Introduction
Working with offshore teams is a common practice in the IT industry. Web and mobile app development are among the most common tasks that are outsourced to offshore development teams. Outsourcing to an offshore team allows you to hire expert professionals for a fraction of the price that you would have to pay if you would hire full-time in-house employees. Along with salary of the employee, other expenses like health insurance, insurance contribution, and bonuses can also be saved. You are not required to spend money on office space, IT infrastructure, and utilities such as electricity. Moreover, a business can easily decrease or increase the size of the team according to its requirements. Thus, businesses enjoy both flexibility and scalability by outsourcing their projects to offshore teams
Overview of Offshore Teams
An offshore team usually implies a certain number of specialists who work for you remotely. They can be located at any place and the communication is done through phone calls, messengers like slack or video calls through zoom, meet. Hiring remote developers can be of great help financially. It helps to save cost. Such practice was usually associated with small companies that had a lack of financing. However, today the situation is different and even huge companies turn offshore as it has a number of undeniable benefits
Here are 5 reasons why businesses hire offshore teams:
- Controlled Costs
- Drastically Improved Efficiency
- Focus on Overlooked Areas
- Access to a Global Talent
- Flexibility
Handling the Common Challenges in Offshore Team Management
Here are the most common challenges that clients come across while handing their offshore teams
Communication Challenges
There are two things that can make or break the whole project: time-zone difference and language skills of an offshore vendor. The time zone difference creates difficulty in communicating with an outsourced team. So the calls are postponed which in turn lowers productivity and causes delay in project delivery
How to overcome the challenge – There might be few hours overlap in time zone. This overlap can be used effectively for various activities like feedback, checking project progress and for communicating with the remote team When all the expectations are set up front, it becomes much easier to achieve them, as well as monitor the development process. The outsourced team has to clearly understand what is expected from them and what the requirements for the future product are
Lack of Control
For some managers, it is very crucial to be in charge of each step on the development timeline– So working with an independent vendor is not a comfortable experience. Not being able to ensure the project progresses according to plan is one of the challenges that come with outsourcing
How to overcome the challenge – To know how to manage a remote development team, a business manager can send a trusted employee to work at the dedicated office and oversee project development. Asking for a personal account manager who keeps tabs on the product’s progress is another way to get more control over the development
Ineffective Project Management
what’s happening at each stage of development, are the red signs that something is wrong. If you came across these offshore team challenges, it can either mean that the vendor is incompetent or aren’t following the methods that you use in your work
How to overcome the challenges – The outsourced team should understand clearly and follow the development methodology a project needs. Make sure that the outsourcing company does have access to the technologies or tools needed for the completion of the project
How to Get Maximum Productivity from an Offshore Team
Daily Meetups
Communication is the key to development success. That goes for any kind of group effort, and doubly so when the people are geographically disparate. When your team is far away from you, it should be ensured that you are updated about the progress of work. For updates about the progress of work, project management models like Scrum, Kanban or Agile can be used. To make the most out of it, use one of the project management models (Scrum, Kanban, Agile, etc.) while working with the outsourcing agency. By ensuring that your people all talk to each other daily, you’re keeping information flowing. Everyone knows what’s being worked on, and what their part is
Sprint Planning
Despite the daily stand-up, everyone is going to be largely working on their own tasks, and there’s a real danger of people’s work getting in each other’s way. The planning meeting is when those tasks are explained and handed out. If you’re following Agile (which you should), then you’ll have a scrum master and a product owner both participating to ensure that everyone comes out of the meeting knowing exactly what to do and why. As for the length of the sprint, that’s up to you
Discuss Your Project Goals
Just assigning a project to an offshore team without letting them know the goal behind it can land you in trouble. The developed product may not be as you expected it to be. Offshore developers require full product vision before starting working on the project. They should be given complete details like why the product is required, what functions will be carried out by the product, what all specifications is required in the product, and when it is expected to be
Make Use of Agile Methodology
As software development is a process that requires a high level of interaction and iteration, the adoption of agile methodology for offshore teams helps in the development and delivery of a high-quality software product on time
In some cases a sprint may be just one weeks’ time or it may be one or two months. Based on priority, features can be allocated to different sprints. At the beginning of each sprint, you and your offshore team can have a discussion regarding the features to be developed and create a detailed plan. Whenever required face to face communication can be initiated with your remote team.
Communicate Frequently and Use Simple Language
When working with your remote team, you can communicate very easily and frequently by initiating face-to-face talk whenever you require. With offshore teams, you should communicate even more frequently so that all the things are clear and there is no confusion despite the large distance between your in-house and offshore teams
Communicating with Offshore Teams
Here are some highly recommendable communication tools that help you when you are working with remote teams
JIRA
This includes everything from planning till analytics. It allows to set clear and actionable goals. Their progress can be easily tracked. Jira is customizable and it is capable of working equally good for all of the Agile methodologies
Confluence
Another product from the makers of Jira,
Confluence is one of the best collaborative document systems and it is more like Google Docs. On the surface, it’s similar to Google Docs. Multiple people can share a document, view and edit it simultaneously.
Changes can be both suggested as well as accepted. The software supports templates for different documents. Above all, Confluence can interface perfectly with Jira. The software supports user-definable templates for different documents, labeling, and cross-document notes. On top of all that, Confluence interfaces perfectly with Jira. Taken together, the tools make a very powerful collaboration system
Bitbucket
Bitbucket Cloud is a Git-based code hosting and collaboration tool, built for teams. Bitbucket’s best-in-class Jira and Trello integrations are designed to bring the entire software team together to execute a project. It helps you to track, preview, and confidently promote your deployments
GitHub
GitHub hosts your source code projects in a variety of different programming languages and keeps track of the various changes made to every iteration. It lets you and others work together on projects from anywhere
TeamViewer
TeamViewer, is an all-in-one solution for remote support, remote access, and online meetings which allows you to assist customers remotely, work with colleagues from a distance and also stay connected with your own devices or assist friends and family members. It even supports mobile devices, a must for mobile app development
Slack or Skype
Both slack and Skype have a chat room and supports the private messaging feature, with VoIP and video calls. They feature robust chat room and private messaging functionality, along with VoIP and even video calls. Use these tools correctly, and you’ll eliminate all of the communication problems endemic to offshoring