The happiest and most stress-free members of your workforce may also be the least present in the physical world. Remote working is no longer a trend, but essential for companies who wish to stay ahead in the tech world, especially in the times of pandemic.
Outsourcing software development teams are the most suitable choice for any business that is trying to hire skilled talent with the money. However, a correct mindset and tools are required for managing a remote team as it can prove to be the difference-maker in enabling long-distance work relationships in a productive manner.
Today, in this article, we are going to share the top 10 tips of making the best out of a Nearshore Development Team. But before we proceed, let’s understand the term called Nearshore Outsourcing.
What is Nearshore Outsourcing?
Nearshore Outsourcing is a practice of getting your services performed by the people operating in neighboring countries instead of your own country. This practice is commonly followed in the Software Development field. A Nearshore development team consists of developers, designers, QA professionals, analysts that are located in countries geographically closer to yours. The nearshore team is hired in the global marketplace to minimize costing and improve the efficiency of your organization. As per a study by Virgo Capital, nearshore outsourcing can save around 20% of the software development costing.
Nearshore outsourcing is prevalent in Europe and North America due to the problems associated with remote outsourcing and offshoring. Western European companies select the Eastern European markets for nearshore software development while the North American countries go for Mexico, Caribbean countries, and other Latin American nations.
Benefits of Nearshore Outsourcing
- Minimize the cost of development
- Improvises Business process efficiency
- Reduce the expenses of traveling
- Better the delivery timings and productivity
- Provides access to a large talent pool.
- Less vulnerable to intellectual property theft in comparison to the offshoring model
- Has hardly any time-zone difference
- A great option for late-night shifts
- Has lower language barriers
- Provides better control over the nearshore development team.
How to Make the most out of the Nearshore Development Team?
Leverage the following pointers before making the final call:
1. Consider Sharing Your Objectives
Nearshore Outsourcing is only successful with maximum involvement. Consider presenting your project idea with your team precisely. It must include:
- Share the vision of your product
- Discuss your goals and deliverables
- Get involved in the various stages of software development, like forecasting deadlines, idea testing, and change of request.
2. Manage Work Procedures
Nearshore outsourcing is never possible without utilizing the proper toolkit. Around 83% of the people are operating remotely in 2020, and as a result, it is very much essential to manage the work processes. Following tools may prove to be handy-
- Project Management solutions like Trello, Asana, Jira, WorkZone, PivotalTracker, and others.
- Microsoft Office 365, which consists of tools like Skype, emails, calendars, and other best online and offline office suites integrated with augmented security options that help in protecting sensitive data from phishing or hijacking.
- Video Conferencing tools like ClickMeeting, Zoho Meeting, Cisco Webex, GoToMeeting, Zoom Meeting, Join.me, etc.
- Google Suite for storing, sharing, planning, meeting, mailing, and other such relevant functionalities.
3. In-person Meetings are Vital
Project workshops and personal meetings with your nearshore development team will make the whole cooperation process much more effective. Also, it helps you in building connections and trust with employees. This, in turn, boosts the employees’ morale for investing efforts into the business idea. Take the following practices into account-
- Invite the team members to your country to give an insight into your business operations in the real-life.
- Consider visiting their offices to have an estimate of their requirements and existing resources.
- Arrange parties, informal meetings, and team building activities for forging friendly connections with the team.
- Invite your outsourced team for workshops to share the vision of your organization.
4. Language and Culture
The common tongue plays a more important role in the development culture than you can imagine. It helps in forging productive working relationships, and it can’t happen without being able to communicate your “I require” statements to the onshore team. In recent years, the hubs of staff augmentation are Eastern Europe, India, and Latin America. Though there are pros and cons of every region, similar languages and shared cultural backgrounds help in increasing productivity.
Both of these traits- language & culture have made Latin America be the best fit for the U.S zones.
5. Appraisals go in Longer Run
Rewards and appreciations help in boosting your team’s productivity. Give your team constructive feedback if you wish to move in the right direction. Reward the remote developers with new gadgets, bonuses, etc. for their job. Provide them with essential equipment and hardware for testing your software applications. Your behavior and few praise words are going to leave a lasting impression in the minds of your team members.
As per a specialist in behavioral science from Harvard Business School, Dr. Ashley Whilliams,
“What really matters in the workplace is helping employees feel appreciated.”
6. Don’t Forget to Reply Promptly
Don’t delay in responding to your offshore team. Promptly respond to the mails of the project manager, especially as they are the ones who are responsible for managing the whole project. Stay in constant touch with your team throughout the product development process. Make use of work management tools as mentioned in pointer #2.
7. Avail Pragmatic Agile Methodology
From the past few years, agile development has become a popular buzzword in the IT world. The model is aimed to keep the development iterations short, ensure frequent testing cycles, maintain the product quality by gaining constant feedback, and enable faster release cycles for the product. Continuous delivery and rapid development cycles ensure adaptive planning, change, and flexibility. However, the actual practice of this methodology is a steeper learning curve for anyone unfamiliar with it. By following a pragmatic approach and recognizing those sections of agile that generates velocity. It will allow the developers to release qualitative products quickly.
In short, teams shouldn’t invest a lot of time and energy in abiding with strict agile methodology. Instead, they should look for adapting those agile practices that enable effective teamwork, smooth communication, and improved efficiency.
8. Check out their Technical Skills
Cloud Computing, Edge Computing, Machine Learning, Artificial Intelligence, IoT, Blockchain are no longer the terms of the future. Ensure that your offshore development team has the expertise that goes beyond the necessary coding skills. It must be equipped with cutting edge technologies for ensuring the delivery of an outstanding product.
9. What’s Their Reputation?
Reliability, Flexibility, and Relatability are the top most characteristics of any good nearshore development team.
- Consider tracking the company’s record?
- Check out their experience with past clients.
- Get to know what the clients have to say about the firm!
Check out all the digital trails of companies like Glassdoor, Linkedin, and the reviews on various search engine platforms.
Remember, any reliable company would be excited to offer you past references. Don’t forget to make the best out of this opportunity!
10. Have You Conveyed the Payment Options?
A Nearshore software development team, like any other outsourcing service, offers multiple modes of payments. Depending on the project duration and terms of agreement with the IT provider, you can provide two options-
- Hourly- Basis Model: This model enables tight collaboration, work transparency, and continuous delivery of the results based on hourly rates.
- Fixed Price Model: The model ensures exact defined prices, offers minimum financial risks, and provides strict deadlines.
Now coming to invoicing, consider executing payments through banking transactions, financial services like Payoneer or PayPal, and financial agreements between two contract parties.
Whatever payment options you select, inform your team about terms and conditions like subjected fees.
Also Read- What Are the Steps of the Software Development Process?
Still on the Fence?
Don’t be! Nearshore Development is the ideal solution.
As per Statista, the global outsourcing market had amounted to 92.5 billion in the year 2019.
It began from the basic outsourcing and traversed through the offshoring and now has reached to nearshoring. The industry has experienced specific problems when offshoring and outsourcing is concerned. On the other hand, there are several advantages of Nearshore Outsourcing-
- Easy to reach geography-wise.
- Comparatively less expensive
- Enables cost-efficiency
- Offers Fast delivery
- Better productivity
- Fewer barriers of time, culture, and language.
If you are unsure whether a nearshore team would be a perfect fit for your business’s goals, consider contacting us.
Matellio is a double-decade experienced team in web and mobile application development. Our round-the-clock available experts shall clear out all your queries, whatever they may be.
