Offshore software development is an outsourcing process where the technical leader of a team delegates all development tasks or part of it to an outsourced company in another country, as long as it is in a culture and time zone totally different from the contracting country.

In most cases, this type of service is desired by startups looking for technology experts to develop their ideas and who do not find companies in their countries with the authority to carry out the project.

Currently, in the technology market, there are some trends that companies that carry out offshore sought to specialize. The main ones are: cloud computing (AWS or Google Cloud), automation, in addition to the development of technologies that involve Artificial Intelligence. Next, you will understand the main differences between the three types of outsourcing: onshore, offshore and nearshore, in addition to the negative and positive aspects of this type of contracting.

Differences between offshore, nearshore and onshore

Onshore

Onshore outsourcing is characterized when a company decides to hire software developers within its own country of origin. This type of service ends up becoming more attractive to the client because it is more accessible and adaptable to any changes that may occur, in addition to offering greater control over the professionals.

Nearshore

Unlike the previous outsourcing model, the nearshore service is characterized by the hiring of a technology team from neighboring countries, but with a similar time zone and a very similar culture. Examples of this type of service are found when US startups hire developers from Mexico, Brazil or Canada. Or even when companies in Germany offer services to neighboring countries like France and Poland.

Positives of outsourcing

One of the main positive points of offshore software development is the reduction of expenses of your company. With this type of outsourcing in the technology area, there is no need for the entrepreneur to assemble a specific team and not even spend on training their employees to bring the project to life. Outsourcing comes with a team of specialists in the subject in order to avoid this type of cost, increasing the return on your investment.

Another positive point is that, with a team specialized in the subject, the final result will have higher quality in a shorter production time. This is due to the fact that the professionals allocated by outsourcing will use any and all cutting edge technology for the execution of the project, without using the resources of their business.

In addition, in the offshore model, it is possible to hire professionals specialized in certain programming languages without having to travel to the country of origin. In this way, your development team will have a total focus on developing the service with the aim of delivering it as quickly as possible.

Risk reduction is another positive aspect of technology outsourcing, both in terms of errors occurring during project execution and in the company’s total investment. As it is a group specialized in technology, the project will be carried out by highly trained professionals in the subject that will be managed by the contracted company, that is, the manager does not have to worry about coordinating the technical project.

The company also does not have to worry about the risks and investments it would possibly need to make, such as, for example, opening a new sector or hiring new employees just to perform the service.

Negative points

Now entering the negative points, one of the problems of offshore software development that can occur during execution is the loss of control of the company over what is being produced. With that in mind, it is important to keep in touch with the outsourcing company frequently so that there are no delays and much less communication problems about what is being developed. In this way, structural problems in the project are also avoided.

Besides, another negative point that startups need to analyze before finding the ideal outsourcing company is in relation to security. When hiring this type of service for your company, the manager shares important data about your business and, if you trust an IT outsourcer without good references, your company’s confidentiality may be at risk.

Another tip is to constantly monitor the development of the project to know which areas are being worked on and if everything is in accordance with your ideals and with your business guidelines. This is because, as the offshore has a relationship with professionals from other parts of the world and with other cultures, communication can be flawed if not done in an assertive manner.

How to choose an outsourcing agency

After presenting the positive and negative points of this type of outsourcing, it is super important to know how to choose the ideal partner for this type of service. Because of this, we will present some points that make it easier to choose a reliable partner for outsourcing.

The first point of attention is to choose a company that has a cultural fit with yours and that fits your values. This is super important for the smooth running of the work routine and also to avoid discomfort with the outsourcing team. In addition, it is also important to ask about all costs involved, avoiding possible future surprises.

As it is a process that involves high investment, verifying the company’s authority through existing cases is one of the main tips to avoid that your investment is not matched.

Having specific Hard Skills and Soft Skills can make all the difference in the work of a CTO. Like any company leader, this professional needs to have skills focused on people management, business and also have mastery of technical aspects, such as programming languages and project management. This is important for your startup to develop in the best possible way and with a lower rate of problems along the way.

