Sure-Fire Approach to Hiring & Managing Dedicated Web Development Teams

Software Experts & Dedicated Web Development Teams—High Profile Players Exposed

When it comes to hiring dedicated web development teams or custom software specialists remotely, nearly all of us speaking about “offshore employment” or “IT outstaffing” are falling into two opposing parties. And their commonest arguments are quite clear and straightforward, indeed. On the one hand, there are lots of business owners who are still skeptical about hiring IT specialists remotely. On the other hand, however, too many people are literally swearing by remote teams, particularly Ukraine-based ones. Of course, from the viewpoint of exclusive-level technology officers, that would be completely out of the question.

But for seemingly unbreakable skeptics, this post can finally make things clear — as below I’m about sharing arguably the most preferable list of top featured practical tips on reaching out “the ideal” software development team, identifying the strongest candidacies for hire, and making the best of this partnership to enjoy the maximum benefit with your project. That being said, now let’s check yourself and see whether your company or startup business is really prepared to get IT outstaffing involved reasonably right from your day one at it. In the next article, we’re going to delve into attainable way of structuring your own remote “dream team” of developers & software experts as it’s meant to. After all, in the third round of the story, we’ll quickly run through some opportune suggestions and practical insights to the right management mode that your newly obtained offshore IT talent really deserves. 

First Stage (Preparatory): Onboarding Checklist To Seamless Offshore Recruitment

So, the first thing to be done before engaging your first offshore team of web developers and software experts is to evaluate your current in-house performance. And handling independent survey is a good option to start moving on. But, of course, even basic research taken from an outsider’s perspective with your own hands — can still provide a fairly valuable contribution. So, in case you’re ready to invest some time and effort into self-evaluation, here are the very basics to help you with the primary guidance.

Tier One: Trying Remote Employment Yourself

Try remote employment yourself — simply begin handling your daily duties out of office. And you’re recommended to spend at least a week or two operating as an offshore staff member on your own. Yes, it may sound like a no-brainer, but this experience is intended to give you some crucial communication and coworking insight. That way, pay particular attention even to your company’s corporate language. Or you might as well realize that a certain part of your current office space needs optimization or even full-scale relocation.

Tier Two: Expressing Expectations/Requirements Explicitly

Express your initial expectations and requirements explicitly — creating clean & clear monthly tasklist is also among the surest things to be done proactively. Remember, a new way of internal communication is always delivering masses of stress and almost inevitable disorder, both for your hosting company itself, and for the offshore team as well. That’s why I strongly recommend that you thoroughly outline a proximate working plan in a definite and concise manner — starting from the role, agreed working hours, and daily schedule to common requirements and further expectations/best wishing to be outlined far ahead of any actual recruitment considerations.

Tier Three: Getting Onboarding Toolkit

Make sure you’ve got the right onboarding toolkit available at hand — of course, you may possess a tentative work plan of technical collaboration based on the use-proven frameworks your in-house crew can swear by. Note, however, that to instantly eliminate most of potential obstacles to readily seamless interaction between your in-house workers and offshore team, make sure to have everything in place with the following indispensable collaboration tools:

• Repository for source code (as for me, I personally prefer Bitbucket, GitLab or Github tools);
• Tool for continuous integration (note, that in case your team is small, these solutions will be just optional — TravisCI, TeamCity, Jenkins, etc.);
• Solid messenger app (like good old Skype, or something a bit more advanced, such as Slack, HipChat, or Telegram);
• Tool for video conferencing (try Zoom, Hangouts, appear.in, GoToMeeting — and you’ll instantly make things easier for your corporate communication);
• Task management framework (such as Jira, Redmine, Trello, Asana, and similar online platforms/software tools).

Tier Four: Miscellaneous Stuff

• Updating Documentation — of course, given that you have been taken a fairly good care of your product/service documentation, you can obviously get by without this step. Note, however, that should your documentation haven’t been all right (at least through the recent time), probably it’s a good opportunity to finally get everything in place to that point. Remember, your remote team of dedicated employees will master their new roles much faster — just make sure they’ve got valid and up-to-date documentation available at any time.
• Assigning In-House Mentor — it can be very beneficial for your company to instantly assign an in-house mentor or team lead to take all necessary care and guidance of your offshore employees. All you need it to get the right person responsible for setting tasks, giving priorities, controlling daily communication, as well as solving all the questions inevitably arising during the earliest stages of your new cooperation. Pending on your company’s structure, it could be a team lead, senior developer, project manager, or even you in the capacity of the company’s owner.
• Developing Communication Strategy — when it comes to successful remote cooperation, having a well-planned communication strategy may often draw the line between a fruitful collaboration and completely failing one. That’s why I personally recommend that you prioritize at least the following actions: daily sync & workflow planning, frequent case reviewing, sprint checkups, backlog refinement, and core team integration works.
  

Second Stage about Attainable Way Of Structuring Your Dedicated “Dream Team” Of Custom Software & Web Developers (part 2 of this article) can be found here.