How to Hire an Offshore Dedicated Development Team
In today’s fast-paced, technology-driven business world, the demand for IT professionals is higher than ever. Fast access to the necessary technical specialists not only allows you to react quickly to changes in the market but can also allow your company to complete key development projects on time. Based on this tendency, globalized companies worldwide have been hiring an offshore dedicated development team for business growth for years. The reason is that employing a team of professionals to meet the needs of your future projects is much more convenient than building a team from scratch.
Features of a dedicated team
Each manager chooses the optimal model of interaction based on the company’s requirements. Often their selection falls on the dedicated development team, which is not surprising because it is flexible and convenient now. But we all understand that no matter how versatile the model is, you still need to take into account the features of its implementation. There are 3 things to keep in mind when hiring a dedicated development team so that this model fits your needs perfectly:
- The project
One is to figure out the nature of the product and the results you want to get within a certain period. If your project is large or you are working on multiple projects at the moment, you need to hire a dedicated team. Not only will they take care of the initial work and software development procedure, but they will also provide quality control and market research before developing any application. - Budget
If you have a budget that allows you to spend more than you need, you should choose a dedicated team. The burden of developing the software or application will go from the company to the team. Other things in business may require your attention, and you’ll be able to devote more time to that than usual if you hire a team to handle the technical part of the company. Not only will this reduce your workload, but it will help elevate your company above other competing companies. - Human resource needs
You might have your software development team, but they might need a team leader or other team to help them with various aspects of application development.
What is an offshore dedicated development team?
Often companies need more than just a set of software development tasks or a single project. Perhaps they need to implement long-term, large projects or a set of related projects. In these cases, they prefer to turn to the offshore dedicated business model. An offshore dedicated development team is a consolidated group of overseas developers, whose main responsibility is to create and support the startup’s technology products. This location difference allows startups in high-income countries to take advantage of lower salaries in other countries. This means that if you want to create a low-cost software solution or quickly expand the capabilities of your existing project team, an offshore team is a choice for you.
A great example to hire an offshore dedicated development team is a large company ScienceSoft with many offices in the U.S. A slightly smaller company, but also with a large number of cases with offices in Poland and Ukraine – Brights. They are reliable representatives of companies that provide this employment model because their experience in this field spans many years.
Typical dedicated team structure
Three basic types of dedicated development team structure exist:
- Extension
This model involves joining missing expertise from another team to your internal staff. - Project-based
This involves bringing in a team of web developers to work on a specific piece of software functionality. - Dedicated team
Usually, such a team works full-time, as does your in-house team. The only point here is that they are offshore.
What country to choose?
Today’s market allows you to hire highly qualified software developers from all over the world. This makes the whole hiring system very simple, but it raises additional questions, such as which country to choose. Here we will consider the most popular options among employers worldwide.
Ukraine
The government encourages the development of the IT sphere in every way, and private companies launch various courses for beginners. Therefore every year the number of IT specialists in Ukraine is growing. Even the British Global Outsourcing Association named Ukraine as a destination for offshoring, and US companies outsource about 80% of IT projects to Ukraine.
Poland
Poland is among the top three countries with the largest number of qualified programmers in the world. Its programmers take first place in tests for Java and are in the top five in other development languages.
India
Despite relatively low literacy rates, there is an increasing emphasis on mathematical research here, which promotes the development of technology. India is considered a good country for application development initiatives.
Most common challenges
Every business model has its challenges to be prepared for, and we will outline the main ones so that you understand what you are dealing with:
- The result of offshore teamwork may not always be exactly what the company needs.
This can be due to several reasons. The offshore team may be in the process of adapting, or its internal composition may have changed too often. - The team doesn’t meet deadlines
You can also look at the possible root of the problem such as the team may feel overstretched either because it is new or drowning in too many demands. Misunderstanding deadlines can also cause inadequate expectations. - Progress is difficult to track.
Addressing this problem requires the offshore team to interact skillfully with the rest of the company. Lack of communication between the core team and the offshore team will lead to serious problems in the future, and you will lose more than you gain. - Different time zones
Assuming the offshore team is located in another part of the world, time zones can influence performance and the final result. Of course, you can come up with a schedule that fits both the internal team and the offshore team, but this will be a difficult task.
Conclusion
Thanks to online tools for collaboration and ubiquitous Internet access, offshoring has become a much cheaper option than hiring your specialists. This model can help you save even more money because you can get qualified developers in other countries for less.
Employing an offshore dedicated team is also more flexible than hiring on a contract basis, short-term or long-term. As a result, you can quickly increase or decrease the amount of work depending on the needs of your projects.
But you need to pay attention to the specifics of this model and be prepared for the challenges that may arise. Of course, with the right approach, this can be minimized, because you can simply attract a professional team, which will bring you a lot of value.
