Defying Four common mistakes when working with IT outsourcing companies

Demand for IT outsourcing companies is on the rise due to talent scarcity. However, performing offshore outsourcing projects indicate several mistakes, which steal your money.

According to Indeed, the shortage of talented developers in the US only will project to be till 2026, with over 1.2 million development jobs cannot find its candidates. The overwhelming demand for IT engineers gives rise to software outsourcing market. HFR research found that at least 80% of businesses globally have an incentive to outsource their jobs and responsibilities. Unfortunately, working with software outsourcing company induces a series of mistakes that companies’ owners might encounter during projects.

After delivering several offshore software development projects, Adamo Software has generated four mistakes that our clients commonly waste time and money on it.

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Challenge in controlling the working time of IT outsourcing companies

The geographic distancing deters the effort of clients in tracking progress and working time of software outsourcing developers. As a result, you might get stuck with managing the team in another country, even when hiring an experienced project manager to perform those tasks. Especially when you choose to collaborate with multiple outsourcing agencies, ensuring all the deliverables under your control might challenge you and your team.

Currently, there are several tools for tracking the projects’ progress. However, the initial tasks refer to confirms schedules and commitment in advance. You could require your software development companies report their historical performance on a regular basis, depending on your demand. For managing multiple partners, the efficient method refers to divide the progress into small spins by setting the fixed interval for each spin. Meanwhile, you can also track directly by having video conferencing to review the whole job.

In term of managing tools being available in the market, JIRA, Redmine, Gitlab, and Jenkin tend to be familiar and suitable for majorities software development projects. Those tools will help you keep track of the workflow of an offshore dedicated software development team.

Changing in scale and scope of software outsourcing projects

Obviously, the scale and scope of an outsourcing project, including the range of tasks and commitments have thoroughly defined during agreement negotiation. In practice, business owners commonly demand the expansion of phases’ scope even after contract signed since they promptly need adding more features into software for keeping up on-trend.

However, on the software outsourcing company’s point of view, expanding tasks in development phases induce huge extra cost due to the disturbance of plan and team. The sudden changes in the scope seemingly lead to a dedicated development team false in respecting the deadline. In this case, software developers tend to work overtime, while clients need to pay more for extra work.

This mistake came from weak expertise in setting and estimating the scope of clients. Whereby, they might work on emotions or heavily depend on the software outsourcing vendors. A practical solution for clients refers to employ an experienced project manager, working as the strategic connection between clients and the software outsourcing team. He or she should take responsibility of consulting clients regarding accurate map out the scope. Additionally, communication is required in official standards and procedures. Whereby, the discussing content has to transform into report or documentation, which reduce the possibility of misunderstanding and translation errors.

Post-meeting activities should focus on scheduling and financial planning for each team member’s roles. Times estimation needs to be considered the opinions of both software developers, IT experts, business experts, and testers. The success of outsourcing projects will rely on the capacity to closely collaborate among parties.

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Underestimating Feedback and Input about IT outsourcing companies

One of the core motivations leading to outsourcing software development decision is that you can have a subject matter expert. However, not all clients take the tech expert’s feedback into account since they suspect their vendor act in favour of maximising his benefit. The lack of trust between partners might cause missing the core industries evidence supporting in the development process.

In the business perspective, you, as a business owner, deeply understand your jobs and target audience. However, if choosing an IT outsourcing provider, you should seriously consider feedback or resource they provide. Whereas, you might find this information in any public source since it might be internal circulation only with more specific and accurate. Do not forget the fundamental reason make you hiring IT consultant refer to leverage their expertise and industry insights.

Failure in balancing in-house team and outsourcing dedicated development team

In practices, companies have an incentive to outsource only part of software development projects, while they reserve some portion of the works to the in-house staffs. Business owners believe that this way would better protect their rights and benefits by reducing the self- interest acts of the software outsourcing agency. However, two teams refer to stand on a different point of view due to the gap of culture and technology environment, leading to unexpected conflict during collaboration periods.

The practical solutions for this mistake might vary, depending on the nature of each team. However, there are three core indicators that managers should consider when managing software outsourcing vendors:

• Work quality: the quality of the final software should be investigated by the in-house team with strong professional skills to make sure the outsourcing vendor has done all the task they commit in the contracts. However, managers need to thoroughly define the requirement for an in-house team to check whether all parties are on the same page.
• Delivery time: in-house developers should take responsibility for estimating the delivery time for outsourcing dedicated development team because it needs to consider the technical requirements and the internal conditions of tasks
• Cost: should be assessed in relation to the productivity and quality of each phase

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In conclusion, the outsourcing challenges are not literally arising from differences in culture and languages. It came from the ambiguous requirement and commitment among parties. To successfully collaborate with IT software outsourcing company, you should help your outsourcing vendors clearly understand the technological requirements and business operation goals concerning the offshore software development projects.