What is an Offshore Technical Team?
Offshore development team or Outsourced partners are a group of talented professionals of a country hired to provide services to another company. Through offshore partners, companies can tap into the global pool of talent and acquire the best resources for the job.
In other words, collaborating with an offshore technical team is a strategic way of leveraging global talent and innovative development. Companies can make significant benefits by integrating offshore technical teams with the right management practices.
5 Best Practices to Manage Your Offshore Technical Team Effectively
Hiring the best remote team, though beneficial, is not always smooth sailing. It takes a lot of effort and strategy to collaborate with an offshore team and derive the best results. Here are a few practices that can help you manage an offshore software development team like a pro:
1. Keep a Strategic Vision
One of the keys to perfectly managing an offshore partner is to develop a strategic vision and share this vision with your remote software development team. Having a goal in mind encourages the team to perform better and deliver results.
2. Develop a Proper Communication Strategy
Next on the list is to develop proper communication with the team. It is very possible that an offshore team may be left in the dark regarding new developments. Therefore, it is vital to strategize and develop effective communication techniques to keep both the onshore and offshore teams in complete synch with each other.
3. Follow an Agile Framework
While working with an offshore team, following an agile framework can help manage the team more effectively. An Agile framework enhances transparency and predictability in the project and at the same time protects the employees from facing burnout.
The agile framework also allows proper delegation of tasks to both offshore and onshore software development teams and strengthens communication between them. All of this collaborative effect makes the project move on more efficiently and smoothly.
4. Monitor and Evaluate Performance
Along with strategy, framework, and communication, the next most important thing for successful project management is monitoring and evaluating the progress of the team. Taking regular follow-ups, and evaluating the progress at every milestone, helps in managing the offshore team effectively and maintaining a transparent and balanced work environment.
The best way to monitor and evaluate the performance is to determine metrics. It will help recognize the slacks, resolve bottlenecks, and attain successful results.
5. Say No to Micromanaging
Micromanaging affects the credibility of the team and lowers the overall morale. Managers should instead empower the team with crisp and clear guidelines, expectations, and end dates. Regular checks to ensure updates and address the issues are fine, but entering into every minute detail is not a requirement but a hindrance.
Managing a team is not so easy. It comes with a fair share of challenges. Here are some of the most common challenges of managing an offshore software development team:
Common Challenges of Managing Offshore Technical Team
Understanding the challenges of offshore team management is equally important to carry out offshore projects effectively. The few most common challenges in tackling an outsourced team include:
1. Lack Of Communication
One of the biggest challenges in managing an outsourced team is developing a clear, regular, and effective communication channel. Lack of communication or delayed communication affects both the productivity of the team and the performance of the project.
Apart from communication channels, language too can act as a barrier to communication with an offshore team. Always ensure that you maintain an official language for communication that is understood by members on both ends of the table for effective communication.
2. Trust and Security
Another big challenge is to find a reliable team and ensure the security of confidential data. While the former can be solved by choosing trustable partners like The Best Remote Teams to reach out to reliable partners, some steps need to be taken for the latter.
Companies should always maintain transparency in demands and expectations and sign an NDA before progressing with the project. This provides security for the parent company and ensures that the confidential data is well protected.
3. Inappropriate Resource Management
Proper utilization of resources is another challenge that arises when collaborating with offshore teams. Improper utilization of resources is a waste of resources, effort, time, and money of the company. Hiring remote workers and not utilizing their potential is an added cost to the company that can lower the performance.
So, how do you overcome these challenges and implement effective team management? There are many software tools available that can help in managing the offshore team effectively. Here is a look at the tools that might help:
Tools for Managing an Offshore Technical Team
Utilizing the correct tools can make managing the best remote team seem like a walk-on cake. Here is a list of some tools that can help in effective management:
1. Communication Tools
Communication is one of the keys to successful management. To ensure effective communication, the company can use many tools like Zoom, Slack, Skype, Gchats, etc. to keep all the teams of a project in the loop.
- Slack: Slack is a popular messaging app that helps teams stay connected through real-time communication and file sharing. You can use Slack to handle offshore teams conveniently as it can also be integrated with Trello and GitHub hence no more email clutters.
- Skype: Skype is the best platform for one-on-one or group meetings with offshore teams. It supports voice calls, video calls, real-time chat, screen sharing, and much more. Moreover, it also includes conference calls, and call recordings to keep the record for future projects.
- Google Hangouts: Google Hangouts is one of the useful communication tools by Google Workspace that supports Google Calendar, integration with Drive, video conferencing, real-time chat, screen sharing, and many amazing features to facilitate teamwork and productivity with offshore teams.
