The outsourcing niche has become one of the most significant fields, with only IT costing more than 92.5bn USD. This number shows how much tech depends on outsourcing, especially software development. Although, such a fast growth of this industry increased the number of problems companies face when outsourcing software development services. How do we manage these issues to avoid their direct impact on development and collaboration? In this article, we will discuss the most common problems when outsourcing and solutions to them.
Problems with IT outsourcing
When choosing to outsource for software development, many clients worry about problems that may appear. It may happen when the development agency is selected not very carefully or when the clients don’t pay enough attention to offshore team management. Here are some issues that may happen and solutions to them.
Poor communication and cultural barriers
When outsourcing offshore development services, problems of poor communication and cultural barriers may happen. It is primarily because of developers’ low level of English, lack of face-to-face communication, and different time zones.
To prevent it, a CTO or a project manager from your in-house team should manage the outsourced developers. To reduce face-to-face communication issues, you should make more calls and online meetings. It can help to find out some issues the engineers struggle with and to make team management easier. Time zone becomes not a big issue if you and the development team organize the working time. So, you have to discuss the convenient working hours to conduct meetings and discuss the working process. To reduce the issue of low level of English, you should either check the developer’s English level during the interviews and choose the candidates with smooth communication or have a PM who knows English and the second language that the outsourced team uses and who will manage the team and take the role of a mediator.
Unclear delivery expectations
One of the most common things to deal with while outsourcing is delays. Offshore developers work within time frames, but delays still happen. To solve this problem, before starting the development process, you should set up the timeframes for delivering the feature/project. You should try setting up checkpoints and milestones to divide the project into small tasks as it helps to focus better on the task, which also reduces issues with the delays later.
Poor quality control
Reasonable quality control may prevent many further issues if the code is done poorly. To check if the code is working correctly and there are no bugs with the software while executing, it is essential to assign a QA to review the work.
This person knows for sure how to check the quality of the software, detect bugs and ensure your product is a high-quality one.
Intellectual property safety
One of the most significant issues many companies face while outsourcing is intellectual property. Sometimes, when the contract is not negotiated, software development teams may prefer an arrangement where they retain the software’s intellectual property.
There are several ways how to protect intellectual property. You can sign the dual contract of the ownership with both developer and you. It is a great way to increase the quality of the software as engineers will have a sense of ownership. Another way of dealing with the intellectual property is when the client owns the rights to the software itself. In this case, all aspects must be prediscussed and written in the contract for not having misunderstandings in the future.
When choosing outsourcing software development, it is essential to check what pros and cons it has. The most important thing is to learn about how to deal with the drawbacks so they cannot appear while you are in collaboration with the offshore development team. The discussed problems, such as communication, intellectual property, and quality issues, can be easily overcome by clever and careful steps. If you want to read more about other solutions to improve your experience with the offshore developers, read our blog.
