How Outsource Development can Get your Startup Further Funding or Acquired
Startups are looking to reduce their cost and quadruple their development output with outsourcing. But how can they find the right startup and how can they overcome the main issue of quality, price, and culture?
When we imagine a successful tech startup, we might see a team of in-house engineers and developers being housed in a luxurious location with sleep pods and free snacks available. After all, aren’t the developers and engineers the soul of the product? In actuality, many tech startups in the past years have faced the pressure of the board members to bring down the overhead cost. So their secret strategy has been to selectively outsource their development work to reduce the overall hiring cost for engineers and developers. This strategy has allowed startups such as Airbnb and Pinterest to save millions of dollars in just a few years.
According to an article by Jason Moll, outsourcing development work overseas can help reduce the cost of hiring engineers by 50 percent or more compared with paying an average salary for engineers at Silicon Valley firms. In addition, offshore engineers are also available 24/7 which is not the case with most Silicon Valley firms where employees have limited hours and often take long breaks. Although there are some risks involved with outsourcing development work overseas, such as communication barriers and cultural differences, there are many ways you can mitigate those risks. In this article, we’ll discuss the top 4 things you should do before you outsource your development work overseas.
1. Create a Clear Budget and Timeline for Development Work
Before you begin looking for an offshore development firm, first establish a clear budget and timeline requirements for the project that will be outsourced. This helps ensure that all parties involved are on the same page from the start and prevents any surprises later on down the road.
2. Create a Detailed Requirements Document for Development Work
When creating your requirements document, make sure to be as detailed as possible. This will help identify whether or not your offshore development firm is capable of meeting all your expectations. Moreover, it will also help you determine if the project can be outsourced overseas or not in the first place. For example, some projects may require access to certain resources that are only available in certain geographic locations.
3. Identify the Best Development Methodology for Your Project
Before you begin looking at offshore development firms, it’s important to identify which development methodology will be best for your project. For example, if your project requires strong customer service and support, then a firm that specializes in this area might be more suitable than one that doesn’t have any experience with customer service.
4. Ensure that the firm holds synchronous and asynchronous communication
A good agency will provide means of both synchronous (weekly or Bi-weekly Video conferences or runs) and asynchronous communication (Slack, Jira, or text) to give regular updates on their process. A mark of a good agency can be seen by their willingness to prioritize communication.
Elite agencies will often use the scrum method as their project management method. The scrum method enables a better understanding of the functionalities and greater involvement of the client in the development process. Sprints are held every two to three weeks, and meetings regarding development and functionality demos will be held at the beginning and end of each sprint. The goal of the meetings will be to determine the priority of the requirements, which are to be developed in each sprint.
But Still, There Are Issues:
With this being said, however, the custom software development agency world is now being saturated by a mix-level of off-shore developers. Many consumers have reported subpar and disappointing quality from their offshore developers, leading them to invest more money than before. This is largely due to the fact that there are very minimal quality assurance methods in low-tier offshore software development agencies.
Many agencies also only hire subcontractors who have never worked with or seen each other work on one project. This means that there is zero team dynamics and communication between developers, unlike an actual development firm that has an actual office where developers can strike genuine relationships and have their codes checked in person (like the good old days).
Valere addresses this quality issue while still offering an affordable price to their clients by combing U.S based quality assurance with UX/UI expertise while also employing offshore developers in four additional countries in real offices. This means that consumers can get an affordable team of developers while maintaining the highest level of product management and quality assurance.
Additionally, Valere has a unique development-as-a-service model where they were able to integrate their engineering team into the startup’s current workflow. They have worked with other companies by providing a team of dedicated developer that works full-time exclusively on their project during regular working hours. This model has been extremely successful, making the companies feel as though they are part of their team and culture (even helping them achieve further funding or get acquired).
You can now experience what global startups like Pinterest and Airbnb have done and hire your own team of dedicated developers to outsource your development work. If you want to learn how you can reduce your current development cost and quadruple your output, speak with Valere today and see how quality and affordability do not need to be at separate ends of the spectrum.
Valere is an award-winning software development agency that has built over 300 top-rated applications for startups and Fortune 500 companies in all verticals like healthcare, finance, sports, fitness, education, and more. Their apps have been featured by the New York Times, and have been consistently recognized as Apple App Store’s top featured apps, TechRadar, and Google Play Store’s top featured apps! Schedule a call with us today to learn how we can help your team create the perfect software or application that can Accelerate Your Business Goals!
