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Outsourcing software development can be a great way to save time and money, but it's important to do it right. According to Dun & Bradstreet’s Barometer of Global Outsourcing, “20 to 25% of all outsourcing relationships fail within two years, and 50% fail within five”.
Many establishments experience delays, budget overruns, low-quality services, and even contract termination.
In this blogpost we will try to list down the steps that you need to take to make sure that your outsourced software development project is executed successfully.
Not always the company which is outsourcing or the company to which the software development is being outsourced is at fault, it is usually the processes and the expectation vs delivery that leads to failure.
Before you start, you need to bear in mind that no matter how big or small your software requirement is, it will be an iterative method rather than building all at once. You could be building a simple website or an enterprise application, development will always be an iterative process. You always need to start with an MVP, launch your MVP and get the user feedback and then redefine the feature enhancement. Since you are running on limited time and budget you always need to make sure that your budget is divided in 2 parts where development should take 30% of the budget and enhancements and maintenance should be done within the remaining 70%. Therefore it is always advisable to start small, use no-code solutions as much as possible to save time and cost.
Now that you know how to split your budget, follow these steps to make sure that your project is successfully executed.
Defining Your Problem Statement - Your First Step to Successfully Outsource Software Development
Whether you are building in-house or looking to outsource the software development of your product, the first step is to define the problem that you want to solve and for whom you need to solve this problem. This will help you to determine the objective of your software.
It can be just one or two lines, but something that clearly tells the reader what problem your software intends to solve. You may have a story supporting your problem statement.
Once you have a clear understanding of the problem that you are trying to solve, you can start to work on your business requirement document.
Defining Your Business Requirements - Your Second Step to Successfully Outsource Software Development
Once you have defined the problem statement to outsource the software development of your product, you need to define the business requirements. This will help you to communicate your needs to the software development team and ensure that the software meets your expectations.
Your business requirements should include the following information:
The purpose of the software
The users of the software
The features of the software
The constraints on the project
To make things easy, think of yourself as the user of the software and try to identify how the user will interact with your software.
Let us take an example of Uber. It has three types of users, i.e.
Driver
Customer
Administrator
Now start with what each user can do, example, in case of Driver
Drivers should be able to install the Uber Driver app from the play store / app store.
Driver should be able to sign up on the application using his mobile number.
Driver should be able to send his documents for verification. Following are the documents that Uber needs from drivers
Picture
Driving License
Can Registration Certificate etc.
The document requirement can change in future if there is any change in compliances by governing authority.
To keep this blog post short, we will not get deeper into the details of Uber requirements, but it should be detailed enough for each user type so that the software development team which you will select for the development should be able to understand clearly.
Do you need help in defining your requirements ? Schedule a call with our expert.
Once you have defined the business requirements, move on to the next step of finding the right team to bring your requirements to life.
Selecting a Development Team - Your Third Step to Successfully Outsource Software Development
Once you have defined your problem statement and business requirements, you need to select a development team. Before we get deeper into team building for your product, it is very important to understand that you are not outsourcing your software development, you are building your extended team.
It's important to interview several different development teams before making a decision. You could also build your own team by hiring different freelancers if you understand the software development process.
If you are not aware of the software development process, then it will be difficult for you to evaluate the right team to outsource your software development. You may consider taking help from an expert who has experience in building software.
Following are some of the parameters that you could use to select the team to outsource the software development:
What process do they follow? Is it an agile process or does the team take the requirement and start working on it directly.
What tracking tool do they use to keep track of their progress? If they say excel or sheets, please do not think twice before rejecting the team.
What kind of questions they ask, the granular they go, the better it is, they should be able to make you rethink about the requirements given by asking questions.
Nowadays it is very important to have a team that understands cloud, ask how will they make sure that the cost of infrastructure is in control or how will they achieve it without compromising the scalability and the availability of the application.
Are they able to provide consultative inputs on your requirements?
Does the team have experience and expertise to execute your project?
Is there any problem in communicating with the team, this may lead to mis communications later on leading to loss of time and money.
Do not go for hourly billing, vendors may tend to charge you extra as you can not monitor anything, at the same time do not go for fixed price as well as that will lead to a lot of disputes as far as in-scope and out-of-scope items are concerned. Build your team, that means take resources from your vendor on fixed retainer cost.
Please note the more the questions the better it is for successfully outsourcing the software development.
Do you need help in identifying the right team ? Schedule a call with our expert.
Managing Your Project - Your Fourth Step to Successfully Outsource Software Development
Once you have selected a development team, it's important to manage your product development effectively. This will help to ensure that the project stays on track and you are satisfied with the final product.
Here are some tips for managing your project:
Set clear expectations with the development team.
Communicate regularly with the development team.
Review the project progress regularly.
Make sure that the project stays on budget.
First thing first, out of the full list of requirements that you have, select only those requirements without which you can not launch, think from user’s perspective, you may think about the features emotionally and may try to do every requirement, but that is the recipe of disaster. This is something that an Engineering Manager can do.
Do you need an Engineering Manager to help you manage your product? Schedule a call with our expert.
The Engineering Manager will help you keep the execution under control and channelize all the engineering resources in the required direction. In fact it is best if you can engage an engineering manager in the beginning only so that he/she can help you define the requirements and also hire the team. He/She should have a good understanding of software engineering best practices and should be able to use tracking tools like Jira.
Work with your EM to identify the MVP requirements and then he/she will work to break down the business requirements to granular technical tasks.
Make sure you have code repositories in place, and also your team is capable of using Generative AI to write code, that helps with the faster development.
Work with your EM to define sprints and start evaluating each release. Sprint retrospective is a very important step to constantly improve the processes and team’s effectiveness which eventually leads to successful outsourcing of software development.
Evaluating the Release
Once the development team has completed the Sprint, it's important to evaluate the deliverable. This will help you to determine if the features are coming up as per your requirements or not, if there is something wrong, work with your team to make sure they have clarity of the requirements. Keep going sprint by sprint to complete your MVP
Here are some things to look for when evaluating the MVP:
The MVP should meet a minimal set of requirements that you identified for each user of the application.
The software should be easy to use.
The software should be bug-free.
If you are satisfied with the final product, you can release it to your users. If you are not satisfied with the final product, you can work with the development team to make changes.
Conclusion
Outsourcing software development can be a great way to save time and money. However, it's important to do it right. By following the tips in this blog, you can increase your chances of successfully outsourcing your software development.
For expert consultation, schedule a 30 minute call with us and we can help you with all the steps and assign our team of expert developers.
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