How Can an Outsourced Development Team Solve Tech Problems?

How Can an Outsourced Development Team Solve Your Tech Problems?

Routine tasks are not for the CEO. Don’t try to do everything by yourself. Therefore, you should create an effective team that will allow you to lead your project and the company in the direction of commercial success.

This can be done in two ways—you can hire an in-house tech team or delegate tasks to the outsourced development team. Google, Basecamp, Slack, GitHub, Apple, and other major technology companies have already preferred the second option. In this article, we’ve summarized everything about outsourcing software development, the benefits, and how to outsource software development in the right way.

Why Hire Outsourced Development Teams?

Deloitte research shows that the most common reasons for outsourcing IT services include:

• Time-saving — the time spent on hiring an outsourced development team is much less than on hiring and onboarding an in-house team.
• Cost-cutting — you do not have to invest in hiring, paying for an office, providing employees with equipment, and also covering the costs of utilities and equipment maintenance of full-time in-house specialists. A collaboration with an outsourced development team can help reduce at least 70% of your labor costs. 
• Professionalism — specialists highly value their reputation, so they work for the maximum result.
• Risk reduction — if you choose an outsourced team responsibly, the risks of force majeure circumstances when developing a product or delivering it to the market are much lower than when creating a product by a newly formed in-house team.
• Official arrangement — it is quite simple to start the cooperation with the outsourced developer team. Since you’re a client, you can terminate the contract at any time without serious consequences.
• Ability to focus on priority business tasks — by delegating IT tasks to an outsourced development team, you can focus on more important jobs, such as finding business partners. For example, Basecamp has 16 million users, and its capitalization is about $100 billion. 

When the number of the company’s users grew, the team faced problems with speed and customer support. To solve them, Basecamp outsourced some of the core functions so that their teams could focus on organizing internal processes. Using outsourced developers, Basecamp was able to continue improving and developing the project.

• Access to the talent pool — usually startups hire employees in their regions. Outsourcing helps to engage professionals from any city or country, there are no territorial restrictions. 

Remember, for a successful product launch (or a project, such as Rapid Order that was created by the Intelvision team not long ago), you need not just developers to write the code and DevOps to deploy the product. For example, outsourcing companies have the opportunity to involve rare specialists in development, such as DevOps Architect, Senior ML-Engineer, Architect for Enterprise, and others. Additionally, your project may require highly specialized skills, such as VR or AI. Finding such a broad range of experts may take quite some time. 

The outsourcing development team has the opportunity to hire highly qualified specialists who have experience working with the technologies, stack, and industries you need, whether it is artificial intelligence, robotics, IoT, predictive software development techniques, or modern mobile solution.

For example, Intelvision developers specialize in industries such as Construction, Retail, Healthcare, Logistics, Education, Professional Services, FinTech, and more! We’re also passionate about technologies such as .NET, Angular, React, Node.js.   

• Optimal balance of skills and rates — outsourcing can help you to create the perfect balance between the team’s development skills and its rates. For example, the countries of Eastern Europe, such as Ukraine, are quickly rising in the outsourcing rankings. The development rates in Ukraine are significantly lower than those in the US or Western Europe. Ukraine is also considered to be one of the best outsourcing destinations worldwide, and the affordable hourly rates (from $37 to $76), extensive educational backgrounds, and comprehensive skill sets. By outsourcing to Eastern Europe, you will get a high-quality, professionally delivered product at a considerably lower cost.

When it comes to the tech field, software application development is the most commonly outsourced IT function, according to Statista. In recent years, the demand for IT outsourcing services has increased due to the pandemic. But the world’s most successful companies have been using this method much earlier. 

For example, Google outsourced most of the support tasks and even the product development to the outsourced team. Outsourced specialists are fully integrated and there is no difference from the internal Google team. By understanding which work can be outsourced and which should stay in-house, Google was able to make better use of its budget. 

Slack has hired an outsourced design company to beta test its future products. Based on feedback from the outsourcing team, Slack made decisions on what needed to be finalized or changed to improve the project. 

Apple uses contractors all over the world. The company has many remote employees in the US, Asia, and East Asia. Apple outsources almost all of its production. Due to this, the company can focus on the development and design of new products. Outsourcing helps the company to reduce costs, focus on key business aspects and solve problems with production volumes. 

Tip: To make the right choice and hire an outsourcing team, check out Intelvision’s profile and reviews. Here are some platforms where you can read testimonials from our clients: LinkedIn, Clutch, Upwork. Besides, explore the website, browse case studies, read a corporate blog, and Google customer reviews.

Types of tech problems companies face today — and additional reasons to hire an outsourced development team include rising security threats, backup issues, compliance with regulations, hardware and software problems, cloud confusion, and many others.

How to Work Effectively With an Outsourced Team?

Having an outsourcing strategy is the first step toward hiring a team for your needs. Below are a few things for you to consider. 

Define tasks for delegation 

While some companies are known for coding excellence, others offer consulting services. It is critical to define which tasks you want to outsource. We recommend delegating tasks that are less important to you. After that create a list of the resources your project requires. 

