According to the results of the global outsourcing survey by Deloitte, IT is nowadays the most outsourced industry. No wonder! Europe itself is in need of nearly 400,000 specialists, and the situation in other developed markets is pretty much the same. Only in the western part of the old continent, vacancies for the positions in the IT industry already constitute 60% of all vacant jobs.
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To outsource or not to outsource?
Outsourcing seems to be a remedy to the problem of insufficient staff. Moreover, it is economically smart as hiring developers from the markets which are not overbought yet can bring significant savings.
On the other hand, the stories about the problems related to poor understanding of the business idea, delays, no common goals between the client and the vendor, still stop many people from outsourcing their web app development. Is there some way to outsource without compromising on your product’s quality?
How to choose the best software house to work with?
Calculate the final cost
Mind that lower hourly rate combined with a slow development process and poor quality may result in a high end-cost. Cost is always an important factor but you need to search for the balance between good price, speed, and high quality. Don’t choose the cheapest option! In the long term, it will pay you off to choose the software house with good opinions, and not necessarily best rates!
Check their portfolio
If a software house has built dozens of products, there is a high chance that they will manage to build yours as well. Check the technologies they used and how they present these products. Look for the software houses that focus on solving business problems and achieving clients’ goals and not only on delivering the code. Also, search for the reviews of a chosen company and see how the projects looked like from the clients’ perspective.
See how the software house works with their clients
Communication is the key. It’s important that a software development company is transparent and that they inform you about the progress as well as about any problems that may occur during the development. Ask if you will have direct contact with developers and to project management dashboard.
A good practice that is more and more common among software houses is to give their customers access to project files, including source code, burndown charts, time reports, and project management dashboard.
See their approach
In order to help you succeed, a software house needs to understand your business needs and your goals. If they don’t know what problems your app is supposed to help, they won’t be able to build a product that solves it. When choosing the vendor for IT outsourcing to help you with your app development, listen carefully to the questions they ask, and see if they mind end-users of the product.
Next, ask about the project development roadmap and milestones to achieve during this process. Discuss the KPIs that will help you monitor the progress. One does not simply build an application! What good software products share in common is that that they get market validation very early. The software house should help you get to that market as fast as possible – even with the simplest proof of concept.
Mind cultural differences
The way we communicate and the way we approach problems lies deeply in our cultural background. It’s not only about language fluency. As per the Global outsourcing survey by Deloitte, 65% of companies who outsource do so in Europe. Even Eastern European countries are very close to western culture – they are driven by similar motivation, they have a similar set of values, and they, in general, have a similar goal-oriented approach. And it’s relatively easy to find a good IT outsourcing company in CEE.
When you are looking for a software house to work with, think if they will ever be able to honestly tell you that your assumptions are wrong and that something should be done differently than planned. Or that they won’t make it on time, or any other “negative” scenario.
Summary
Choosing the best software house to work with is not easy. There are many things that you need to consider – and only some of them are related to what you actually outsource! Like with any other service, it’s important that your service providers understand your needs and that you are able to trust them with your product.