Because of this importance in the area, we have produced an article that details the main hard skills and soft skills that every CTO should have. Perhaps this can help professionals improve their characteristics or help you hire the ideal technical leader. Check it out below.

Hard Skills

Project planning

As it is a very technical area, a good CTO must know how to correctly execute the planning of his projects. This is because, for a given product to have a good final result, it is necessary that project management techniques are executed in an agile way. Having experience with SCRUM and Kanban are fundamental to the curriculum of a technology director.

In this planning, the professional is responsible for conducting a requirements survey on which features will enter the project. In addition, he needs to understand and assemble this planning according to the needs of the company and its customers. The CTO also analyzes scopes and limitations of projects, studies solutions, and also works to guarantee the success of products, managing time, processes, prioritization, resources and deadlines.

Strategic knowledge

As previously mentioned, for a CTO to be able to plan projects he needs to have well-developed strategic knowledge. This professional becomes the leader and responsible for choosing which technologies will be used in the products, implementing these languages ​​and developing strategies to improve and perfect the product.

As its focus is on the customer, the final product and the increase in revenue, it is important that every CTO is well updated on the emergence of new technologies – and the most used ones – so that he can understand where to use each programming language. . In this way, the professional is able to pass the main instructions to his development team. This strategic thinking is important so that execution errors do not happen and that the final product has no problems.

Technical knowledge

Following the main hard skills required in a CTO, having technical knowledge is the most important. A professional who wants a CTO position needs to have practical experience in computer engineering and similar areas. As he will be the technical leader of a team, he needs to organize the whole team and come up with solutions to possible technical errors that may happen in the execution of a project.

That is why most CTOs are trained in computer science and have knowledge of system architecture, programming and software design. Although not all of these skills are present in professionals, having practical knowledge of the technical part and experience in the area makes them better prepared to deal with types of technical challenges.

Know how to hire professionals

In addition to the resources mentioned above, it is super important that a CTO knows how to hire professionals. He is responsible for assembling the development teams, knowing where to find the developers, what their characteristics and in what areas are most needed can help in the progress of the project and in the management of the team.

The CTO needs to be able to identify and attract developers who are not only talented, but who are part of the company’s culture. In addition, it is important to know how to detect performance problems among employees as soon as possible, so that the company does not suffer from unexpected results. Therefore, look for professionals you can trust and who enjoy working together so that the company’s goals are achieved.

Soft Skills

Communication

Besides to hard skills, soft skills are also important for any CTO. Having a professional with the ability to communicate is super important for the growth of your business. Because it is a very technical area, the CTO who is able to convey his ideas in a simpler and more didactic way tends to have an easier time managing his projects. In addition, communication is important to communicate to other sectors of the company about what is being done in your area.

Another important characteristic is knowing how to listen to other people. The CTO needs to fully understand what is needed on both the business and development side and know how to deal with all the challenges so that it can transmit them efficiently. Make sure you understand if your development team is really understanding what you are saying.

Have a leadership profile

This soft skill is pretty obvious, but we can’t stop talking. As the technical leader of its development team, it is up to the CTO to indicate which paths should be taken and which priorities the project should have. Besides, it is the CTO that defines which programming language will be used in the product and which will be your team.

This choice can become a complicated step because defining a technology stack in the wrong way can compromise (and a lot) the development of the project. This leadership is also an important role in solving problems, as the technical leader is responsible for analyzing and tying up loose ends.

Organization

Closing our list of hard skills and soft skills, having a good organization is also part of the range of skills of a CTO. When entering a technical project, every technology leader needs to be organized enough to define a list of priorities and also to assemble their development team. Every initial project needs developers who know how to work in more than one area (Full-stack). After a clear growth of your business, choosing specific professionals who will work in each sector (Front-end, Back-end, etc.) guarantees increased productivity.

Being organized also ensures that development sprints are effective, done in a shorter period of time and that the least number of problems happen during execution.

