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Best Practices When Assembling an Offshore IT Team

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 12:06:02 +0000

Best Practices When Assembling an Offshore IT Team

Now, more than ever, is the best time to form or strengthen your remote workforce. With the global health crisis still far from being over, sitting things out without doing anything is the perfect recipe for doom. You need to innovate to keep up with the changes brought by the pandemic.

The past year taught us that companies built for the remote operation were not severely shaken when the global marketplace was forced to go on its knee by the health crisis. While other businesses closed down and laid off their workforce, the online business community grew even more robust. If you’re transitioning your operation to go on full remote, then you need to know these best practices from the experts.

Choose a reliable communication system

Whether it’s an offshore IT or Marketing team you’re forming, one thing holds water — you need to have an efficient communication system. If, aside from your remote team, you’ll be maintaining a small group in your headquarters, make sure that both groups share the same communication system. With this, you’ll be assured that no communication between and among team members is missed. Plus, collaboration is made easier when they’re within the same communication system.

It doesn’t matter if the members of your offshore IT team are officially hired or commissioned solely for a single project. They need to coordinate with the rest of the team to make sure that the operation is smooth.

Create a climate that’s respectful to all cultures

The beauty of forming an offshore team lies in removing geographical boundaries when discovering and hiring great talents. One of your teammates may be from Africa, while others may be from Europe, the USA, or Asia. Since you don’t have to relocate physically to work, anyone from different parts of the world with a suitable skill set can be made part of the team. Unfortunately, since your team becomes a melting pot of people with different cultures, discrimination can happen.

It’s the role of leaders like you to ensure that each team member is accorded with respect, regardless of race, gender, skin color, political beliefs, and religious affiliation. You can cultivate this culture by making inclusivity one of your core values. You see, when people feel safe and accepted in their workplace, their productivity and creativity thrive. In the end, you can build an ethical, ideal, and profitable work environment for everyone.

Keep your team down to a manageable level

Let’s face it. It’s hard to manage a team made of more than five people. The more people you need to talk and disseminate information to, the more stressful it is to keep the consensus.

Most people assume that when you have a bigger team, you tend to be more productive. The truth of the matter is, larger teams are less efficient compared to smaller ones. The main reason for this is the fact that the former requires more management and communication. If you have an IT team, you’ll know that most software dev tasks couldn’t be subdivided into chunks for different individuals to finish.

To achieve optimal balance, keep your team to 4 to 5 people. If you go beyond this threshold, you’re risking your efficiency. Besides this, you also need to balance your team size with the knowledge and skills required to complete the sprint backlog successfully.

Designate a senior engineer and technical lead

When you intend to form an IT team, it goes without saying that you need to hire the best developers for backend, frontend, and full-stack development tasks. Aside from that, you also have to ensure that your team members’ technical skills match the requirements of the core services you offer. This suggests that you might need to bring in savvy people in system operations, mobile development, and test systems. You might also need to bring a business analyst, QA tester, project coordinator, and UI/UX Designer on board. If two or three people in your team can assume multiple roles, that’s better.

But apart from these team members, you also need to have at least a senior developer in your team. He is expected to be in the industry for quite some time, enough for him to gain experience on a wide array of IT dev issues. These people can appreciate IT work as a whole. As such, they can better guarantee the entire code base’s quality.

On your end, you also need to have at least one technical lead who can keep tabs on the remote team’s work and progress. They should make sure that the said progress matches the client and company’s technical expectations.

Building an offshore team has its own share of perks and risks. However, if you have the right people with the right skill on board, the risks can be mitigated, while the perks can be magnified.

5 Signs That Say It’s Time to Commission a Dedicated Development Team

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 11:36:13 +0000

5 Signs That Say It’s Time to Commission a Dedicated Development Team

When a vast majority of businesses and industries have moved their operations online, others follow suit in hopes of keeping up with the competition. Even those who kept sub-offices and branches in different locations felt the need to intensify their remote work set-up to cater to more customers and finish more work. If you’re gearing towards automation and optimization, one of the teams that you would most need is a Development Team.

This team often includes a Project Manager, QA Specialists, Web Developers, and Web Designers. These people can do so much for a company, even if they’re on a seasonal work contract. But despite the benefits they can offer your company, it doesn’t automatically mean that they’re right for you. To know whether it’s time for you to invest in a dedicated development team, check these signs out.

1. You don’t have the time and manpower to sort out hiring and payroll matters.

Hiring a single member of the workforce can already be taxing. You have to gather an applicant pool, screen them, make a shortlist, conduct interviews, draft a job offer, and invest time in onboarding and training. And once they’re already part of your team, you need to compute their monthly fees and set them up in your company payroll. All of these tasks require a massive chunk of your time and resources.

However, if you contract out all IT-related tasks to an independent professional team, you will be relieved from all these functions. All you have to do is talk to their Project Manager, explain your system requirements, discuss the project timeline, and finalize the project costs. They’ll do the rest for you and your team.

2. Your office space is limited.

Naturally, when you have more people in the office, you’ll be forced to get a bigger space for everyone to work and move around comfortably. And you know exactly what happens when you move into a bigger office — your rent, bills, and other office-related expenses get higher. Plus, since you’ll bring in more workers, you also need to allocate provisions for the tools, equipment, and office supplies they’ll need. Your operational expenses could quickly skyrocket because of all these.

