How to Pick The Right Outsourcing Team

You can save your time, have your project looked at from a new perspective and thus learn and grow as a company, but where do you go to find the right team? Let's assume you have an IT project, but no IT department of your own. What should you expect and pay attention to when looking for an outsourcing company?

We're going to look at a few things the perfect team should be able to do, including:

1. They Understand the Business You are in

You need to find some talented people (that's always a must) who understand the business. It's not only about understanding the functionalities you describe; it's crucial that they know what's behind them, what they are for and what are the expected effects. This way they will be able to provide the solutions you really need.

Seek out the companies that hire both talented developers and agile communication and project managers. Remember that money, goals, investments and business advantages that are important to you translate to class abstraction, methods universality and code semantics to the developers.

It's crucial to have somebody that understands both sides and can manage the communication.

2. They Can Be Considered Peers You'd Love Working With

Always look for the people who you can consider your real business partners. If you treat them as equals, not just as your employees who follow the orders, you will clearly benefit from the cooperation.

They have the experience and can suggest to you what to do and what to avoid. Of course you can also share your own opinions but having peer discussions is a whole lot more effective than letting one side make all the decisions.

3. They Plan the Right Moves for All your Requirements

It's also essential that the people you cooperate with have a plan, a clear idea on how the work should be carried out. This seems obvious, but many people overlook it. Brainless coding without asking a single question is not the best way of developing large and complex projects.

Your developers and project managers should listen to your requirements and be able to suggest, for example, to divide the project into stages.

Of course the right approach to your project will vary depending on whether you're a startup or a large company. It's difficult to be more precise here, but I believe that you'll be able to tell whether the team knows what they're doing when you talk to them.

4. Discuss

Avoid the companies that follow your orders without discussion. Many clients know this and expect the developers to take the initiative and generally get involved in the project as equal partners, but some can be fooled by deceptive smoothness of their project's workflow.

Appreciate it when a developer wants to discuss an issue with you, even though at first it may seem to delay the work. The discussion will pay off in the long run, reducing errors and preventing mistakes that are easier to nip in the bud than to clear away near the end of the race.

Companies that follow your instructions to the letter will also be less creative and prone to point the finger at you when something doesn't come up to mark.

Conclusion

Of course the above list is only a starting point. Each company has its own requirements and it may actually turn out that you need a separate team for each project. If you haven't worked with anyone abroad yet, don't worry - globalisation did its job. Apart from some cultural differences (like different ways of refusing, managing a discussion or negotiating), we're on the same page.

However, if you and your team are in different time zones, project management can be challenging, but almost all obstacles can be overcome with enough good will and patience on both sides.

Editor's note: This is a post written by Filip Jaskiewicz for Hongkiat.com. Filip is the COO of Magently, a reliable and experienced development agency for the Magento eCommerce platform.