The IT Outsourcing services are flourishing year by year. Earlier outsourcing was considered as just a cost-cutting measure but nowadays vendors are determined to provide much more than that. But still, cost cutting is a major factor that encourages businesses to outsource.
To get the best value for your bucks, Here are top best practices of outsourcing you should follow before outsourcing any software project. Take a look below:
1. Determine If your project needs to be outsourced
It’s necessary to determine whether your project fit for outsourcing because not all project can be outsourced. The best time to seek outsourcing services is when the project is unrelated to your core business or when the in-house team is limited and or not available to work on the project.
For example, Not Every company works on all the technologies or not having sufficient resources and budget to start with the particular technology. For them, the software outsourcing is the only way to get their project done faster and within less budget.
2. Make a proper plan
Make a clear project plan with its objectives, functionalities and well-defined timelines. By this way, you can have good control over your project and this also leads your vendor to be well prepared with the realistic objectives in mind and ensures the guarantee of a quality service deliverability.
3. Choose a trusted vendor you can rely upon
Your outsourcing partner is an addition to your company. So, it must be a trusted one. Choose them with proper research and validation. Who understands your industry well and having prior experience of working in the same domain.
If you are unable to decide whom to choose, the best way is to always start with a small test(demo) project with the provider to ensure their productivity and quality of work. This lets you start work together with your provider without risking your original project.
4. Make Sure you get a dedicated team
For a large and long-term project, it is necessary to have a dedicated team to maintain the project smoothly. Constant changes in the resources lead to the project delay and often incurs extra cost. Dedicated teams are with the project from the start to the end, that ensures the project’s faster delivery.
5. Always go for Agile development methodology
Agile is the best method for software development. And according to research, it is the leading software development methodology, 71 % of organizations are using agile approaches sometimes, often or always. And agile projects guaranteed to be more successful than the traditional one.
It is done in the multiple short iterations, these iterations include development, testing, and release of the new version. Each iteration lasts for a few weeks that gives much scope for the new changes with much flexibility and speed.
The cost for an agile development approach can be fixed or on the project basis that depends on the vendors.
6. Documentation
Proper Documentation is necessary to track the progress of your project. It starts from the initial project plan and ends at the project delivery.
With the practice of document everything at each stage of your project development tenure, helps you track your project progress and gives you all the facts and figures needed to maintain the project even after the end of the contract with your outsourcing partner.
It’s not necessary to document everything in the specific form only, you can even store the important email conversations related to project, minutes of the meeting, bug reports and even code comments.
7. Communication
To communicate regularly with your vendor is at utmost important when you collaborate with an outsourcing partner. Without proper communication, the end result can be disastrous. Communication keeps both the parties aware of the project’s updates and enhancements (if needed).
An outsourcing partner can be from any country so, despite of having time differences make sure to be connected whenever required. You can be connected via phone calls, email follow-ups, Chat-rooms, skype or using any web-based tools.
Make sure to have a constant follow-up with your outsourcing team. You can use various project tracking tools like JIRA, Scoro, Trello, Workzone, and Slack.
We at Scideas follow Agile development methodology and focus more on the satisfaction of our every client with the regular follow-ups and demos of the project.
If you have any outsourcing requirements, feel free to Contact Us.