The Secret to Building a Dream Offshore Development Team and Success
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More chaptersAfter the COVID-19 pandemic, the concept of “work from anywhere,” or what people often say working remotely, has gradually become familiar and is increasingly applied in technology companies emphasizing flexibility.
Remote work today is not restricted to any specific location. It is not necessary to work from home or co-working spaces to be called remote; such a collaboration approach expands to the outside world, in different countries, and across continents. The term “’offshore development team” is what is being referenced here.
While hiring freelancers from another country can also be considered a form of offshoring, offshore software development team refers to a broader term involving larger teams or entire departments geographically distant from your main office hired to handle specific software development tasks.
With the challenging economic situation where budget plays the cornerstone of every business operation, offshore development opens up opportunities for companies to access resources cost-efficiently while ensuring high-quality outputs. Wondering how things begin? Watch out the article below to find the answer.
How to Find Offshore Development Teams
Consider Top Locations for Offshore Development Services
It can be difficult to initiate your offshore development journey without even knowing where to begin. Start small by identifying the specific locations for hiring developers. Like your in-house team, software engineers from different countries offer different cost advantages, creating a diverse labor market.
There is no denying that the cost of hiring in a specific area is one of the top priorities for most businesses. However, in addition to cost efficiency, you should consider a number of other factors, including technical expertise, cultural compatibility, language proficiency, and time zone differences, to ensure your future partner is the most balanced and reasonable choice compared to your needs.
While countries in Europe and the Americas are known for their exceptional IT infrastructure and ease of communication, Asia has an advantage in a large young talent pool with affordable pricing models. For instance, customers have to pay the average annual salary for a software engineer living in the United Kingdom (UK) up to $67,000. In Vietnam, this figure is nearly four times lower, with a cost of only $17,000 per year for a developer of the same level.
Some regions and countries you can refer to for offshore development include:
- Asia (e.g., Vietnam, India, Philippines): Emerging as a tech hub with a growing number of skilled developers, Asia is a popular destination for businesses looking to access IT services at reasonable prices but with guaranteed quality.
- Eastern Europe (e.g., Ukraine, Poland, Romania): Although the average hiring cost is higher than other countries in the Asia region, Eastern Europe is still favored based on its strong tech talent pool with expertise in IT consulting and software development and up-to-date technologies.
- South America (e.g., Brazil, Argentina, Chile): In addition to possessing high English proficiency, South Africa is also home to a large number of IT professionals and is known for its expertise in software development at competitive prices.
Look for Offshore Teams from Possible Sources
Your offshore team members can be everywhere. Once you’ve narrowed down the country you want to partner with, make sure you don’t miss out on any platforms that are likely to host offshore professionals. In addition to popular international platforms like Upwork and Toptal, there are some country-specific resources that cater to skilled local developers.
For example, while Vietnamese developers might be present on global platforms, they are still mostly focused on job boards like ITviec, VietnamWorks, TopDev, and FreelancerViet. These platforms are especially useful for businesses targeting developers from a specific country due to language or certain expertise.
The good thing is that online platforms and job portals aren’t the only resources that can help you find your real partners. You may find your desired software engineers located in different countries in:
- University Partnerships: Universities specializing in computer science can be a great way to find and access young talent right after they graduate.
- Tech Conferences and Meetups: You can attend tech events as a guest or even sponsor tech conferences in target countries to build relationships with local developer communities.
- Tech Hubs and Incubators: If your chosen country has local tech hubs nurturing tech talent, consider partnering with them to receive quick access to dedicated offshore teams.
- Social Media and Professional Networks: Social media and professional platforms are not only places to create and share content but also valuable resources for networking with tech communities.
- Digital Publications: There may be local tech publications that highlight the best offshore software developers and tech companies in that area.
- Referrals and Word of Mouth: Referrals from your existing network are considered some of the most valuable and practical advice, leading to selecting reliable and skilled developers.
- Outsourcing Companies: By offering a large available talent pool, offshore development companies can help you gather your own dedicated development team in a snap.
How to Hire Offshore Developers
Select a Hiring Model
The hiring model plays a significant role in determining the efficiency, cost, and success of your project. As mentioned above, both freelancers who work independently and remote teams from offshore development companies are considered approaches to offshore development. If you choose freelancers to work on your future projects, things go easy as they are individuals working independently. However, if you choose a remote development team, you are required to take an extra step to choose your specific hiring model, including a dedicated development team, project-based model, or staff augmentation.
Choosing which hiring model can be challenging if you lack understanding of them, and making the wrong decision can lead to inefficiencies, increased costs, and resource misallocation. So, what are they actually?
