Whether you’ve had bad experiences in the past or no experience at all, there will always be fears underlying your decision to outsource software development.
They concerns about outsourcing software development mostly fall into one of the following categories:
| 💎 | 💬 | 🤝 | 🔒 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Quality | Communication | Honesty | Safety |
For each, let’s have a look at what these concerns may be and what you can do about them.
Quality
| What you’re mostly concerned about | What you can do about it | |
|---|---|---|
| The end-result will be below expectations | 👉 | Never settle for oral confirmation during meetings. Clearly describe your expectations and get them confirmed via email. Ask for these expectations to be rephrased and repeated to make sure you’re on the same page. |
| I’ll be locked into relying on them (vendor lock-in), even if I’d rather switch to another provider | 👉 | To avoid “high switching costs”, divide your project into completed stages, where each opens a window of opportunity to change the service provider. |
| They will deliver as expected, but after some time lots bugs will emerge and they will avoid responsibility | 👉 | Accept that QA must be part of the process and it can’t be done by the ones developing. Do test on your own, but don’t rely on it entirely, as some bugs can only be found through specialised testing. |
| They’re not as skilled and well-trained as they seem to be | 👉 | Pay attention if they are asking enough questions. Appreciate if they openly admit not knowing things or making mistakes. Humbleness grows with knowledge and experience (see the Dunning-Kruger effect). |
Communication
| What you’re mostly concerned about | What you can do about it | |
|---|---|---|
| They won’t understand what I want but they won’t admit it | 👉 | Never settle for oral confirmation during meetings. Clearly describe your expectations and get them confirmed via email. Ask for these expectations to be rephrased and repeated to make sure you’re on the same page. |
| Communicating with foreigners can be a drag, I hope this won’t be one of these scenarios | 👉 | Decide on your own whether you’ll be comfortable communicating with your primary contacts. Consider picking channels that provide the best mix of flexibility and clarity (e.g. text chat instead of calls). |
| They will be pushy with upselling services I’m not interested in, instead of focusing on my problem | 👉 | During initial talks, see if they focus on solving your issues instead of creating new diversions (upselling unsolicited services). |
| (…) |
…curious about the rest?
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