Planning to hire offshore developers for your projects? Outsourcing can lead to reduced development costs but if you do not pick the right teams, you will be left dissatisfied. If you are a small business owner, it can be easy to be duped by offshore developers who offer underwhelming results. Here is a quick checklist of everything you should be looking for.

Collaborate with Your Offshore Developers

If you are hiring offshore developers it is important to be thorough and communicative with your team. If you hand over a project and do not collaborate with the team constantly, it is going to lead to nothing but a disaster. No one understands your assignment better than you. And the final outcome of the project needs to be based on your guidelines. Your offshore developer should offer complete transparency and be willing to communicate with you every step of the way. Building trust and transparency is important when working with offshore developers. If a team is not capable of earning your trust, you should steer clear immediately. 

Ask for Complete Control Over Development

Your offshore team should offer complete control over your project. An offshore team should work as an extension of your in-house team. They should be open to regular feedback and checks on the status of the project. You should also set limited time goals to ensure your project is on track and will be meeting your final deadline. You should keep track of all timings, deadlines and resources spent by the developers at all times. It is your project and you should have complete autonomy over what happens. There should not be any instances where they supersede your instructions. On the other hand, you also need to offer them breathing room to work comfortably on the project and it involves having slightly flexible schedules and instructions. If you’re hiring your outsourced team as a third party service provider, don’t forget to detail all these conditions under a vendor agreement. If not just ensure you have a proper new hire checklist in place.

Pricing Is King

If you are unable to strike a deal with an offshore developer team for a reasonable price, you should look for a different team immediately. Any project that you want to offshore should not cost you more than your inhouse team. You should conduct proper market research to find out what the average development costs are like in the country you are outsourcing your project to. The best way to do that is by calculating the cost of an in-house team in that country and assess the time sink and developmental expertise needed to complete your project. With most companies saving up to 60% on development costs by offshoring, you should be looking at achieving a similar saving percentage. 

Communication Channels

Communication is one of the most important aspects of offshore development. If you are looking for an offshore dev team, it is important to hire one that is accessible through multiple communication channels. This includes collaboration apps, video chat, text chat, phone calls and other online communication channels. The team needs to be accessible during your working hours for updates and checks. Offshore teams that are not open to constant communication should be avoided.

Do Background Checks

If you are hiring a new team, ensure that you do full background checks for legitimacy. There are instances of fraudulent offshore developers who take up projects and disappear. In addition to doing background checks, you also need to check their claims of past experience. Most reputable offshore companies should offer you all the information you need about past projects or clients. Unless a company is working strictly on private enterprise apps, they should have no problem giving you actual references. When you are talking to past clients ask them if they would hire the same offshore brand again. 

Assess Market Opportunities

By leveraging offshore teams, you can tap into new market opportunities. You can establish your presence in other countries and work with your offshore team to introduce new services or products. If you do not have a great team of developers in your target market, you can always hire offshore teams for it. You save on establishment costs while also being able to cater to foreign markets. 

Conclusion

Hiring an offshore team is a massive risk but it is one of the most cost-efficient and best ways of tapping into new markets. Leaving up a clear means of communication and being transparent with offshore developers will make your project go smoother for both parties. Make sure you go through everything on our checklist when hiring talent from other countries and you should be good to go. 

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