To compete with the large companies, small businesses need to ensure the appropriate allocation of resources, and big companies, in turn, won’t mind saving costs. Whatever the case is, software development outsourcing is a one-stop solution for both of them. Besides, when transferring some non-core tasks to the remote developers, the business becomes more tech-savvy, leverages innovations, and is able to attract more customers.

However, even if you have a skilled outsourced team, it won’t be able to prove itself fully if there’s a lack of proper management. Once there is the right approach to the remote team members, all the critical business benefits from outsourcing, like quick development time, improved scalability, and reduced costs can be achieved.

If you aren’t sure where to look for a vendor, check out the article about outsourcing rates by country by Qubit Labs. The company specializes in IT outsourcing and is among the sought-after players on the Ukrainian outsourcing market. Besides, if you need help in establishing remote teams or finding developers, you can reach out to Qubit Labs and schedule a consultation with the company’s specialists.

Now returning to the issue of managing outsourced teams, here are the top 10 practical tips to boost your company’s performance.

Choose an experienced project manager

An effective leader is a prerequisite for the team’s success. If you want your project to be completed on time, stay within the budget, and implement the right solutions for certain cases, it’s critical to appoint a project manager. This has to be a person who can easily find a common language with any person and help the team move in the right direction.

Also, it’s crucial to treat your remote team as your in-house one and establish a true partnership. Show your outsourced team members that you care about their impact and growth by engaging them in discussions, asking for their advice, and sharing your vision on the future product. 

Provide clear guidelines and well-thought plans

The more detail you provide to the team, the more likely they are to deliver outstanding results from the first try.

It’s better to create a roadmap to guide the processes and prevent a bunch of issues from happening. Make sure to reach realistic agreements on the project’s status and establish strict deadlines, so the team understands how to distribute the load. If the team understands the expectations you put on it, it’ll be easier to monitor the progress of each member and help with the issues as soon as they arise.

Ensure regular communication

Daily catch-ups help to make sure that all the employees are on the same page and get updates on progress. They don’t have to be too long; usually, 15 minutes is enough. Also, you can discuss which communication channel is the best for you and the team, choosing from instant messengers, phone/video calls, and other tools that enable more effective communication and convenience.

Additionally, remember the importance of being transparent about your goals and share your expectations and ideas with the outsourced team. In this way, the communication strategy will bring the desired results and help the project skyrocket.

Opt for understandable performance metrics

If you need to understand how this or that person impacts the progress of your software development, it’s critical to use several different metrics. For example, lead time is a period between the project’s beginning and its delivery to the customer. This parameter helps to predict when a specific process will be ready.

Code churn is another metric that explains the number of times an engineer rewrites one’s own code within a short period. It helps to control the quality of the development process, and once the churn starts to spike, it might be an indicator that the development process has gone wrong.

Also, you can measure the impact, which means the effect the code changes have on the project. The more complex the change sets, the higher the developer’s impact score is.

Another measure is the number of active days since they show when a developer contributed code to the project and include other activities, like writing and reviewing code. 

Last but not least is efficiency. This is the percentage of a programmer’s contributed code that’s productive. Usually, it involves balancing coding output against the code’s activity. The code’s business value depends on its efficiency rate, and a high percentage of churn reduces it.

Prevent micromanagement

Careful planning, accountability, and predictability are the essential elements of efficient software outsourcing development. To avoid micromanagement, make sure to set the interim goals, select the right time to hold team meetings, and regularly address issues and questions.

The negative impact of micromanagement is that it can impede the capacity of experienced software engineers to apply their unique approaches and creativity to achieve product goals.

Keep the team motivated

Feedback is essential. If you let the team know that you’re satisfied with the results—you need to tell them about it, and if there’s something wrong, you should also point this out.

Don’t forget about giving your team enough room for advancing their skills and being flexible. Days-off, vacations, and bonuses for the excellent work will help you make the outsourced team members more loyal and productive.

Leverage project management technologies

Keeping in mind all the tasks, meetings, deadlines, and other specificities is challenging and requires additional time and resources. That’s when project management tools come into play.

With ConvertCalculator’s time card calculator you can log your time as well as calculate the week’s wages with your remote employees and even embed it somewhere on your website with fully customizable features. 

 

Trello is one of the most popular ones and relies on Kanban boards. With it, you can create thematic boards and tasks and monitor the processes. It allows adding comments, attaching files, and inviting other members to join the boards.

Jira is an advanced project management tool with several capabilities and features. It is designed for software development teams and allows teams to create plan sprints and user stories and issues, centralize the communication, and prioritize tasks.

Notion helps to plan and discuss projects while tracking the ideas and sharing everything with the team. With it, you can keep a personal weekly checklist, take notes, build a task board with a flexible drag-and-drop editor, and add necessary pages. 

Conclusion

With clear directions, enough attention to the team members, and understandable goals, your project has all the chances to skyrocket. Your outsourced software development team is an equally important part of the company as the in-house employees, so they both have to be treated fairly.

Don’t forget about outlining the tasks, setting priorities, and mentioning the deadlines. Also, discuss the project expectations with the remote employees and make sure you’re on the same page. In this way, your outsourced team will be the most productive and achieve their objectives.