3. You’re frequently commissioned to do seasonal gigs.

4. You want a committed and output-oriented team.

A team of IT professionals often form a team to commission per project work from companies and individuals needing their services. As such, they capitalize on what their team can offer and their leverage over other developers to secure a project. Because they’re looking for customers, they always aim to offer more value for your money. The competition among them is enough for them to always put their best foot forward when working on client projects. This attitude and disposition, along with the competition among other teams, work in your favor as you end up getting the best service and total commitment.

And since these teams are looking to close more client deals, they are making sure that they keep their clients satisfied with the output and quality of work they’ve done. They can’t be complacent since their brand and integrity are at stake. Again, these will all work in your favor as you end up getting more than what you pay for.

5. You need different niche experts for different projects.

As you already know, an IT team is often composed of different experts that assume these roles — UI/UX Designer, business analyst, project coordinator, QA tester, project manager, web developer, web designer, and so on. You don’t need all of them for every project. For his project, you might only need a QA tester. For the next one, you might need all of them. It’s not cost-efficient to bring all of them in and pay for everyone when you don’t require all of their expertise and services. The best path to take is to commission a dedicated team to determine the task, the expert that has to work on it, and the cost of such piecework.

Takeaway

If you agree to all of these points, then you need to be on the lookout for the best IT team to take your project. These teams will make life easier for you. Aside from that, they’ll help you save up on company resources while rendering the best IT service they can offer.

Why Software Development Outsourcing is Even More Relevant After COVID-19

admin — Sat, 20 Mar 2021 10:12:06 +0000

Why Software Development Outsourcing is Even More Relevant After COVID-19

Everything seemed to have suddenly come to a halt when the world was hit by the global health crisis early last year. Borders started closing, and businesses operating brick and mortar stores were forced to close down in fear of profusely spreading the virus. Though vaccines have already been rolled out and borders started to slowly open, the pandemic is far from over. With these, employers strived to cope up by finding ways on how they can continue their operations without sacrificing anybody’s safety.

Sitting this crisis out without doing anything will only lead to closure or massive loss for the business. The good news is you can still save your business by tweaking your ways of working. Yes, you can open up your stores and offices, but you’re running the risk of infecting your employees and customers. And that’s not a good business move. If you choose to open on a skeletal force, you’re only incurring operational expenses without maximizing your ROI. That’s not a good business decision, either.

So, what’s the best option, in that case, you suppose? That’s correct! Going online is the right way to go. However, your management efforts shouldn’t end there. Besides digitalizing your operation, you have to make a customized system that will replace the usual face-to-face work routine you and your team are used to.

Why do you need to develop customized software to run your business?

No two businesses have the exact same ways of working. A system may even be helpful for this business but is detrimental to another. You need to have a system that’s built for you and your team. You don’t get these sets of infrastructure by subscribing to pre-designed programs. These pre-built programs may have extensive features and could help you run your operations, but they can’t be as flexible as those built after a thorough study of your processes. For this reason, it’s best to outsource software developers to immerse into your current ways of working to come up with a customized, tailor-fit system that works best for your team.

Why investing in software development outsourcing make more sense after the pandemic?

It’s a shared sentiment among the business community how they suffered significant losses during the pandemic. Because of these losses, they were forced to lay off their workers or, worse, close down their business. The least they need as they pick themselves up to start all over again is to hire more people to be on their payroll. When they need somebody to build and maintain software, it is financially sound to outsource someone for the one-time software development job and recurring system maintenance. Even if you pay these developers a hefty amount one time, you will still be in a better financial position than hiring and keeping an in-house IT staff.

Remote work is still the trend

Before the pandemic, remote work has been on a steady rise. The demand for the same skyrocketed when it seemed to be the safest option to replace traditional work. A study published by Harvard Business School revealed that over 45% of businesses have moved their entire operation online and wish to continue the same system even after the pandemic. Furthermore, a survey conducted by the National Association for Business Economics (NABE) showed that about 80% of businesses had adopted a remote system post-COVID.

These facts alone suggest that remote work will still be on a steady rise even after the health crisis since it’s a more cost-efficient and creative alternative to the traditional face-to-face work environment. With remote work being a necessity post-COVID, your business can even save more if you outsource the task of developing a system that will make your remote operation.

You don’t have to be together to reach a collective goal

Looking back, you’ll see that the teams built for remote work didn’t have a hard time adjusting to the pandemic’s economic repercussions. As for teams who were forced to go remote, they might struggle initially, but as time passed by and as they cope up, their productivity picked up. Over time, they found out that they don’t have to be physically together to achieve their set goals.

According to Professor E.Glenn Dutcher, work in a less formal system can drag workers down and adversely affect their productivity. However, he noted that the same environment nurtures creativity and allows workers to think outside the box. So, when productivity is in question, it’s not right to assume that remote work makes one less productive. As published in TechRepublic’s report, remote workers even indicate that working away from the office allowed them to create an outstanding work-life balance as the stress from commuting, spending more time with their family, and giving them the freedom to work where they want.

Takeaway

Given all these facts, it’s safe to assume that what you need to succeed and reach your targets is a stable, secure, and working system that’s built for you and your team’s needs. And you don’t have to hire someone and place them on your payroll to have this system built for you. Instead, look for a reputable software developer, outsource the project and see how your bottom line improves. What’s even better is you can commission the same people to maintain the system for you.

As they would put it, never let a good crisis go to waste. You see, a crisis remains a setback if you refuse to think out of the box and innovate.