Establish a good job climate 

Inform your staff and outsourced employees of the outsourcing goals, and close any cultural gap between them. On top of that, you should consider before starting cooperation with the outsourced development team time zone difference, the level of English proficiency, and cultural mindset. For example, the Intelvision team is easy-adaptable to the different time zones. Our specialists are fluent in English, and take into account the difference in mentality before starting cooperation.

Ensure DEI in the team

DEI is an abbreviation that consists of the words diversity, equity, and inclusion. The cultural context and the national differences matter. IBM, Facebook, Amazon, and Walmart have even opened a Global Diversity & Inclusion Manager position. This specialist implements the DEI strategy and creates equal conditions for all employees. 

Diversity is proven to drive innovation and financial results in the long term. In 2015, McKinsey published research “Why diversity matters”. It said that US companies with a more diverse ethnic and racial culture were 35% more productive. 

On top of that, DEI promotes innovation and growth for companies. Harvard Business Review found that businesses with a DEI culture are 70% more likely to enter a new market.

Manage an Outsourced Development Team

As the customer, you are the one to coordinate all the key processes and control the outcomes. Your opinion, combined with the product owner’s verifications and reports, and effective communication with the team will help to organize the development process and reach high results. Here are the aspects you should pay special attention to collaborating with an outsourced team. 

Implement Agile processes 

In technology companies, Agile is showing impressive results. According to the 2021 “15th State of Agile Report”, 59% of companies report an increase in customer satisfaction, 48% in quality, and 41% in productivity. Netflix and Spotify used Agile from the same start and became successful. Amazon switched from traditional to flexible hierarchy. 

Agile is a modern trend in project management. Agile includes sprint planning, daily stand-ups, creating task backlog, retrospectives. That makes managing an outsourced development team easier. Also, there are some tools that can help you conduct such an activity, for example, Linoit, Miro, and TeamRetro.

Optimize communication processes

Both lack and overload of communication can complicate the working process. Stay in touch with your outsourced developer team and monitor the channels where employees can contact you throughout working hours. It is also a good idea to choose the right communication tools for your team. Here are some examples: Slack, Zoom, Skype, Google Meets, and Microsoft Teams.

Think about additional project management tools 

In addition to implementing agile methodologies, decide what project management tools you will use. For task tracking, it can be Trello, Jira, and Asana. For prototyping, there are Zeplin, Figma, and Invision. For file management, we recommend you Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. Try Calendly, Doodle, and HubSpot for scheduling, Confluence, and Nuclino for documentation. The best CRMs are HubSpot, Bitrix24, Salesforce, and Zoho. 

Use productivity tools

The trick is to keep high work productivity. Clarify as much as possible: what is to be done, what result, tasks, and priorities are expected. Set metrics to evaluate the success of your outsourced development team. Perform a regular review and give feedback to your team. You can also use time tracking apps such as Kanban Flow, Pomotodo, Focus Booster, and Forest to keep your outsourcing team more productive.

What Problems With Tech Part Can Solve an Outsourced Team

When do you need the services of an outsourced development team? First of all, it will be an effective practice when it comes to a long-term project that needs continuous updates and improvements. Secondly, when internal developers have no time to carry out the project or have no required expertise in specific areas. Use the services of an outsourced team if you are on a tight budget and it is not cost-effective to pay high local compensations. 

A significant reason for outsourcing web development is a dedicated team of specialists. You get access to many technical resources dedicated to your project. The team members include a project manager who oversees quality assurance, as well as a website architect, business analyst, frontend and backend web developers, web designers, and other professionals.

In addition, outsourcing IT tasks means faster product development and delivery. However, if you decide to hire an in-house team, this process can be delayed. You will need to organize the recruitment and onboarding process, implement benefits, vacations, and so on.

Scaling a web project with an outsourced team is much easier than managing an in-house web developer’s team. Our outsourcing development team at Intelvision has extensive experience in scaling web development projects from basic versions to complex products. You can see a few examples in our portfolio.

Tip: Practice shows that outsourced development teams are useful for complex long-term projects, about six months or longer.

Why Choose Intelvision as an Outsourced Development Partner?

Finding a reliable outsourcing partner can be a challenge. But if you are reading this article, on the official website of Intelvision, you are in the right place. We are a custom software development company headquartered in Dublin with highly skilled developers in Eastern Europe for hire. 

Our mission is to help existing companies build world-class software in a cost-efficient way. We always look for ways to improve and seek first to understand, then to be understood.

Why choose Intelvision as an outsourced development company:

• Intelvision has 5+ years of experience in the global IT market. We are skilled in managing outsourced development teams, quality, and client-oriented specialists; 
• Our outsourced developers have experience working with various industries and communication tools to ensure maximum productivity; 
• We use a dedicated outsourced development team model. It is a popular concept that scales the existing team fast by covering the need for specific in-house technical expertise. 
• From Agile to DevOps to continuous delivery, we use modern development approaches to work better, faster, and be more transparent. 
• Intelvision is well-recognized in the IT market — our customers are based in Canada, the USA, the UK, European countries, Israel, Arab Emirates, South Africa, and Australia.