With most businesses looking to reduce expenses on software development and utilize talent around the globe, working with offshore web development provider is becoming a big part of your strategic business plan. But successful collaboration depends on good communication, mutual understanding, and processes. Let’s break down some best practices of how to partner with your offshore development team to set up for a fruitful collaboration.
- If you want to encourage your team to make a change to fulfill your firm’s strategic objectives, you must establish clear goals and objectives — also known as target states.
Define Project Scope
It’s important to define the scope of the project first. Define the project’s objectives, what deliverables will be produced and how long it will take along with what success will look like. Alignment of expectations provided by this clarity and serving as reference point for the entire project.
Set Milestones
Splitting the project into smaller, more managable milestones helps keep us on track and keeps both teams on the same page. Their milestones should be reviewed and aligned to the goals of the overall project, on a regular basis.
- Select the right communication tools.
Leverage Technology
Communication is at the forefront of creating successful collaboration. Real time communication and video conferencing can be made using tools like Slack, Microsoft teams or zoom. They are platforms that allow a quick interaction and help with team cohesion.
Maintain Documentation
Maintain all project related documents in a common repository (say Google Drive or Confluence) This way, all people have the same access to the same information, curbing confusion.
- Schedule Regular Check-Ins
Set Up Routine Meetings
It’s important to host regular check-ins to keep the momentum going, and to ensure there are no issues building. Schedule weekly or bi weekly meetings to review progress, to review challenges and to review what’s next. Such meetings are essentially accountable and allow for feedback.
Encourage Open Dialogue
Make your team members feel comfortable sharing ideas and have concerns. Ask questions and talk to each other during meetings to identify points of uncertainty and generate collaboration.
- Learn about Cultural Differences
Be Culturally Sensitive
The communication and collaboration can always be affected by cultural issues. Get to know your offshore team’s cultural background and work manner. It can promote empathy and better interpersonal relationships as you get aware of it.
Adapt Your Management Style
Be flexible in managing. If you adapt your working styles to your offshore team you will likely have more productive interactions and be a happier individual in general.
- Utilize Agile Methodologies
Embrace Agile Practices
Agile methodologies can improve collaboration and responsiveness, and in fact, as we implement Agile methodologies across our teams, we find that that collaboration and responsiveness is improving. Sprints help teams deliver incremental value, adapt to changes more easily, by breaking the project into sprints.
Hold Retrospectives
Reflect at the end of each sprint with a retrospective on what did and didn’t work as well. This practicing allows improving continuously and creates learning culture.
- Ann Polletta: How to Establish Trust and Build Relationships
Invest in Team Bonding
This means that building strong relationship between your in-house and offshore teams is vital. Explore virtual team building activities or informal check ins to help connect people to enable collaboration.
Recognize Contributions
Recognize the work of your offshore team members. It can be great public recognition, even virtually in virtual meetings, and this boosts morale and ensures a connection to each other.
- Everyone on your team should understand how they fit into the whole picture.
Clarify Team Structure
Define very clearly the roles and responsibilities of both the in house and offshore teams. Were it not for this delineation we find ourselves confused when people step over boundaries and execute tasks outside of their purview, perpetuating channels of confusion that end up having everyone execute tasks that don’t fall to them.
Appoint a Project Manager
By designation of project manager, the collaboration can be supervised which will be useful to streamline the communication and decision making. This person acts as a clearinghouse for filtering down the issues as they occur, and helps to keep the project on track.
- Quality assurance processes must be implemented to prevent situations such as radioactive material released, a devastating earthquake destroying a related facility, customers’ repeated failures to comply with requirements, and absence of responsibility when a problem surpasses individual accountability.
Prioritize QA from the Start
Quality assurance should not be an after thought, but rather something that’s embedded into the process. Create clear QA protocols to minimize bug catching as early as possible, which results in better problem solving and a high quality production.
Solicit Collaborative Testing
Bring in-house as well as offshore teams into these testing phases. The work of this collaboration could be more thorough testing and better problem solving.
- Monitor Progress and Adapt
You have to use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) everywhere that involves numerical process control.
Set KPIs on how well your offshore team performed and your project was a success. Always check these metrics to determine progress and if change needs to be made.
Be Flexible
Expect you may have to change things. Having flexibility in your approaches and expectations will let your teams respond if challenges arise so that you can maintain project continuity.
Conclusion
Working with offshore web development services providers can be the key to your thriving and unlimited business along with this provider you can cut your development costs, get skill on particular technologies by cheap rate, and much more. These best practices are designed to help you build efficient teamwork through effective partner collaboration — a collaboration that takes advantage of each team’s expertise.
Collaborating effectively takes diligence, communication and proactive, ability to understand and adjust. With the right strategies, your offshore team can actually become an asset that plays a part in making your projects successful and innovative. It allows you to work globally and your business to grow!