Whether you are an enterprise or startup with ambitions, offshore can take you to the success-shore with "cost-effective", achieve "time to market" and "quality". That's true, and that's why offshore is the trend for many companies, which has grown over the years.

A Verified Marketing Research shows offshoring is rising, with a compound growth above 10.13% annually by 2030. Surprised? There's nothing to be surprised about. Companies also love to leverage the perk of having a vast on-demand talent pool of developers with offshore development choices without going through a long, tenuous software developer hiring process if they choose to extend the in-house team. 

However, with offshore development, communication challenges, cultural barriers, reliability issues, security concerns, and other challenges are involved. Nonetheless, if you can top these challenges, offshore development teams will allow you to scale and help you achieve limitless success and accomplishments. 

So, what are the secret spices to succeed with offshore developers? Let's go from shore to shore, from developing custom software development to mobile apps, whatever your offshoring needs are; hear our 20 years of management insights as we have sailed through success stories for our clients. Hop in. 

9 Keys to Success with An Offshore Development Team

Promote Team Game

When you choose offshoring, you have a pool of remote software developers. The project's success lies mainly in how you can adapt team spirit in remote locations and how you can turn those individual software developers into teams. When the teams are formed, foster a collaborative culture by encouraging team members to share their expertise and ideas and valuing everyone's input so they feel as good as your in-house teams.  

We also recommend adopting an inclusive team-building approach for both teams. As we all know, "teamwork makes the dream work". Besides, as a pack leader, you have roles to play to forge a team spirit into them.

Align Them To Your Goal and Expectations 

If you align your offshore team to your project goals like your in-house team, things might turn around great for your project outcome. How can you do that? Make them part of your project planning so they know your project deliverables. Having a clear understanding of your project scope, goals, and deliverables, you can expect better understanding while collaborating with them throughout the project lifecycles.

To achieve the perfect alignment, you can keep a small "goal orientation" section in weekly meetings, celebrate project milestones and successes, and recognize their contributions. When you do those things, you can expect a highly committed and goal-driven team that works within the scope and delivers on time and within the budget. 

Define workflow

It is best to adhere to a systematic workflow rather than haphazard delegation for the offshore projects. Here is what you can do: structure meeting schedule, reporting format, project scope, team structures, deliverables, and everything related to your project. Document them all and make sure every facet is communicated to them. 

Not only setting up a workflow is enough, as a leader or project manager, stick to it and commit to it wholeheartedly. When you do that, every remote member is aware of the progress/milestones and all the backlog and remains within the perimeter you have set. To make your workflow perfect, define how to respond to a situation or any failure so that you can efficiently deal with every possible outcome.

Communicate Effectively

Communication is one of the significant challenges in offshore development due to the distance and cultural barriers. Try to remain 'transparent' and 'effective' while communicating for effective communication. By being transparent, you should be more focused on the objectives. Have you shared the entire scenario or in fractions? Whereas the result of your communication largely depends on how effectively you have made things clear to the developers, is the underlying message adequately communicated?

Signing into Establishing communication protocols, choosing the right tools to facilitate video conferencing and massaging, using practical collaboration tools like Trello or Jira, and opting for constant team communication from kick-off meetings to post-deployment support will sail you to success.

Manage Diversity

Working with offshore software developers means dealing with people of different cultural backgrounds, ideas, and beliefs. Be prepared to work with diverse cultural identities. All you can do is maintain a harmonious and positive culture simultaneously in both on-premise and remote workplaces. Ensure all offshore staff are respectful to each other and avoid conflicts. 

You can organize group discussions or across-the-table seminars to make developers aware of diverse cultural nuances and develop acceptance and tolerance. 

Language is the most vital component of culture. Using the same language across the shore can help you overcome the essential barrier that might be an obstacle to work. Since English is the most used official language worldwide, companies prefer English as a cross-shore language to be safe. 

Build A Relationship of Trust and Partnership 

Although offshore development can help you cut costs, it's still a considerable investment for any company, whether small or large. While working with offshore software developers, set the path towards a relationship of trust and partnership right from the word go. It's one of the secret recipes to success in the complex weaving of offshore software development. 

If you manage to keep remote software developers on the same page as your on-shore staff developers, you can expect a boost in productivity and better outcomes and achieve success. At BJIT, we have completed over 200+ offshore projects forging a lifetime relationship of trust and partnership with clients and our developers. Care to learn more? From our experience, we recommend promoting an open-door collaborative culture in both on-shore and offshore settings so you can grow a trusted bond with your remote software developers.  

Manage time zone

Managing teams across different time zones is vital to succeed with offshore developers. To better handle time zone differences, opt for a clear communication protocol and ensure a shared understanding of time zone differences so asynchronous communication is possible across all the channels and protocols. Micromanaging in a different time zone can be a bummer, so establishing overlapping time zones can make life easy, especially for key personnel. 

However, time zone differences are a reality in offshore development. So, check if you can establish a flexible work timing approach for offshore developers; it might help ease your life. Finally, as a leader, you can adjust your work hours to accommodate offshore software developers. 

Monitor Team Performance Regularly

The remote team's performance monitoring will differ from your in-house teams. We recommend that all the job responsibilities are clearly defined so that there is less confusion and more focus on the goals at hand for your offshore software developers.

To successfully monitor your offshore venture, find key performance indicators (KPIs) on every aspect of development work, such as productivity, code quality, debugging time, etc., before setting the KPIs, talk with the Bridge Engineer (BrSE) or Project Manager to gather information about any obstacles to implementing it.

Make security a priority deliverable

Undoubtedly, security is one of your biggest concerns when considering offshore software development. Your products and information are all you have. So, choose a company that keeps security at the cornerstone of service delivery. Let the company know how much you prioritize security over anything! 

We recommend comprehensive vetting while choosing offshore development services. Ensure developers sign legal documents, such as a non-disclosure agreement (NDA), to secure all your sensitive and invaluable company data. Also, consider periodic security audits to make sure data is protected all the way.

Final Words

Indeed, offshoring has irresistible perks that no software development company can let go of, for some it’s an inevitable reality. Research shows that agile offshore development has an alluring success rate. Though, achieving "success" with offshore developers can be tricky if you don't deal with the manifold challenges. By now, we hope you have a clear understanding of the major challenges and the ways to overcome to achieve success for your offshore project. 

However, If you are yet to decide whether hiring offshore software developers will benefit your project, read this post on Benefit of hiring offshore developers.