Businesses always look for multiple solutions that can scale their product development to new heights, and an offshore development team is one of the agile methodologies that helps not only tech giants but also small businesses and startups scale their operations.
Putting the dream in your mind, you present your ideas to venture capitalists to get funds and shape them in the real world. Operating on a tight budget, cutting down on unnecessary costs is something a startup founder prioritizes. To fulfill your dream, you want a development team that can build your MVP(Minimum Viable Product) and impress potential investors and convince them to invest in your startup.
You look for a possible solution, underlining your budget. You start browsing through different websites. Finally, you hear something about offshore development and you take an interest. You learn that these development teams are the best to develop your products within a tight deadline in a cost effective way.
You start to look for the vendors and freelance platforms that can provide you with a development team in a short time, but you get confused, as there are more than 50+ platforms that offer a guaranteed software development team for your success.
As a startup, we understand your situation and the pressure of building your product and improving your brand reputation. For this reason, we at Optymize have devoted ourselves to helping enthusiastic startup founders like you, and hence, our article will clarify some of the aspects of building offshore development teams for your startups.
What is Offshore Development?
Offshore development refers to development which is carried out from an offshore location far away from employers’ headquarters. Generally, this development takes place in countries where development costs are much lower. Hence, India, the Philippines, and Ukraine are the best countries for offshore software development.
Though offshore development is a common practice among IT firms to scale their teams, it gained huge momentum during the events of COVID as companies were forced to adapt to remote work policies.
Why Offshore Software Development?
If you are a startup founder who is hoping to scale startup teams within days and achieve the best product development, then an offshore development team is the ideal choice. You might ask, what’s wrong with an in-house team? Or why not an in-house team?
Your hiring expertise is unquestionably legitimate, but in-house teams need much more than just salaries that you should adjust for. Additionally, if you run a startup, you may need to make some sacrifices and cut costs from time to time. Because of this, we strongly suggest choosing an offshore dedicated team.
Benefits of Offshore Development Team
1. Cost Effective
This is something every startup prioritizes. And it should, because the main goal of startups is to advance their production and increase their brand name among audiences. Hiring an offshore development team significantly reduces unnecessary costs, compared to in-house teams, which are costly and come with hiring costs, real estate costs, and other costs.
Moreover, they require additional benefits, health insurance, and other things as well. A startup cannot provide all of these benefits, and even if it did, the owner would be losing a ton on employees rather than the product.
On the contrary, offshore development teams don’t rely on any office as they operate from a remote location. Furthermore, a third party vendor provides these talents, which means you don’t have to provide additional benefits as well as any health insurance.
The best part here is that you can hire an offshore development team on a contractual basis. This means that once the project or MVP is completed, you can no longer rely on the offshore team and can move ahead with your brand expansion.
2. Productivity at its Finest
Productivity is indeed the most essential parameter in the development process. Having said so, an offshore development team brings a more streamlined development process to the table, which saves a chunk of time for startups.
Above all, you won’t have to train these offshore developers as they are the experts in their domain, which in-house teams require a lot. Instead, you can focus on management and marketing to gather a huge audience and spread the word about your brand.
If you have read some news during the COVID events, you may have encountered a headline that mentioned “remote work boosts productivity of employees by more than 40%”. If not, let us bring clarity to the subject. Offshore developers operate and complete their tasks mostly from their homes.
You will undoubtedly respond “blessed and happy” if we ask you how you feel at home. This is the game here. This offshore development team feels calm and happy at every moment because they work in a peaceful environment where they can concentrate on the software product by being highly focused.
Moreover, unlike the office environment, they can finally work in peace where there are no distractions, pressure, or disturbances, so no doubt your product development quality will shine brightest. For this reason, many researchers say that remote work and working from home are the best ways to get effective products.
3. A Huge Pool of Talent
IT offshore development team hiring provides you with a talented team of developers around the world. Unlike your regional teams who demand perks equivalent to Google software developer salaries, startups are certainly not that capable of doing so. Instead, they can hire offshore developers from Asia or western Europe to achieve agile development with offshore teams in a cost efficient way.
Offshore development teams are typically hired to complete critical tasks that a startup development team would fail to complete. Additionally, these teams are more productive than your regional teams, as we already mentioned, so it is safe to assume that you will receive a high-quality product.
How to Find Offshore Development Teams
Great, You have decided to outsource your product development and you need an organization that can provide the elite talents to fulfill your needs. You can begin finding these teams via Google, where you will find more than 50+ sites that guarantee success with offshore development teams, and these are usually known as the freelance platforms.
But you have to understand the difference between a talent marketplace and a freelance site. Even IT professionals consider them the same, but they are not. Their goals are similar, but they have one main difference, and that is the support system.
Let’s say something goes wrong while a product is being developed by an offshore development team. What options do you have? Problems will inevitably arise during the development process, so you should receive some support to resolve them. Therefore, if some of them promise you a 100% success rate, that’s a worrying sign. Therefore, be aware of how the platforms differ.
