Statistics show that 92% of G2000 businesses outsource their IT operations, whereas 37% of small businesses outsource at least one business process. In many cases, an offshore company acts as an external provider of dedicated teams or services from another country.
And why not?
Offshore teams are the perfect solution to counter the challenges of the increasing current tech talent shortage, market uncertainties, and shrinking economies. It's important to note the distinction between an offshore team and an outsourced team: an outsourced team is typically contracted through a third-party organization for specific projects and may include offshore team members as part of the outsourcing process.
Although working with offshore development teams has many benefits, managing the offshore team brings its own set of challenges. Leveraging offshore teams can also provide a competitive advantage, such as faster delivery times and cost efficiency.
Miscommunication, cultural differences, and time zone gaps can turn even the simplest projects into a logistical nightmare. But it doesn’t have to be that way.
By following some simple tips for managing offshore development teams, you can transform offshore development services into exciting opportunities for collaboration and innovation.
In this blog, we’ll provide some practical tips that will help you manage your offshore development teams effectively. Let’s dive in.
But before we discuss the best practices for managing offshore resources, let us explore why businesses shy away from working with offshore teams.
Why do companies fear offshore software development?
Miscommunication, mismanagement, and security are some of the primary reasons businesses avoid working with offshore development teams. It's important to note the distinction between an offshore team and a distributed team: a distributed team includes employees working in various locations globally, while offshore teams are based in another country. Below are some of the businesses’ most common apprehensions about managing offshore development teams.
1. The Fear Of The Unknown
Working with offshore development teams means hiring resources from an offshore country.
Since businesses need to gain knowledge about the talent market, they fear they won’t be able to navigate its nuances and find the right resources to build an offshore team. This fear also includes concerns about assembling a dedicated offshore team that is fully committed to their project.
This creates a fear of the unknown, making them skeptical of offshore software development.
2. What If They Don't Understand Us?
Another fear that businesses have is the language barrier. If the hired team speaks a different language, it can create productivity issues, performance gaps, and delivery delays. Building mutual understanding between teams is crucial to overcoming language and cultural barriers, fostering trust, and ensuring effective collaboration.
3. How Do We Manage A Team That We Don't See?
When companies work remotely with teams, they fear that since they cannot see the work in real-time, they cannot manage the operation or monitor the team’s productivity. Implementing time tracking and productivity management tools is essential in remote settings to monitor work hours, assess project progress, and ensure overall team efficiency.
4. Our Data Will Be Compromised
Companies fear that offshore teams would access their information on different systems and servers to work on the project, making their data vulnerable to cyber-attacks and infringement. Involving the entire team in data security protocols and access control is essential to mitigate these risks.
5. How To Manage a Team That Doesn’t Even Work In The Same Timezone?
Businesses worry that the time zone difference between their in-house and offshore teams can lead to communication gaps and work delays.
Some of these fears may resonate with you as a business owner contemplating offshore software development.
But let me assure you that though valid, you can easily tackle these challenges by partnering with the right offshore development company and following best practices to hire offshore teams.
Which brings us to our main question- “How to manage an offshore team?”
Managing an offshore team can be smooth and easy. But it needs determination and a flawless strategy to ensure everything goes well.
Below, we have shared some tips and tricks for managing your offshore development team effectively.
13 Best Practices To Manage Offshore Team
For your offshore software development to succeed, in-house and offshore teams must be symbiotic.
So, managing an offshore development team is not just an outward practice but also requires an inward assessment of your business and its readiness to adapt to the new environment.
Below, we have shared some tips and tricks for managing your offshore development team effectively. Effectively managing offshore teams is crucial to ensure a smooth workflow, strong collaboration, and quality outcomes.
Which brings us to our main question—“How to manage offshore teams?”
Therefore the first practice of managing an offshore team is:
1. Communicate your vision from top to bottom
The decision to offshore software development may be of top management, but it impacts everyone in your company. So it is essential to ensure that not just the leaders or seniors agree. But the lower hierarchy must also be fully dedicated to the task. When working with remote teams, it is especially important to establish a shared vision and maintain effective communication to ensure alignment on goals and successful collaboration.
To get everyone onboard, you must communicate
- Why have you decided to offshore?
- What impact in terms of growth and business opportunities will this bring to the company?
- How will it not affect the jobs of the current employees?
- What do you expect out of this offshoring decision to ensure everyone is on the same page?
Educating in-house resources on how offshore teams can enhance their work environment, reduce their workloads, and empower them to perform better is crucial for a seamless transition and smooth operations in the future.
3. Setting the right parameters, aka scope of the project
Before initiating a conversation with an offshore partner, you must clearly understand your objective and vision for your offshore team. As a business, you must have clarity on:
- What is the kind of engagement to wish to create?
- Is it a one-time thing, or do you wish to include offshoring as a part of business mode?
- Have you created an outline and scope of the project?
- What are your long-term goals with the team?
- Have you defined a clear development process to ensure organized collaboration and effective workflow management?
These are some of the questions you must have answers to before deciding to hire an offshore team.
4. Establishing clear expectations
Creating and sharing clear expectations is crucial for offshore team management. Without a clear direction, the team will operate mindlessly, doing just what is told, failing the entire purpose of bringing experts on board. Having a dedicated team is essential to ensure effective collaboration and project success.
Here are some tips on how to do so:
- Communicate goals and objectives: You and your offshore team should be in sync on the goals and objectives of your project. They should know the project's purpose and what the result should look like.
- Define roles and responsibilities: Each team member should know their roles and responsibilities. This can include outlining the tasks each team member is responsible for and the deadlines they are expected to meet.
- Set deadlines and milestones: Split the project into multiple mini milestones and establish deadlines to ensure the team stays on track and meets its goals on time.
