affect the progress and quality of the project and make your business take a long time to find a replacement, decreasing the chances of getting product built and out the door within the timeframe you expect.
To not face this problem, a remote development team is the right choice from the start with high commitment. The sustainment of all resources will be ensured with no significant change during the project implementation. Also hiring a remote software team means you are working with leading experts, so the complexity of the project will also be resolved in a most accurate and most efficient way. They can also ensure to take on all the heavy lifting, helping you maintain consistent performance over the long term.
Read more: The advantages of hiring an offshore dedicated development team
Communication is always of the utmost importance while you work with a remote development team. Members should communicate with each other regularly, continuously and freely, to ensure the goal of achieving the success of the project.
At the same time, make sure this is a two-way communication process, all responses are timely and constructive. Supremely, all interactions must be based on respect, openness and honesty. This will help you and the remote development team understand each other better, resolve issues as quickly as possible, ensure smooth operation and improve productivity.
Daily check-ins or meetings can play an important role if you are required to remotely manage a team. Compared to regular texting or calling, video calls allow you to communicate face-to-face and limit information interference, helping to maintain relationships and interactions between people working remotely.
You can also easily check the progress, provide feedback, and see if there are any questions your team members need to ask. The frequency of these sessions can be reduced as the group becomes more stable. However, it is still necessary to ensure that there is always a regular exchange and meeting. Some popular video calling tools today you can consider to communicate with your team easily are Skype, Zoom or Microsoft Teams, etc. so take advantage of these to make communication more effective.
Working with a remote development team, it is very crucial that you set a specific goal and build an effective project management system to capture and document everything in a project. Agile methodology is also used by many remote team managers as it allows you to develop product development and get continuous feedback throughout the implementation, thereby keeping coding projects up and avoiding stagnation.
At the same time, to well manage the remote development team, being proactive and flexible in monitoring and managing also brings effective work results. Accordingly, encouragement and positive interest in the progress of team members will create great morale, especially with people who work remotely. And it would be great if you do more mentoring than managing, which not only improves the relationship and communication between members, but also an opportunity to share knowledge and experience with your team.
Choosing a remote development team means you will be working with people from different cultural backgrounds. Not only does this expose you to a variety of working styles and problem-solving approaches, but it also means you’re working with professionals with a wide range of experiences and perspectives. From there, it helps to increase multifacetedness and solve complex problems with many unique proposals. To make good use of this, the best way is to respect and harmoniously combine the contributions, creating a unique working culture, bringing into full play the strengths of individuals.
Nowadays, Vietnam is among the top countries in the world in terms of offshore business services at an extremely fast pace (Statista, 2021), especially in the IT field. Not only that, with a young population structure and identified in the golden population period, the labor force in Vietnam is extremely abundant, especially knowledge workers with high skills. And the talent pool in developers is no exception. Compared to China or India, which is the leading country in offshore software development services so far, the workforce with many talented and experienced developers in Vietnam has a more attractive labor cost. At the same time, the IT industry is also stable and growing rapidly in recent years.
“Vietnam has the highest-performing computer science students I’ve ever encountered,” said Neil Fraser, a software engineer at Alphabet Inc’s Google. According to Vietnam IT Market Report 2020, currently, the number of programmers in Vietnam at a young age accounts for the majority with 53.2% from 20 to 29 years old. This is a dynamic, enthusiastic generation who wants to be heavily involved in the product development process. And the number of senior developers with more than 5 years of experience accounts for about 30%.
Not only that, the report also shows that the demand for IT human resources in Vietnam will continue to increase sharply due to one of the reasons: “Vietnam has attracted the attention of big technology companies in the world to hire and build their product development team.”, as IT giants began to recognize Vietnam as a very potential destination for offshore software development services, including Microsoft, Samsung, Intel, IBM and Nokia.
Perhaps these are enough to demonstrate the potential strength of the talented engineering force in Vietnam. The important thing right now is to find a reliable and experienced partner to cooperate in building a remote development team!
As a leading digital venture builder and software engineering tech partner in Vietnam, Fram^ has been developing and providing top-notch on-demand solutions for businesses worldwide, delivering over 1,000 projects launched, hundreds of mobile apps and websites for businesses in different countries and hands-on experience in providing custom eCommerce solutions & marketplaces to over 50 businesses all over the world, etc.
Our achievements are made up by the talents of industry-leading engineers with high experience and expertise, wealth creation and credibility. If you are in need, our remote development team is always ready to make you thrive!
The final thought
These are common situations where your business may find itself needing to supplement an existing team by hiring a remote development team that brings together the best professionals with extensive training and experience. And also some practices for your management.
This is an opportunity for your business to tap into the rich talent pool and fill the skills gap internally. At the same time, hiring talent beyond borders not only saves costs, but also helps bring a diverse and inclusive culture into the workplace. When individuals with different skill sets, experiences, and perspectives come together to solve complex problems, the results are often multifaceted and powerful.
To wrap it up, if you still have doubts about the decision of hiring a remote software team, please feel free to have us in your contact. We believe you need more than an article to understand many of its aspects. With our wealth of experience, we can assist your business decide if a remote team is needed and how to run it effectively.