1. Freelance Platforms
Freelance platforms offer a variety of developers in every niche, such as AI, ML, Blockchain Development, and others. Upwork, Fiverr, and People per Hour are some of these platforms that have a huge number of developers operating on hourly rates.
However, there is a catch. You need to find and hire a developer for each one because they operate independently. Additionally, since there is no intermediary, you won’t receive any support services, which increases the risk that your development will hit a snag.
Moreover, even if you decide to take a shot, you have to interview and check each candidate’s problem solving and analytical thinking skills to identify whether he is right for the position, which again is frustrating.
2. Freelance Talent Marketplace
A freelance talent marketplace is a platform that is solely focused on helping startups and IT firms deliver the best offshore development teams to upscale their development and production practices.
These marketplaces are filled with developer teams who are chosen through various tests, which include problem solving, psychometric, and other tests.
In addition, they only choose developers who have years of experience working remotely for various companies and have genuine profiles. In other words, they are qualified professionals.
Additionally, freelance talent marketplaces are in charge of assembling teams and managing other duties like paperwork, allowing you to focus on running your startup rather than worrying about team organization.
The most interesting part is that they provide support facilities, which come in handy whenever an issue arises in development or managing procedures.
Similarly, Optymize has handpicked the top 5% of developers who can scale your development quickly. Opytmize values your time and will assist you within 48 hours with the right team of developers. Moreover, we have 24*7 support, so you can rest assured of your issues and contact us anytime.
How to Hire Offshore Development Teams
Now that you are eager to hire, let us stop you for a moment, as we haven’t stated the prerequisites you should consider before hiring these offshore development teams.
1. Understand Product Goals
The first thing you should consider doing is to start identifying the problem and narrowing down the things you want in your MVP. This will define and structure your product’s goals and will give you an idea of what you really expect from the product.
Accordingly, note down all the aspects of your project to give the offshore development team an idea of what you really want. Break down the milestones into small parts to achieve success bit by bit.
2. Identify Skill Sets and Tech Stack Required for Project
Once you understand the goals, you have to move ahead to the next step, which is to underline the skill sets and tech stack your project requires. If you belong from a non-tech background, we highly suggest you hire a technical expert who can help you out in identifying the tech stack and skill sets to accordingly define the roles such as senior developer, analyst, and others.
3. Set a Budget
The most important aspect of your startup is your budget. A budget defines and prioritizes your spending, so if you have any unnecessary costs, cut them down. Plan how much money you would like to spend on the project or to build an MVP to impress potential investors. Accordingly, contact the freelance marketplace and find out whether the costs align with your project and get a step closer to building your offshore development team.
4. Prepare a Job Description
The next step would be preparing a well formatted and concise job description that explains your project needs and roles, required tech stack, and soft and tech skills to offshore development team. To make it more clear, a job description defines your ideal candidate’s information. So be clear, don’t mention anything you don’t offer, such as additional perks to hook developers.
5. Reach out to the Freelance Marketplace
After you finish up with the job description, reach out to the freelance marketplace, have a conversation, discuss your needs and the budget you have, get aware of their workflow and support facilities, so you can understand which can serve your needs in the right way.
Finally, choose the right freelance marketplace for your development practices. While choosing, make sure they have served clients with similar needs as you have. Check their feedback, reviews, and ratings.
6. Look into the Developer’s Profile
Now, as you have chosen the best marketplace, look into their developer’s profile, and learn how they assist a client with their development skills. Analyze their tech stack, expertise, and other parameters to make sure they align with your project and, accordingly, choose the offshore development team.
7. Interview and Onboard
The last and most important step is the interview. Set a date and time and inform both the developers and the marketplace about the interviews. Before you proceed, make sure you have some technical questions ready to understand the candidates’ expertise and their interest in your project. Once done with the interview, choose the best developers and make an offer.
After the developers accept the offer, onboard an offshore development team and explain your culture and other policies so they can get well versed in your startup culture.
How Do You Manage an Offshore Development Team?
Managing a development team is crucial for calibrating your development in the right direction. It is true that managing an offshore development team is hard as compared to in-house teams because they operate from a remote part of the world.
Nevertheless, it is still possible to gain control and manage your offshore development team with the help of smart tracking and monitoring tools that will help you track your product development phases. These tools monitor the development team’s computer screen and send this information to your table, so you can take the necessary steps.
Moreover, video conferencing platforms such as Skype, Zoom, and others are equipped with smart features of AI that reduce file size and improve connectivity even in poor network conditions. This allows you to stay connected to your offshore development teams and assign responsibilities and get task updates.
Conclusion
As we have enlisted some of the offshore development team’s benefits, you might have understood why they are favored by startups. These offshore teams are qualified professionals who work effectively on your project. Besides, you will save a ton of money by hiring these experts. Hence, if you are a startup and looking to get your MVP up and running, then we strongly advise opting for an offshore development team.
Having said so, choosing the best freelance marketplace is essential. This article will help startups and small businesses to understand the key aspects of finding and hiring an offshore development team to begin their offshore operation.
