Pitfalls To Avoid When Outsourcing Software Development
In the previous post, we have discussed the potential benefits of outsourcing that your companies should be utilizing. Yet, you also have to acknowledge that benefits come along with risks. Outsourcing can improve your business’ efficiency, reduce the time to market your application and result in significant cost-savings, but only if it is done correctly. Otherwise, these can negatively affect your business and crash down your projects before you get a chance to launch them.
To avoid the detrimental effect of outsourcing, the process should be set up and managed in an organized manner. These are pitfalls that you need to avoid when outsourcing your projects:
1. Lack of comprehensive research
Most startups nowadays base their outsourcing decision solely on the basis of cost-efficiency. Although the cost factor plays an important role in the decision-making process, it is not the only one. Other things that must be taken into consideration include the company’s portfolio, expertise, feedback and reviews, and the way your outsourcing partner functions on the market in order to find the best supplier that best suited the key features of your projects.
2. Barriers
Given we are living in such a globalized world more than ever, you’ll need to overcome different time zones, languages, and cultural conventions to reach out to the best team that’s well-suited your company’s projects.
3. Lack of clear scope, requirements, and miscommunication
Clarity on the requirements and deliverables that you expect, the expected timeline to deliver, and the overall scope of the project is what you need to prepare beforehand to make a successful outsourcing decision.
Miscommunication upon these subjects may result in scope creep and misalignment on the product vision. Without resolving these issues, the software engineers will continue working in silos and there will be a widening gap between your expectations and the actual deliverables.
4. Poor Knowledge of Contracts, Privacy Law, and Legal Implications
Ensure that you sign a nondisclosure agreement to protect your idea before you reveal the details of the project and do this even if your goal is just to get a price quote. You should protect your intellectual property mindfully.
Privacy is the next. At this point, consider the IT laws governing the legal systems of your country and that of your vendor so that your projects won’t be shut down halfway or never get completed due to government regulation. It is always good to know what is attainable and what is not.
As a project owner, you must try to avoid being a victim of software piracy. Hence, make good efforts to ensure that your vendor does not use any proprietary in-house tools belonging to other clients’ projects without authorization.
The reason is that it may become an issue when it comes to owning full intellectual property rights. In alike manner, make sure your contract has a special clause that states that you own the copyright of the software project after completion.
5. Short-term Partnership
Usually, short-time software development projects lack enough time for execution and sometimes budget. In the end, it is a recipe for disaster. Signing a short-term contract makes your software project liable to be done hastily, with the aim of delivering it fast, which poses threats such as the omission of important development details or improper view of your business goals. As a result, you might risk having software of poor quality. Besides that, such projects end as a one-off rather than a lasting business relationship.
It is advisable to look for a long-term partnership for outsourcing any type of software development project that might arise as a warm relationship is good for business and partnership. It strengthens commitments and agreements.
6. Lack of basic tech expertise at your end
Lack of technical knowledge at your end may impose some major risks on the project. Although outsourcing companies have technical expertise, it doesn’t mean that everything is well aligned at the end of your project. Thus, regular monitoring is important to ensure there’s no occasion in which your supplier utilizes these loopholes to manipulate and overtake your disadvantages.
So, if you are not in a position to manage the technical aspects of your projects, then you need to have an internal person or a project manager who can manage and take a consultative approach to monitor the project better, seeing through those technical details that seem foggy to you. Majorly, he will scrutinize the quality of service and product when you are not able to do that. On the other hand, there will be no need for such a person if you are working with a trusted partner.
ABOUT NEXTFUNC:
Nextfunc is a software development outsourcing company specialized in delivering services and solutions for web, mobile apps using native SDK and cross-platform frameworks. As we are living in such an ever-evolving world, our team truly understand the frequent changes in the needs and demands of our customers. With a team full of young yet talented specialists, we are here to provide customers across the globe with the best cutting-edge technologies.
