How to Avoid 5 Major Traps in Outsourcing

Outsourcing expands your possibilities in software development to unseen horizons, but at the same time, it has some traps you’d better avoid. Let’s figure out how to handle them like a pro.

Software outsourcing has been a huge trend during the last decade. For example, in 2016 the market size of the industry exceeded 80 billion U.S. dollars.

• Outsourcing Rates Digest for 2017

Despite endless advantages, outsourcing still has some traps. Luckily, these are not hard to avoid. Here you will find a few tips, which will be useful for both sides of an outsourcing project.

1. Improve communication

The first bottleneck of any project is the lack of communication. Having Product Owner and Team in different companies (and sometimes even different time zones) can be a real challenge. Our recommendation is to start working on communication from Day 1.
Make sure you agreed on communication for at least these 3 types of issues:

1. Instant notice – messengers like Skype or Slack work best here
2. Short-term agreements and clarifications – emails can be part of it
3. Long-term agreements – documents sign off is really helpful for this

Besides, make sure that you equip as many sources of information in your communication as possible. Talking is better than writing, seeing and talking is better than talking and nothing can be better than a person-to-person meeting.

2. Be proactive

This tip is true not only for outsourcing but here it really can save you from tons of troubles. Make sure that behavior from both sides is as proactive as possible. As long as you came up with any concern or issue, make sure it is made visible to the other side.

• Why and How to Be Proactive in Customer Communication

One can’t create something great without facing the challenges, so there’s nothing to be ashamed of. By informing the other side, you provide better control over the situation, which lets your space ship drive safely through all sorts of asteroids and burning planets.

3. Better ask twice

It’s better to over communicate than under communicate. If you are not sure about certain business logic or the way it going to be brought to life, it is better to come back to the discussion and go over some points again than miss something and then spend extra money and efforts trying to fix things you were too shy to ask about.

• 7 Common Myths about Software Development Outsourcing

In an outsourcing project Product Owner and developers works as a Team, so there should be no place for this type of shyness.

4. Go for compromises

Speaking about working as a Team. No matter on what side of outsourcing you are, never forget that you all have the same goal – create a great product that will help to solve a certain problem. So it’s always better to head for compromise and win-win situations than insist on a certain solution. The earlier you will start collaborating as a Team, the better the final result will be.

5. Keep your contracts clean and clear

And finally, while mastering communication and collaboration processes, don’t forget to allocate some time to work on the judicial side of the thing. Keep your contracts clean and clear, which would allow you to set and dispute much quicker and easier and focus on your main goals.

We hope these tips were useful for you. And how do you make your outsourcing processes more efficicent?

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