5 Crucial Mistakes When Looking for Software Development Outsourcing Company
The secret of your online venture success is easy: it lies in hiring talented software developers. The question is, how to find them and how to set the workflow right?
While looking for developers, you may want to consider outsourcing software development to Ukraine as it has a noteworthy number of benefits. Custom software development can provide powerful ROI and seamlessly integrated solutions for your desktop, web, and mobile applications. With IT outsourcing, you can reduce costs and decrease the workload of your employees.
However, despite a great number of advantages, there are still some significant mistakes businesses often make wearing out. These can result in failures, additional costs, and time loss.
Developing a desktop or mobile application can be a stressful time in a business’ life. Whether it is because of missed deadlines or lack of communication with the development team, issues may emerge while you are working on the project. Therefore, it is highly important to be aware of possible traps and be ready to avoid them.
So here’s what to look out for when choosing a software development outsourcing company:
Mistake #1: Lack of proper research
Businesses make a common mistake of choosing a software service provider without conducting a thorough research, basing their decision mainly on cost-efficiency. For sure, the cost factor plays an important role, but it’s far not the only one. Other things that matter is the way your vendor functions on the market, as well as feedback and reviews, portfolio and expertise.
There are a couple of areas you should research to make sure you choose the right IT partner for your project. Research enough in order to have a good idea of all of the work your potential IT companion has done. Feel free to ask for individual resumés from the team and everything you would like to know:
- How will you communicate with the team?
- Who is the PM/other responsible people to get in touch with?
- Are you familiar with the industry and user base?
- Are there new trends adopted in your portfolio?
- What kind of software development pricing model do you suggest?
- Who/what team will be working on the project?
- What is the PM’s professional background?
- Will the developers be working only on your project or several projects?
- Does the app development team have a proper experience and expertise to do the project effectively?
Clearly, a lot of this research should be done before the primary interview. The rest will come from real-time communication with your IT outsourcing company. Ultimately, after a thorough analysis, it becomes much easier to identify whether that team can realize your project.
Mistake #2: Unclear requirements and miscommunication
Sometimes business owners outsource their web or app development projects without a complete understanding of what needs to be done. Obviously, if you only have a vague idea of your project, it becomes quite complicated to set clear requirements to others as well as to evaluate whether the process is going right.
The solution is to make sure you understand your project requirements well and are able to answer questions and give helpful feedback throughout the workflow. When outsourcing app development, you should agree together on what exactly and how has to be delivered. An experienced IT outsourcing partner will be able to give you good advice.
It often happens that customers forget about the end user, which is actually the most important part of the project. You have to be able to answer the following questions:
- What is the main reason for a user to download your app?
- Have you properly thought about user flow and all use cases?
- Will your app be a really intuitive user experience?
- What will be your app’s strong and weak points?
Don’t underestimate the importance of communication, thus you will avoid misunderstandings because of lack of it. These are several things your primary technical assignment for outsourcing app development company should sketch out:
- exact profile of target audience you’re aiming at
- main features of your iOS, Android, or web app
- technologies that you want to be used in the app development
- business objectives of the organization
- design details and examples of existing applications that you like
Before starting a collaboration, discuss the milestones and the chain of approvals. Agree on who will be submitting the application and future updates to the app stores. Your software vendor must understand exactly what you want in order to find the most effective ways to implement your idea.
Mistake #3: Outsourcing to companies that are falling behind on modern trends
Outsourcing to countries and companies that are behind on modern trends can cause major troubles. Even though your chosen web development company may seem to code better than anyone else, they may be using workflows and interfaces specific only to their local area. This can cause a significant cut off with how end-users will experience your software.
Actually, no region is worse than others, but it is important how the offshore app development company meets your expectations. Such issues as legal risks, working ethics, cultural differences, broadband capacity, and market size of custom software development in Ukraine influence the final quality and cost.
Why Ukraine? Ukrainian IT Outsourcing Industry takes the 1st place as for the of the number of specialists in CEE and the 4th place globally. Learn more in our article ‘4 engaging facts about outsourcing to Ukraine‘.
When looking for outsourcing some of the UI/UX work, ensure you will be dealing with cutting-edge professionals. They should follow the latest design trends, understand best practices and the app culture of your region. Software with a beautiful user interface and clever user experience is always readily accepted by the users and gets more recognition. Users actually show their interest only if they come across something fresh and unique.
Mistake #4: Lack of having a tech-savvy manager
Lack of technical knowledge from your side may pose some risks for the project. Offshore app development doesn’t presuppose that you will place an order and get the exact expected result in a couple of months. Regular checks are essential. So if you are not ready to manage the project on a daily basis on your own, you need to have an internal person (e.g. product manager) responsible for that.
Without an experienced PM or an in-house ‘client lawyer’, managing a development team may become quite a challenging task. And it’s not just about checking whether the work is done at a proper quality level. It is more about the ability to set requirements clearly and having strong documentation to help your team move in the right direction.
It is always important to have a focal point within your company – a tech-savvy person able to guide and assist with any issues that arise along the way. Don’t fail by not using the best practices of project management just because of the absence of PM.
Mistake #5: Underestimating Quality Assurance (QA) or Testing
Testing your not yet born application is vital to gaining a guarantee that your final project is clear and functions the way it should. In fact, a tester should be involved in the development from the very beginning, otherwise, you will have a ton of bugs in the end. So, ensure your software is tested appropriately. The biggest part of this work falls upon your custom software development team. One thing to take care of is to ensure that there is an appropriate system for bug reporting.
Whatever you’re building, testing should be an integral part of software development from the very beginning.
Beyond any doubt, Quality Assurance engineer’s work must also be part of the contract with the outsourcing app development company you’re going to collaborate with. Ask your offshore tech partner for access to the ticketing system they are working with to be able to see the history of every reported bug. Don’t underestimate the importance of each individual bug to be discussed (to avoid further confusion).
Eventually, why outsourcing?
First of all, IT outsourcing makes it possible to choose highly qualified professionals because you get access to the top software development companies around the world. Due to Deloitte’s 2016 Global Outsourcing Survey, respondents (more than 85% of them are from organizations with over $1 billion in annual revenues) plan to increase outsourcing across all functions.
Companies are reporting fewer concerns with provider proactivity, innovation, resource and service quality. In general, 78% respondents felt positive about their outsourcing relationship and rate more of their vendor management capabilities as above average.
The overall process is focused on your kernel competence while you don’t have to dive deep into the development details, as all issues are empowered by your outsourcing IT-partner. Furthermore, you can reduce development costs by choosing the country where the average cost of software development is lower than in yours.
For instance, software development outsourcing to Ukraine is one of the niches that presents highest future opportunities for the global growth. Meanwhile, in 2011, the total revenue of Ukrainian custom software development companies was near $1.1 billion, in 2016 it reached $3.5 billion and it continues growing exponentially year by year.
The final hint
We can’t but mention that along with all the great advantages which the outsourcing of software development brings, there come some challenges as well. So, last but not least, one mistake companies often make while looking to outsource app development is to expect the impossible. And there are a few reasons for having extra-expectations of the technical vendor:
- either they have too high standards
- or they are new to the world of app development
Meanwhile, the last issue is easier to solve by means of good communication with the offshore development team.The best way to avoid this mistake is to discuss it with your team beforehand. Ensure that both sides have the right and clear expectations and remember that this is an equal partnership and things always need to be discussed.