Here are some common hiring methods when approaching offshore development:
| Hire freelancers | Hiring independent developers to work on your project temporarily with no long-term commitment. | |
| Work with an offshore development company | Dedicated team | A group of developers who work exclusively on your project, providing focused attention and continuity. |
| Project-based | A team which works for a specific project and is responsible for managing the entire project lifecycle. | |
| Staff augmentation | External developers who are added to your existing team to fill skill gaps and work alongside your in-house team. | |
| Set up your own offshore team | Self-setting up an Offshore Development Center (ODC) to handle your unique development needs. | |
Start with a Trial Project
The truth is, you can’t determine the right match until you give it a try. However, immediately signing a partnership with a large project is quite risky. Instead, you can entrust the offshore development team with smaller projects before committing to a long-term partnership as a small test for future partners.
Through trial projects with real-world tasks, you efficiently evaluate the developers’ capabilities and the quality of their work and working style. This is also an ideal solution to help businesses with strict budget allocation test the waters without committing significant resources upfront and avoid costly mistakes. A successful testimonial is the basis for customers to be confident in the decision to hire any offshore team, making it easier to commit to a strong working relationship.
Negotiate Terms and Contracts
Ending an offshore hire with well-formed contracts is a must to ensure the transparency of any partnership. Such legal documents should be discussed and agreed upon by both parties to avoid unnecessary conflicts during the cooperation process. If the contract contents are unsuitable or lack essential points, you have the right to provide comments and additions with the partner’s acknowledgment.
Remember, besides the contents about the scope of work, how ownership of intellectual property is guaranteed is especially important, as it helps protect sensitive information and ensures that the offshore team adheres to your security protocols.
To create a complete software development contract, you can refer to this article.
How to Choose the Right Offshore Team
Consider Budget Constraint
Realizing the significant benefits of offshore software development services in promoting operational and product efficiency, an increasing number of businesses are turning to offshore developers as the primary driving force for the success of their software projects. A large number of offshore software development companies have been established in recent years to serve this growing demand. This is both an opportunity and a challenge for customers seeking suitable services.
As newcomers in the playground, many businesses easily make the wrong choice when placing their trust in remote dev teams with pricing models that are “too good to be true.”
Instead of choosing to use services based on price alone, focus more on your potential outcome in the future corresponding to the price. Is this investment good value for money? Cheap quotes may be beneficial in the initial phases. However, you may end up paying more at the end of the software development project due to reasons such as hidden costs, quality issues, scalability problems, etc. It is advised to focus on cost-efficient solutions whose pricing models fit your budget constraints.
Assess Technical Expertise
A team of offshore developers with good technical skills is all you need to make a successful software project. Technical expertise is a set of necessary skills and experience that a certain business expects from its future employees in order to meet the project’s requirements. By assessing the technical skills of candidates through interviews and tests, you have a basis for evaluating and verifying the true capacity of developers, ensuring that they are the missing pieces for delivering expected project outcomes and a strong return on investment.
The advice is to select personnel that best fit the needs and specializations of the project instead of focusing on full-stack developers who have broad knowledge in many areas. There is no denying that gathering dedicated full-stack developers is an efficient way to provide versatility and reduce the need for multiple hires; such a decision is often only suitable for small projects or rapid development. When quality and precision in a specific domain are critical, specialists can ensure that the work likely meets high standards.
Check Portfolios and References
Don’t forget to check your potential candidates’ portfolios to ensure they have experience in your industry with similar projects and contact previous clients to ask for their references and measure their satisfaction.
What offshore developers express in interviews may or may not be true. That’s why businesses need to verify what they share through concrete evidence, or what we call proof of work. While portfolios are the quickest way for you to directly assess developers’ technical expertise and the quality of their work, references provide insights into a developer’s reliability and their work attitude in previous projects.
How to Work with Offshore Software Development Teams
Effective communication is the most useful way to help you work well with an offshore development team. Unlike working with your in-house team, offshore developers are not physically present in the office to discuss work. As individuals located in different countries around the world, remote team members can only be reached online through effective communication tools.
Communication channels are not simply tools to support the work process but also play a particularly important role in keeping the workflow smooth. A clear communication system undeniably facilitates seamless collaboration, ensuring that everyone is on the same page and working towards common goals.
Last Note
If you are looking for quick access to skilled offshore software developers without significant hiring investment, the best advice is to partner with a software development company where a diverse existing talent pool is concentrated at your service.
No more recruitment hurdles or challenges dealing with costs required in benefits and infrastructures. Offshore outsourcing helps businesses eliminate most of the problems related to recruitment and human resource management, optimize financial strategies, and boost efficiency.
Contact Orient Software today to learn how we can maximize your hiring processes and deliver desirable outcomes. Starting with a free quote, and we can start turning your project vision into reality.
