6 Mistakes To Avoid When Searching an IT Outsourcing Partner

Software development outsourcing is a great deal and can benefit you a lot. But only if you find a reliable partner who is not an amateur but highly proficient and really shows strong commitments to your goals and values. Make a mistake when selecting a vendor for your software development project, and you may have tons of problems and waste tons of your time to solve them. So, be aware of the common mistakes and avoid them at your best.

1st mistake. Not carrying out your in-house expertise

You know, one of the biggest mistakes to make in your casual life is to go shopping without a clear idea of what is on your wish list. To clarify, tons of stuff you may buy and the money you may overpay during your random shopping make you regret as soon as you return home. The same way, searching a company to outsource your software development project without preliminary deep in-house expertise, no doubt, lead you to one of (in not all of) these consequences:

• Too long search time
• Too high project costs
• Too long development time (read as loss of money because of the longer time to market)
• Low-value solution
• Project failure

So, before starting your vendor search, do your due diligence to get a full understanding of project requirements, goals, and costs:

• Challenges to solve
• Features to have
• Technology to use (front end, back end, and database)
• Quality requirements (both functional and non-functional) to comply with
• Deadlines to hit
• Budget to spend

2nd mistake. Set too tight frames

Software development is not pharmaceutics. So, it doesn’t have strict recipes to follow. In other words, always leave room for alterations, extensions, and even reduction. Both in terms of the project scope and budget.

First, your outsourcing experts may suggest using another technology that will benefit the solution with higher performance, security, or scalability. Second, during the project implementation, a need for new features may arise as well as you may omit some of them when shaping your requirements. At last, but still especially important, custom software development has no guarantees for staying on budget you specify initially (turn to the previous two points discussed here). So, you need to leave a certain margin within your initial budget.

That is to say, be flexible and open to discussion whilst still staying alert and doing your numbers.

3rd mistake. Pick up the first offer

We say the first is not always the best. (Though, this is not an absolute truth and you may be lucky enough to find the right vendor in the first software development company you come across.) After all, cognition comes through comparison. And who can guarantee the first bidder is the greatest option you can acquire for the same money?

So, try to shortlist a few IT companies for your outsourced software project and then verify and compare them. The following points are essential to have an appropriate comparison base:

• Proficiency in required technology
• Expertise in your targeted domain (here you can take such metrics as the number of completed projects in your targeted domain as well as thoughts and ideas they express regarding your exact software development during their interview)
• projects duration (to understand how much you can count on them in long-term projects)
• Software development approach
• Project management, collaboration, and communication approach

Also, it is very important to check their customers’ reviews and references. This way you get some insights into who they really are and how reliable they are.

4th mistake. Choosing the lowest bid to save money

Buy nice or buy twice. This is an absolute truth in any sphere of our life. There is only one alternative way –to buy nice or compromise. But are you really ready to accept standards that are lower than desirable ones? Do you think a low-quality solution can bring your tons of benefits in the long-run? We pretty doubt you are and you do.

Let’s think about how do these low-cost bids appear. Just off the top of our heads, here are some of the reasons to take into consideration:

• A company is a market newbie
• Their developers are last year students or recent graduates who are still inexperienced and ready to work for a penny to gain the experience
• This bid is a bait to catch you in the contract and then try to shake you down with endless “tasks not included in the initial scope of work”

Well, what reason do you prefer? In other words, do you want to get the result of low quality, delivered too long, or overpay until you get exhausted? If no one of these outcomes makes you happy, do not rush into the lowest bid just because it has the lowest price.

In fact, the bid proposal, its speed and accuracy, can tell you many interesting things about the software outsourcing company:

• Their experience and expertise (for example, regarding what their suggested scope of work is)
• Their honesty and trustworthiness (now and again, look at their project assessment and compare it with your numbers)
• Their reliability, at last (for example, if they procrastinate when answering your RFQ, would they be more eager and proactive when working on your solution?)

5th mistake. Not testing the vendor

Will you purchase a car just taking the seller’s word it is a perfect choice for you? Not, of course! That is why test drives exist. At least, you simply need to assess the vehicle’s drivability and comfort right in your case. So, why should you enter an IT outsourcing contract without testing your potential vendor? After all, words are just words. They may convince you in their deep expertise and great knowledge but appear to be difficult to communicate and work with. Or they may turn out to be too lazy to run real-life tests or deliver an unoptimized code. And so on and so forth.

So, we recommend you not to risk but test your potential vendor before entering the long-term contract. Your options here are as follows:

• Pilot projects
• Your real-life digital challenges
• GitHub challenges, at worst

6th mistake. Not specifying crucial contract details

A contract is more than just words. This is a responsibility, both of yours and your vendor. Poorly drawn up contract can’t protect your interests and provide large room for your vendor’s opportunism and evasion.

Thus, make sure you have specified and documented such crucial aspects as:

• Protection to your intellectual property (if any)
• 24/7 vendor’s technical support and availability in case of an emergency
• Knowledge transfer and communication plan

This way you will secure your positions and, simultaneously, make a big step toward establishing efficient collaboration and a long-term partnership. That is exactly what you need, don’t you?