Guide to Build Offshore Development Teams 

Across industries, outsourcing has now become the new normal for software development. Businesses and startups have realized the numerous benefits that outsourcing and building offshore development teams bring to the table.

Deloitte’s global outsourcing survey shows that 70% of organizations outsource to reduce costs. Besides acting as an effective cost-cutting strategy, offshore outsourcing is proven to ensure scalability in development, faster time to market and provide access to the best tech talent worldwide.

If you are thinking of setting up an offshore development team but have no idea where to begin, this post has got you covered with some handy tips to hire offshore developers.

But have you ever pondered when do you really need to invest in offshore development? So, let’s find out when offshore outsourcing makes sense.

When Do You Need to Hire an Offshore Development Team?

Offshore development means delegating software development tasks, which include product design, coding, product testing, management, maintenance and support to a specialized IT service provider based in another country.

There are many situations where hiring and building an offshore development team is an ideal solution; which include:

• Shortage of local tech talent
• Involvement of complex projects
• Tight deadlines
• Project demands specialized skills
• Tight budget and can’t handle expenses associated with building an in-house team
• No more room to handle development tasks in-house
• Want to hit targeted time-to-market for your project
• You need expert-level consulting and support for your existing/ongoing projects
• You’re not able to scale fast

Benefits of Hiring a Dedicated Offshore Development Team

Companies prefer hiring and building an offshore development team over an in-house team for different reasons. Some do so for cost reduction and flexibility, while some for global talent access and faster time to market.

Let’s now dig deeper into the most admired benefits of hiring offshore developers:

Cost Reduction

CBInsights reveals that 29% of small businesses fail due to a lack of capital. With hiring offshore developers, business failure as a result of running out of cash is unlikely to happen.

After all, the offshore development approach eradicates the need to bear the overhead expenses such as recruitment, infrastructure, employee benefits, payroll and others.

Moreover, you save more by hiring a development team from the Asia Pacific region where the rates of developers are much more economical than in the US due to the lower cost of living.

Before moving forward, have a look at below table to know an estimate of offshore software development rates by region:

Note*: These offshore software development rates are just rough estimates as they overlook other factors such as engagement models. It’s recommended to get in touch with offshore IT service providers to know about accurate offshore outsourcing rates.

Global Talent Access

With offshore development, you’re no longer limited to your local area. Instead, you can go beyond geographical boundaries to find the best tech talent for your project.

“69% of US employers are struggling to find and hire skilled workers” – as per the US talent shortage statistics by ManpowerGroup. Tech positions are among the top three hardest roles to fill.

For example, most of the talented developers are already employed by leading tech companies in the USA with luring packages and benefits. On the other hand, startups come with risks; thus it is quite challenging for them to attract developers.

However, offshore countries in Eastern Europe and Asia are home to skilled developers with eager to take risks. For example, the Asia Pacific region dominates the tech talent landscape with 5.8M developers in India alone according to Github findings.

Scaling at Ease

To keep pace with ever-changing customer demands, fast-growing startups and companies need to continuously come up with new offerings, upgrade their existing services, business model and more. What it means is being able to ramp up or down resources from the development team, change the technology stack as the project demands.

Such changes are challenging to handle for companies especially startups with a tight budget.

But when you decide to collaborate with a reliable offshore IT vendor to build your development team, you can have the assurance of on-demand scalability at any stage of your product development cycle.

Faster Time to Market

Outsourcing empowers you to kick-start the development process rather than investing valuable time in recruitment, employee training and team building activities. You’ll get to work with already pre-vetted and trained subject matter experts.

Offshore developers are ready to give their valuable contributions from the beginning. Thus, they are likely to deliver projects much quicker than the in-house development team, reducing your product’s time-to-market significantly.

Also Read: Should You Hire an In-House Developer or Outsource Overseas?

Tips to Hire an Offshore Development Team

So, where to begin? Here are some handy tips that will help you build an offshore software development team.

Create a job description

The first and foremost step is to be ready with an attractive job description that entails the skillset a potential developer must have, job responsibilities, details of your project, timeline and budget.

Before creating a job description, it’s recommended to pour considerable time into understanding your business objectives and identifying the pain points you want to address with MVP. This will help you determine the tech stack, skills and expertise you need for your project. Also, you’ll be able to come up with a budget and set deadlines.

Pick your offshore development destination 

The good news is that there are many remote destinations to choose from. Some regions of the world are known as the preferred destinations to hire dedicated remote development teams. It includes Asia and Eastern Europe.

To choose the ideal destination, you should consider factors such as time zone differences, culture differences, tech talent requirement and software development rates.

Hire the right offshore developers 

There are many ways to find an offshore development team; recommendations, searching for talent at freelance or tech talent marketplaces, searching for offshore developers or teams via LinkedIn or other social media platforms and partnering with an offshore software development agency.

Once you find some suitable candidates, it’s a must to evaluate them so as not to regret them later after hiring. Below are some tips you can follow:

• Conduct several interviews
• Make use of the right tools and technologies to carry out the whole remote candidate evaluation process
• Pay attention to both technical and soft skills
• Carefully assess their past work portfolio to check whether they have experience in your specific industry
• Choose developers with expertise in the latest software development methodologies such as Agile or workflows you follow

Also Read: How to Recruit and Hire Remote Employees – Then Retain Them? 

Don’t fall for the cheapest quotes

If the offshore developer or software development company is able to provide the cheapest rates all while fulfilling all of your requirements, it’s a red sign. Reliable IT vendors typically offer competitive quotes after carefully analyzing your needs and expertise required for your project.

Pick the right project management tool

Remote collaboration tools play a significant role in getting success with offshore development teams. Leverage modern project management and collaboration tools such as Jira and Slack to keep every member of the team on the same page.

Why Build an Offshore Development Team with InfoStride?

InfoStride is a leading IT services and solutions provider with a global footprint across USA, Singapore and a dedicated offshore development center in India. Our forte lies in helping companies ranging from startups to enterprises worldwide build remote teams with no hassle.

Below are some of the reasons to hire offshore developers with InfoStride:

• Pre-vetted and trained developers: Our developers are hand-picked and trained further by subject matter experts to deliver bespoke IT services.
• No hidden costs: We bear recruitment costs and you pay only after developers start working on your projects.
• On-demand scalability: We ensure greater flexibility in adding or dissolving developers as your project requirements change.
• Access to emerging technologies: We have developed dedicated teams with expertise in next-gen technologies such as AI, Blockchain, Big Data, Cloud Computing, RPA and more.
• Varied engagement models: We have numerous cooperation models to choose from; fixed price, time & material, dedicated teams, BOT.
• Full support: We provide infrastructure, onboarding, payroll and legal support to ensure no overhead for you and empower you to fully focus on core activities.

Interested or want to learn more InfoStride’s approach to building offshore development teams?

Feel free to get in touch with us and one of our experts will get back to you shortly.