How to structure a good software development team is one of the biggest challenges that a manager has when deciding to start a new digital product. Among the main doubts that arise at that moment are related to the necessary functions within the team, how many people are needed for the good progress and what is the best professional profile.

Within the technology area, different roles and responsibilities are defined. Because of this, understanding what each of these profiles does is essential for a good project performance. Thinking to help you in this moment of decision, we have prepared an article that details some essential functions and positions for the progress of your project and what are its due importance.

Remembering that each moment of the startup needs a certain set of professionals, and our intention is just to show each one of them so that you can decide which ones you need.

CTO

To structure a software development team, the presence of a CTO is essential. He is the chief technology officer of his company and is responsible for the entire technical area of the business. It is his responsibility to hire the team for the area, control code quality and technical debt, always be tuned in to new technologies and know how to get the best out of each person within the team.

As we are talking about digital products, technology is one of the main areas of the business, so it is important that this professional is one of the business partners. In this way, you are able to guarantee your total commitment to team management and product development.

PM

Following our presentation of the main positions for managing a project appears the Product Manager. This professional is responsible for guiding your product, and he is also the one who gives direction to where the team should go and which paths to take.

Knowing how to set a priority on which features will be launched with priorities and what the client’s real needs are competencies of that professional. It is essential that a good Product Manager has a notion of growth hacking, roadmap definition and processes. Knowledge in agile methodologies such as SCRUM and KANBAN and product metrics are also essential.

Front-end developer

When we talk about front-end we are referring to the development of a more visual aspect of the product. This part of the development will deal with the functionalities that guarantee the user’s direct relationship with the system. All the things that someone sees or interacts when they are on a website, for example, relate to the front end.

When a page is accessed, it has several features. Everything a person sees when accessing a website was made possible by a front-end developer. For this, the professional will use a language (such as JavaScript) that will allow to elaborate the application components in the browser. Menus, buttons, titles, texts, bars. All of this is the result of the work of this professional.

Back-end developer

The back-end developer, on the other hand, is concerned with what is “behind” what the user sees. This specialization will be based mainly on the functionalities related to the information that are not displayed in the interface of the website but, nonetheless, are necessary for its functioning.

A dynamic web application, for example, requires a variety of information and functionality that will be stored on servers and databases. The developer specialized in this area is responsible for a kind of “intermediation” between what the user accesses and this data.

Your performance will ensure that the application remains up to date and preserves the data that must be there, such as videos and images. In order for him to do this, it is necessary to use a programming language that is understood by the databases. In this case, the developer will use PHP, C #, Java – and even JavaScript -, for example.

Full Stack developer

The full stack developer, can act in several parts within our project, he can develop both back-end and front-end and depending on the experience of this developer he can even work with devops.

This type of professional is essential for starting a startup, as it reduces the amount of resources needed to make a project run from end to end.

QA and UX/UI Designer

Quality Assurance, as the name implies, is the person who guarantees the quality of a project. She is responsible for testing the products, whether automated or not.

The objective of this professional is to reduce the amount of bugs that reach the end customer, thus increasing the quality of the product as a whole.

Entering the Design segment, at this moment, it is important that a team has two professional profiles. UI Design is responsible for how the application will behave visually, that is, it is the one who actually designs the application screens thinking mainly about aesthetics. UX Design takes care of the experience as a whole, in addition to the interface it thinks about aspects such as ease of use accessibility.

Devops

Devops, in a simpler way, is the combination of development and operation practices. The job of this professional is to automate the maximum of infrastructure functions, such as publications on servers, security, database backup, among others.

A good Devops also knows how to work with the most famous cloud services on the market, such as AWS or Google Cloud.

Tips to how to build a good software development team

For any manager to be able to structure a good software development team, it is important to take into account some points. The main one is the context of the product and the timing of the business. When the need arises to assemble a new technology team, whether for a new digital product or the launch of new features of an existing product, always be clear about the objectives that this team needs to achieve.

In addition, the presence of a multidisciplinary team assists in the process, since it is a combination of people from different specialties that aims to deliver a result. With this variety, you can have different views on the same problem, so the solution can be much more creative.

