3 points to consider when selecting an offshore development partner
Bringing in an external development team is a great way to fuel up your organisation’s development capacity in a cost efficient and flexible manner, but with the wide range of vendor options it can be tricky to chose the right partner for you. Below are my two cents on the most important factors to consider, based on my experience building Ascentic over the last years.
Company culture
When hiring we tend to pay a lot of attention to the candidate’s cultural fit with our organisation, however in selecting an external development partner this aspect is often overlooked. Make sure to assess the cultural match between your own organisation and the vendors you are evaluating, asking questions to get to know their practices and philosophies as good as possible. Finding an external vendor that promotes similar values and principles as your own, increases the chances that your external team members will be able to smoothly blend into your organisation and contribute in a similar capacity as your inhouse crew.
Technical alignment
Different vendors come with different ranges of technical competency — some being specialized in a selected few while others covering more or less everything (but to different extent). Make sure your selected vendor has a strong track record in your key technologies, and if not, a convincing idea about how they will build the competency when starting up your team. A good technical alignment increases the chances that the vendor will be able to quickly scale your team with strong profiles, and that your team members will have a good amount of senior mentors and leads to learn from.
Collaboration model
There are various engagement models for offshore services out there, and depending on your needs, own organisation and growth plan — different options will be differently suited. For example if…
… you have a well defined and scoped project that you just need to turn into a working product — you might want to opt for the project model where the offshore vendor manages everything needed to get the work done. During the project startup phase, discuss and agree on your own involvement in the project and invest some extra time in the start of the project to help the team see the bigger picture and set their aim straight.
… you want to scale up your existing development team by adding more engineers and have someone inhouse with capacity to lead the work — you might want to opt for the integrated Extended Team model. Here you manage your remote members just as you manage your inhouse crew, with the support of the offshore vendor handling all needed HR infrastructure.
… you want to expand your development capacity, but you don’t have anyone inhouse with capacity or skills to lead the offshore team — opt for fully Managed Teams model, where the offshore vendor apart from the tech team also provides management of the team and work. Here the customer stakeholders can fully focus on the strategic needs of the business, and works with for example a proxy product owner from the vendor who helps to create and prioritize the product backlog, and the ongoing work with leading the team to get the work done.
Hope this helps in your vendor evaluation and selection process — give me a shout if you have questions or would like to discuss further!
