When you begin working with outsourcing businesses, you gain access to new prospects and knowledge on a regular basis. However, by understanding and assessing potential concerns, you can better prepare for challenges and avoid costly errors.
Software development team extension, as one of the most popular outsourcing services, necessitates some planning and focus on the part of enterprises to guarantee that they can find common ground with developers and establish a productive cooperation atmosphere. GBKSOFT, a leading software outsourcing company, has compiled a list of the most common blunders firms make when dealing with large groups.
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Choosing Cost Over Value
Outsourcing rather than recruiting developers in-house is a cost-cutting strategy used by businesses. It would be imprudent to make it the deciding element in selecting a team extension provider.
Every country has its own market for software development, which determines average rates. However, if you notice unusually low rates in a certain area, it could indicate that the corporation is trying to save money on something. It could be a developer qualification (for example, junior developers will work on your project rather than medium or senior developers who would be more appropriate), or they may skip some steps in the development cycle to reduce the number of hours necessary for the project.
If you choose to begin with such a partner, you may have unfavourable outcomes: for example, you may require more hours, and thus more money, to complete the development than was originally envisaged.
As a result, consider many aspects of a potential partner’s offer, such as their expertise and experience, process approach, communication, and collaboration.
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Treating Your Development Partner as an Outsider
Any outsourcing firm is a third party, and there may be some conflict. Acting as though your extended team isn’t as important or valuable as your in-house team isn’t the best road to take. Team extension services are intended to supplement and accelerate your development, but they will be impossible to do without sufficient coordination between your team members and outsourced professionals. Due to their geographical separation, two teams may be working on the same tasks or developing features that are incompatible.
Align your organization from the start for mutual cooperation, and make sure that the extended team can dive into the process, acquire all important information, and stay in sync with the rest of the team.
You could also try paying a visit to your extended team once or twice a year to strengthen your bonds.
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Onboarding Process
Onboarding is crucial to a successful collaboration. When your extended team joins your development, they’ll need to catch up and comprehend what’s going on and how it’s going on. It may take a long time to figure things out if you don’t have any advice. And while the developer is focused on comprehending the context, completing duties, and writing code, they are not contributing to the project.
However, if you plan ahead of time for the onboarding process and provide documentation and a product overview, clearly define their position, and offer them access to all necessary data for effective work, you’ll have a better chance of a speedy start and useful contribution from the extended team.
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Ignoring Roadmaps
Requirements are essential, but they are not the only thing you require. A roadmap will define in what sequence and how the required features should be built, depending on the product vision and your development plan.
Again, the lack of a roadmap will simply add to the turmoil and cause annoyance among engineers, managers, and other stakeholders. You’re also risking your money because it’s likely that you’ll have to radically adjust your focus or disregard the features that have previously been completed and so invested in.
As a result, consider the long term, make plans (but don’t forget to leave room for some modifications, as software development necessitates some flexibility), and execute them.
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Avoid Partner
You may lose a lot of money if you’re merely looking for developers who will code and execute tasks without adding anything else to the project. Even if you’re confident in your own expertise and management talents, keep your eyes peeled for opportunities to incorporate the rest of the team on a deeper level.
Typically, outsourcing teams have amassed a large amount of development experience and have attempted a variety of approaches. Furthermore, such businesses are more interested in initiatives in which they aren’t only a bodyshop, but also a decision-maker.
As a result, the outsourced team may be more interested in taking greater ownership of the project than you initially anticipated. And that’s a good thing because they can advise ways to improve processes or give novel solutions that will only benefit your project’s outcomes. If your extended team has experience with similar sorts of custom software development. You can tap into their knowledge and relieve yourself of a certain amount of labour and strain.
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Team Size
Let’s get rid of this misunderstanding once and for all: Adding more programmers to a behind-schedule project can help it get back on track. It can’t and won’t happen. While adding more people to a team may seem like a good idea in other industries, it is not the best answer for software development. In fact, it may be detrimental, further delaying the project. In software development, a team of 4 to 5 individuals is optimum. The work procedure would no longer be as efficient once we passed this point.
At least three aspects in software development can explain this:
- Any new team member must go through a “ramp up” period, which means it takes time for new team members to become productive in a software project.
- As the number of individuals grows, so does the cost of communication. Most software development tasks are not divisible, thus when team members need to communicate with more people, they produce less productive work.
- This is in contrast to other activities, such as cleaning a room, when adding more workers to the job speeds up the process. The man-month model isn’t applicable here.
Bottom Line:
The most key point to remember while working with the extended team is that excellent outcomes need effort on both sides. You will most likely be dissatisfied with such an encounter if you are not paying attention to your cooperation and attempting to create smooth communication.
Your partner, on the other hand, should be willing to communicate and set aside time to synchronize and plan. As a result, talk to them about their approaches to collaboration from the start and pick the ones that are a good fit for your processes and expectations. GBKSOFT formerly known as Altamira a leading software outsourcing company, has compiled a list of the most common blunders firms make when dealing with large groups.