Another important point is to be as transparent as possible. That way, the people on the team know exactly what their responsibilities are and what they will perform on a daily basis. It is very annoying when you hire a professional to work on process X and end up working on process Y. Of course, these situations can happen, but it is essential that you as a manager talk to that person explain the situation.

In addition to all this, for a healthy production process, it is recommended that the staff have a cultural fit similar to the values of your company. When hiring, be sure to do an interview to ensure that the new employee has all the cultural aspects that you value in your business.

Finding out how much cost a open vacancy in your company can be important so that the recruitment process is done more quickly. This is because, despite the chance to reduce costs with the dismissal of a professional being tempting, this vacancy that has just opened can bring a series of impacts due to the drop in productivity of your business. In addition, this cost can quickly exceed the salaries of the former professional.

Although most organizations know that unfilled positions can hurt profit, few are able to quantify exactly how much these vacancies cost. It is essential to observe how the loss of manpower and talent can affect everything from sales, production to management and recruitment efforts.

Among the main impacts caused by an open position, some of them can hinder the evolution of your business. In this scenario, probably some employees will need to be relocated and will start to perform not only their obligations, but also that of another sector, taking the focus away from the professional for their tasks. In addition, when hiring an employee for the specific payment takes a long time, other professionals may feel devalued, since they are performing double functions.

Because of all these problems mentioned earlier, it is super important that the leaders of a startup know how to calculate the COV. Known as “Cost of Vacancy”, the selection and recruitment metric can help you recognize how much it costs to have a open vacancy in your company. Want to know more details? Check it out below.

What are the costs of a open vacancy?

The costs of a vacancy can vary depending on several factors. In addition to financial impacts in relation to the monthly / annual revenue that the lack of an employee generate, there are also some additional problems that can occur in your team and in the company as a whole. This can even be felt by the staff, by each individual professional, by competitors, partners, customers and also in the development of your company.

When there is a open vacancy in your business it means that the work that would have been completed by a person in that role still needs to be done in some way. The solution to this recurring problem may be to hire a temporary employee or pay overtime to other employees. Another concern is the costs of employee turnover in your company. When a selection process is not carried out in an assertive manner, costs related to hiring, integration and training may be demanded by a professional who does not fit correctly for the specific vacancy.

As well, from the moment there is a vacancy open the productivity decreases, affecting its results in several ways. This not only means that you are potentially paying extra overtime, but you are also missing out on business opportunities and product development that you cannot take advantage of or explore. This, in turn, impedes your company’s growth and stifles your ability to scale.

How to calculate the cost of a open vacancy?

As stated earlier, calculating the “Cost of Vacancy” for certain positions in a company is crucial for you to know what the real cost of an open position is. Besides, this calculation is also super important to find out how much is feasible to spend in the process of selecting and hiring new employees.

The importance of performing this calculation goes further. Most companies think that an open position is not something that can cause problems for their business, because it means a temporary reduction in expenses. However, the reality is that hiring an employee should be seen as an investment and not an expense, since all professionals must bring financial returns to the company.

Entering the subject of our subtitle, performing this calculation can vary greatly for different positions in your business. However, there are some formulas that can help you measure this to approximate values.

General hires

The first is for hiring in general. This formula is based on the average of how much an employee generates annual revenue for the company, divided by the number of working days in a year. Thus, you get the average daily revenue of an employee in the final result. If you have an open spot, this is the amount you lose each day.

Formula:

(Annual revenue / No. of employees) / Working days in the year

Specific hires

Another way to perform this calculation is for vacancies in more specific positions and positions. According to studies, a professional is expected to generate a financial return of 1 to 3 times the value of his salary. Therefore, divide the employee’s salary by the number of working days in a year and multiply it by a number from 1 to 3. The final result should represent how much your company loses each day that a particular vacancy is not filled.

Formula:

(Annual professional salary / Working days in the year) x 3

In addition to making an assertive hiring for your business, it is super important that it be done in a short period of time. Therefore, some practices to optimize the selection process can help you in this regard.

