How to Hire and Manage an Outsourcing App Development Team?

Many companies increasingly prefer outsourcing key development processes instead of hiring and establishing an in-house development team. No wonder the latest stats reveal that the IT Outsourcing market volume is expected to reach $396.30bn by the end of this year. Do you want to hire an app development team for your next project? Wait, you still need to prepare and know a few things about managing an outsourcing app development team. 

While outsourcing app development offers you all the opportunities, including cost advantages, freedom from the time-consuming hiring process, and access to a huge talent pool, making outsourcing a success requires good command of the basics. Here we provide a brief guide to hiring and managing an outsourcing app development team.

Step One: Have a Clear Idea and Documentation on the Project 

When looking for app developers and development teams, you already need to understand the app you will develop clearly. Whether you want to start with a basic app and add more features incrementally, what tech stack you use and what platform you choose, all these need to be documented first.

Step Two: Finding the Development Company 

Based upon the chosen platform and corresponding tech stack, look for credible development companies in popular online platforms such as Goodfirms, Manifest, Clutch, etc. Screen the companies as per experience, their client’s experience, portfolio of projects, and the hourly rate they charge. It would help if you also considered linguistic and cultural barriers and the time-zone gaps. 

Step Three: Putting the Project Management Practices in Place 

Now when the onboarding of the new development team is done, you need to set proper communication channels and protocols for smooth collaboration throughout the project. You must ensure that the best collaboration and communication tools are used and adhere to best development practices for successful project execution.

How to Manage the Outsourcing App Development Team? 

Often managing the outsourcing team is more challenging than hiring them. Too many projects go into shambles, and they eventually get stranded in the middle of nowhere because of poor project management. Let’s figure out how to manage an outsourcing app development team efficiently. 

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Let us not doubt that using the right communication and collaboration tools is still the key to keeping things moving more efficiently, often without putting much energy. This is why Jira Slack, Trello, and many other tools are there and prospering across the app development world.

Tooling is Still the Most Important 

A simple chat solution like that Slack allows developers to reply to questions on the go, and this guarantees that everyone in the project is in perfect sync and is busy with the gas they should be. Most importantly, chat tools support remote teams and develop a good rapport with them. 

Catch Them Up Regularly in a Call 

Like the morning sales call that often sales teams in many companies do, the strategy also works well for remote teams. Some people consider chat messages as distractions that interfere with their work attention. For them, a daily catch-up call can be highly effective in putting everything in place, setting expectations, and driving behind them. It should last up to 15-20 minutes but surely will impact streamlining tasks and pushing productivity. 

In this respect, we must remember that the daily scrum that helps the team sync with the sprint goals differs from the daily catch-up. At the same time, the daily scrum is more technically focused on solving issues that the team faces, while daily catch-up meetings are more about organizing things at any given time.

Emphasize Refining Backlogs 

Development teams adhering to the Scrum environment in a remote project need to refine the backlog, adjust requirements, make clear estimates, and do away with potential bottlenecks. Thanks to the participation of the remote team in such a Scrum event will keep everyone on track and offer a clear view of all the aspects that matter the most. 

Here one crucial requirement is to ensure the presence of the Product Owner and key stakeholders along with the outsourced team. The responsibility of communicating project requirements goes to the Product Owner since he knows all the minute details of the final product that will be developed.

Conducting Sprint Reviews is a Must

When an outsourcing development team works on an agile app development project, all the Sprints must be reviewed. A Sprint review should closely follow every Sprint, and during this period, the entire development team will have a closer look at their work and the deliverables. Such reviews generally happen on a weekly or fortnightly basis.

As for managing a remote development team, reviewing Sprints is of great significance as through this, you can give feedback, put everything on track, and give more clarity on the project goals and the gaps to take care of.

Finally, Occasional On-site Meetings are still important 

When the cooperation and collaboration of the project manager with the outsourced app development team get better, you can also look forward to facilitating on-site meetings can be very effective for making the team bonding stronger.

This requires considering several things like the distance and the app development cost impact, but if you can make your outsourced team visit the company’s workplace, you can create a better roadmap for the projects. If you are hiring not just for a single project and if the remote team is likely to work on several app projects following one after the other, facilitating such meetings is crucial.

Summing It Up 

Hiring and managing an outsourcing app development team is not as easy. But you can easily beat the challenges and make remote outsourcing a success if you can strike the right balance and adhere to the best outsourcing practices. Leading companies that have proven successful outsourcing always found the above methods effective.