- Microsoft Teams: If your offshore team relies on the Microsoft ecosystem. Apart from video conferencing, and file sharing, Microsoft Teams supports Microsoft 365 and offers tools like Word, Excel, SharePoint, and other app integrations.
2. Project Management Software
Next comes the project management software that makes tracking progress easy. This software enables central monitoring of the process, making the distribution of roles and responsibilities clear and hassle-free.
- JIRA: Jira makes project management easier due to its useful features for customized workflow, agile development, and real-time collaboration across different time zones. It helps to manage an offshore team by task tracking, sprint planning, and bug tracking.
- Trello: Trello is a simple-to-use project management tool that can be used by anyone due to its drag-and-drop interface. It uses boards, lists, and cards to organize tasks and projects. This makes task assigning, tracking, and setting deadlines easier among the team.
- Asana: Asana is a suitable project management tool for small as well as large teams. It makes project tracking and team collaboration easier with its task dependency, timeline, project integrations, and other advanced features.
3. Time Management Software
Thirdly and lastly comes the time tracking software. This software makes tracking attendance and logging hours feel like a breeze. Many software are available in the market, along with customizable options that you can integrate into your systems for effecting time management and monitoring of the team.
- Hubstaff: Hubstaff is a popular tool that is mostly used by remote teams for activity monitoring, screenshot capture, and productivity reporting. It is useful in tracking team habits and analyzing how much time they are investing in specific tasks. Moreover, you can also integrate it with Trello, and Asana.
- Time Doctor: The time doctor tool focuses on productivity, it tracks working hours and real-time activity and gives detailed reports to understand the area of improvement and handle offshore teams more efficiently.
- WebWork: Webwork helps to track everything about offshore teams by capturing screenshots and monitoring mouse and keyboard activity to get detailed insights about their performance and progress. This tool is mainly used by higher authorities, like managers, to analyze productivity and employee performance and manage workloads.
You may seem to wonder whether there is any future for such offshore team collaborations or not. Well, it is a valid question! Let us see.
What Makes Offshore Development Teams a Game-Changer for Your Business?
Offshore teams are a reliable solution that helps companies meet the deadline with premium quality results. They help the company slay the market and stay competitive. However, as they say, nothing in this world is free. Getting the benefits of an offshore team requires proper business management techniques and skills.
Here are some benefits of hiring an outsourced development team:
1. Easy talent search
Outsourcing allows you to expand your horizons and find the finest talent in the pool for the team. The Best Remote Team can help you identify and recruit the most suitable prospect for your team and enhance your performance.
2. Flexibility
Hiring an outsourced asset provides you the flexibility of work hours without burning out your resources. It gives you the freedom to utilize the maximum hours of the day and deliver results on time with the finest quality.
3. Reduces Operational Costs
Hiring an offshore team is more cost-effective than hiring onshore employees. The cost of interviews, hiring, and managing falls under one belt and you get to access and negotiate the salary on a larger scale.
Companies also get the freedom to increase or reduce the workforce as per the project requirements, further helping them manage the company resources effectively.
4. Seamless Expansion of Workforce
Having a remote team reduces the infrastructure cost and makes operations more manageable in different regions. This promotes a healthy expansion of the team without unwanted hassles and cost-cutting.
Strategic outsourcing empowers companies to drive growth, enhance service quality, and give a competitive edge in the dynamic business landscape. Best Remote Team can also help you acquire the best talents and resources for quality performance.
How Best Remote Team Can Help You With Hiring the Dedicated Offshore Technical Team?
If you too are on the lookout for high-quality talent or an outsource support team, Best Remote Team is here to meet all your needs. We are a team excelling in recruiting top-tier offshore technical teams that meet your project requirements.
Our skilled and professional team utilizes advanced project management tools to ensure seamless collaboration and high productivity. At Best Remote Team, we foster a strong team culture and continuous skill enhancement to harness global talent efficiently. We can help you recognize the right team and the right models to upgrade your tech needs. So, connect with us now, for your outsourcing requirements before your next project.
Conclusion
The future of dedicated software development lies in offshore technical teams! Whether you are looking for innovative ideas, different technologies, better quality, or cost-effective projects, an offshore team is the answer for it all. Consider the above factors and implement the best practices to get the most out of your offshore development.
If you are looking for reliable and top-notch software development solutions, Best Remote Team can help you identify the right team, and hire dedicated remote developers. We engage with the right models and take your tech needs to the next best level.
Connect with us today for the best offshore technical team to partner with for your upcoming project.
