Outsourcing industry is one of the biggest and fast growing industries, globally. One of the major use of outsourcing is for software development. The total estimated market worth of IT outsourcing was $530.15 billion in 2021 and it is expected to hit around $1.06 trillion by the year 2030.Outsourcing helps you to cut time and cost for production. By outsourcing software development, you will have a team of developers ready to be working for you. You do not have to worry about hiring experienced developers and offering competitive salary to the new employees. However, outsourcing can cause a lot of problems. It has a bad reputation as most people think of outsourcing as hiring a low-cost over-seas company for software development, which can lead to problems like different time zone, cultural and language differences, trust issues, etc, that can hinder the development process. Today, we discuss some of the biggest challenges of outsourcing software development in detail.
Trust
Under outsourcing, trust goes beyond the concept of having a proper contract or believing in the expertise of your development partner. It is about finding a trustworthy person or team who will give efforts to understand your business and your goals. For software development, it is very important for the people, to whom you are outsourcing, to understand the bigger picture behind the project. Once you have taken care of this issue, you can be sure of a great product.
Communication Problems
When you put together two different companies in two different time zones of the world, with different work cultures and communication methods, problems are bound to appear. Communication issues are one the major problems in outsourcing, causing delays and other nuisances. Often times, software development projects end up in disputes due to communication problems. To avoid these problems, a clear communication method should be established from the beginning. You should schedule weekly meetings or calls to review updates and convey instructions and goals.
Understanding the Scope
Failing to understand the scope of the project can lead to various issues like reworks, timeline delays, over expenses or unnecessary features. These problems often occurs due to lack of trust and communication issues. The developing team need to properly understand the bigger picture of the project. Without clear understanding, they won’t be able to tell if something is going wrong or bring in new ideas that can help to improve the project.
Code Uniformity
Another thing to take into consideration while outsourcing a project is to hire a team that uses the same coding language. Differences in coding language can cause problems for your in-house team to maintain or fix possible bugs in the end product. If this happens, you will need to re-hire the contractors for the maintenance of your software, blowing your expense budget.
Project Management
Project management is an important aspect of outsourcing software development. Issues like unclear processes, different end expectations and lack of communication can arise due to bad project management. A good management should be able to understand the goals of the project themselves and manage the team in such a way that they are able to achieve both short-term and long-term targets. They should also be able manage risks and set up plans in case of project failure.
If you are going down the outsourcing route, you will definitely face some or the other issues down the line but there are many advantages as well. All of the challenges mentioned here today can be easily taken care of. All you have to do is to be careful and find the right team who will make an effort to understand the project and your business.
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