One way out is to try to make the selection as objective as possible for the vacancy in question. With the elimination of bureaucracy, costs are also lower. Also, do a well-planned outreach to attract as many candidates as possible. If it is still difficult to find a professional – mainly for the technology area – some companies are specialized in this type of service and can bring the ideal professional in a short period of time.

Whether or not to hire a outsourced developer can be one of the main questions for those starting a digital business. Having an allocated professional, who is not part of your internal team of professionals, can bring some uncertainty to managers. However, this type of contracting brings a series of benefits such as cost reduction, reduced risk of investment going wrong and also agility in development.

Because of this, if the size of your company prevents you from performing all the necessary functions at a reasonable and consistent cost, outsourcing may be a good option.

However, it is also important to know that the ideal time to hire a outsourced developer is when you are looking for an evolution of your company in the job market, either by creating an online solution, developing an application that can boost your business or just for daily control and management of your startup.

Because of all these points presented, we have prepared an article that details the outsourcing of developers and their benefits. Check it out below.

What does an IT developer do?

The system developer is a professional who has the function of writing and coding a series of functions and commands that will be responsible for creating a software, website or application. In addition, within the areas of expertise, the professional also has enough technical knowledge to monitor networks, create and manage databases and also offer technical support for maintaining products already developed.

The work of the developer is very important nowadays, due to the rapid advancement of information technology and the constant evolution of technological knowledge. In addition, most companies are looking for a digital solution to increase revenue and visibility for their business.

Despite writing codes, the developer must have, in your essence, creativity, curiosity in solving problems and a lot of dedication in his studies, since new technologies and languages ​​appear daily. Another fundamental characteristic in the profession is having leadership, to manage a possible team of developers, and also the notion of entrepreneurship, to attract new customers and close a larger number of deals.

Due to the countless qualities expected for this type of professional, the system developer is a key part for a company that wants agile growth and innovation, following the trends that have emerged over the years.

When to hire a outsourced developer?

Before hiring a technology developer, it is necessary to analyze the structure of your company, how many employees you need for the operation and also about which projects you want to invest in. This is important to determine how the search for talent will occur, since, to fill or create a new vacancy for an IT professional depends, first of all, on the assessment of their needs. So, recognize what your company needs. After that, finding the right person for the vacancy will be much easier.

As well, it is important to detail and delimit your project so that you have in mind what your goals are, it is another important step so that, in the future, the development team has no doubts about what to produce.

The trigger to hire a outsourced developer must arise from a need, whether to create a website, a management system or an application that will modify your business for the better, paying less than the company would pay when forming an internal development team.

One of the solutions to reduce the initial cost projected by the company is to invest in an outsourced IT professional. With this type of outsourcing in the technology area, there is no need for the entrepreneur to assemble a specific team, take care of the bureaucratic hiring parts and not even spend on training their employees to bring the project to life.

Hire a developer will increase your results

From the moment you have a company that specializes in hiring and managing high performance teams, you also dramatically minimize the risks of the investment not having the expected return. Besides, choosing companies that take care of this part of developer allocation ensures that your project will be produced by highly trained professionals in the subject, and with that, the completion of your system will be completed more quickly without losing code quality.

Another time when hiring a outsourced developer may be ideal is when it comes to starting a digital transformation in your business. Hiring a team of developers who will be responsible for including your brand in the online world can significantly increase your company’s authority and visibility and, consequently, profitability.

Other factors that may indicate that you need an outsourced software development consultancy are related to the lack of training of your employees regarding technology. Having an outsourced team for the matter, the manager will have a team focused only on the objective of bringing the project to life while the company’s fixed employees take care of other vital areas of their business.

In addition, another positive point is that, when the project executed by the allocated professionals ends, the result will be maintained for a long period. Assuming that a group of developers developed software for your company, in this case, even with the departure of the allocated professionals, the result of your work will be maintained and the manager will have no consequences on the performance of your business.