How to choose the right software supplier — 7 myths about outsourcing that need to be debunked right now
It’s high time we commented on some of the most well-known myths about outsourcing looking at the difficult issues from our perspective — more than ten years of experience in software development sure did give us many examples to base this article on.
Myth 1: ‘I’m Polish, so I trust only Polish developers’
Consciously or not, we have all been there. Growing up in any culture gives you different views of other cultures, traditions, and nations. It happens without us realizing and while developing as a person/company we need to actually confront those fallacies with reality — it’s healthy and makes us more open-minded. You won’t know until you try; you can ask all of our European clients, who at some point decided that a company from Poland is a great partner in developing their software. If we have already started this bragging contest, we want to add that Polish developers rank in the TOP3 of best developers in the world!
Myth 2: ‘Any outsourcing company will do.’
Well, that’s a big no! Before even starting the search for the best outsourcing company to fit your needs and requirements, you should set out a thorough plan of what you should do while checking those companies. Be demanding, find out how the company finds specialists it then sends to work for the clients, learn about their working culture, read their clients testimonies a few times to be sure this is ‘the one’. Choosing the first company you find is actually the reason there are so many stereotypes about outsourcing constantly being reinforced.
Myth 3: ‘Let the outsourcing company do the job and then we will test their work’
It hurts our hearts to even write that, just so you know. The company you choose to do any job on your software should have testing capabilities equal to the job they have done on your software. It’s them who should find ensure the quality of the solutions. If a company doesn’t emphasize the need for testing and quality assurance, some red flags need to be raised right away. Somehow we have all stumbled upon poor quality software that we still used and didn’t complain about much, but we should definitely set high standards, especially when security is discussed — more about security in the next myth!
Myth 4: ‘I can trust outsourcing companies with my data and ideas’
The future or current users of your software count on you when it comes to the security of the data they share. There are hundreds of laws and rules you have to comply with when handling personal data. Do not overlook those issues when choosing an outsourcing company that will work on your software. Another issue is sharing your ideas that can be just brilliant and turn out really fruitful in the future with companies that might be unfair and try to steal your work. Look for solid partners you will feel safe with! Protect your intellectual property!
Myth 5: ‘I like the person they sent to the meeting, I will choose this software house’
Imagine you run a company and there is a request for your services from a very promising client. How do you prepare for that meeting? Who do you send to present your company to the potential client? The star of the company! The person who has sound knowledge and will be able to answer basically any question! Will that particular person work for the client if they choose your company? Well… When you, as a customer, are in the process of choosing an IT company to work on your software, always look at the bigger picture, meet more people, have your questions answered by multiple employees of that company. This will definitely help you choose the most suitable IT outsourcing supplier.
Myth 6: “The outsourced team will only do the easy tasks’
Many people still believe that only the positions that do not require that much skill should be outsourced; or that the outsourced developers should only deal with the non-core parts of the business. On the one hand, it’s understandable; you don’t want to ‘lose control’ over your product/core business, but on the other hand: wouldn’t it be better to let professionals, who have gained their technical experience in many different IT projects, to look at your product/core business and tell you how to improve it? Letting an outsourced team dive deep into the clients' products has many times enabled Jit Team to boost the clients’ businesses.
Myth 7: ‘This company is cheaper, let’s agree on that one’
Remember that software is not a commodity. You can’t just compare prices and choose the cheapest option. The quality of companies, scope of what the company is capable of, level of knowledge of developers, approaches to work — these all matter more than you can imagine. Anyway, the aforementioned myths we have debunked already painted a nice picture for you. The number of things you have to consider before choosing a partner to work on your software is big, but if you find a good company, they will walk you through the process, at the same time staying totally honest with you about the possible difficulties. Choosing the cheapest option often means paying more to fix the problems that appeared during the process.
We do hope some of the points of this article were eye-opening and thought-provoking. Jit Team has been an outsourcing company for more than a decade now, so we believe our knowledge on that topic is considerable. To finish off with another fact which will make you think: corporate giants such as Google or IBM have been continuously outsourcing parts of their businesses — it’s really common and safe — if you make the right choices on the way. If you’d like to find out more about making the right choices while developing software — visit our website or drop us a line at hello@jit.team!