5. Set Up A Standard Communication Channel
Communication is the key to the success of a project, whether built in-house or offshore. But it is one of the biggest challenges companies managing offshore teams face.
Businesses often share that communication and collaboration are one of the biggest challenges in remote operations.
Thus, establishing standard communication channels is crucial for managing offshore development teams. It allows teams to exchange their ideas, input, and feedback seamlessly. To maintain effective communication within teams, you can use communication and collaboration tools like Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and more.
Having well-defined communication channels help in the following:
- the proper documentation of all discussions carried out between teams
- ensures that no information falls through the gaps
- ensures both in-house and offshore teams are on the same page
- creates a backup for team members to refer which empowers teams to work more efficiently
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enhances team collaboration by facilitating regular meetings, open communication, and building trust among team members.
Besides defining the channels and modes of communication, it is also a good practice to train teams to communicate efficiently to optimize the time spent collaborating.
Wish to learn tips to communicate with offshore teams? Read our blog on 13 Tips to Streamline Communication With Offshore Team.
6. SOPs & Documentation Process
Multiple people work on different aspects of a project. With team members being constantly switched and multiple reviewers sharing inputs, it’s no surprise that the code gets swampy, increasing the “Technical Debt” of your project.
“Technical debt (also known as design debt or code debt) is the implied cost of future reworking required when choosing an easy but limited solution instead of a better approach that could take more time.”
Companies pay a cost to maintain and fix code in applications, which is called technical debt. On average, a company spends $3.61 for every line of code. For an average-sized application with 300,000 lines of code, this adds up to $1,083,000 per application.
And around 1/3rd of an engineer's time is spent dealing with technical debt. One can avoid this cost by establishing a strong standard operating process (SOP) and informative documentation process.
Establishing an SOP will help you streamline operations, and a solid documentation process will not only caters to the current team’s needs but also helps future team members to manage the technical debt and solve problems no one ever thought about when writing the code. Additionally, having clear SOPs and documentation makes it easier to monitor the offshore team's productivity and performance, ensuring that remote work is efficient and measurable.
7. Set Tools & Systems in Place
Equipping your offshore team with the right technology and tools is crucial to ensure seamless collaboration and help them significantly enhance their effectiveness and productivity. Providing the right tools is essential for the success of an offshore software development team, as it enables them to overcome challenges and work efficiently across different locations.
These tools can be broadly classified into two categories.
- Communication Tools-Communication tools refer to the set of equipment, software, and technologies that enables your teams to communicate and collaborate seamlessly over digital platforms. Having these tools ensures team communication, promoting better coordination and faster problem-solving.
- Project Management Tools- Project management tools are software applications that assist your project managers in planning, organizing, and managing the project assigned to the offshore team.
These tools help you track tasks, deadlines, budgets, and resources while enabling collaboration with team members and communication with stakeholders.
Here is how project management tools improve the efficiencies of your offshore teams
- They bring visibility to the ongoing work by creating a central location for project information. Thus helping improve communication and collaboration among team members and stakeholders.
- They improve efficiency by automating tasks and providing insights into project performance, freeing team members to focus on more strategic work.
- They help reduce risk by providing a framework for managing risks and unexpected setbacks.
Pro-Tip: The selection of the tool depends on the team size and complexity of the project. So, you must evaluate all the pros and cons before selecting one.
4 Effective Tools to Manage Offshore Team
- Slack: A cloud-based online messaging platform, Slack, enables team members to communicate with each other in real-time. It provides various features such as direct messaging, group chat, file sharing, and integration with other widely-used tools.
- Zoom: Zoom is a platform for video conferencing where team members can have face-to-face conversations. It provides many features, including HD video, audio, and screen sharing.
- Microsoft Teams: Microsoft Teams is a platform for collaboration that offers tools for chat, video conferencing, file sharing, and project management. It is a widely used solution by businesses that utilize Microsoft Office 365.
- Trello: Trello is a widely used project management tool with boards, lists, and cards to monitor tasks. It is an excellent option for businesses that need to keep track of the advancement of various projects.
Using these tools is essential for successful offshore team management, as they help coordinate tasks and communication across different time zones.
Remember, there is no right answer to which tool is best for project management. It completely depends on the team size and complexity of the project.
So, you must evaluate all pros and cons before selecting one.
8. Hire The Right Leadership
Do you want to know how to manage offshore development teams with different cultural backgrounds? Hiring the right leaders is the answer you seek.
Onboarding individuals with strong leadership qualities into your offshore team goes a long way in creating operational harmony.
These leaders become the face of your organization among the offshore team. They help build a bridge between in-house and offshore teams, creating frictionless interactions to ensure enhanced productivity.
9. Continuous Training & Downloads
Want your offshore team and in-house team to work in perfect sync? -Train them!
Want to bridge the cultural gap between teams?- Train Them!
Want your offshore software development to be successful?- TRAIN THEM!
I cannot stress enough the importance of providing proper downloads and training to the teams. Investing in training programs helps make work transitions smoother, leading to increased productivity & employee retention for both offshore and in-house teams.
Training helps in the following ways.
- It clearly explains a company's business, clients, operations, and other essential aspects.
- It helps resources to identify knowledge gaps and upskill accordingly.
- It helps smoothen the transition and handover of the work.
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It supports professional development and career growth for offshore staff through remote training, certification programs, and regular evaluations.
10. Create Overlapping Work Windows
Often, your offshore team may work in different time zone. Managing a remote offshore team brings unique challenges, such as coordinating across distances and requiring greater flexibility in communication and collaboration. The timezone difference in offshore teams can create management issues if not tackled well.
Though it is impractical to expect your offshore team to be available 24/7, a smart way to tackle this is to create overlapping work windows occasionally for team scrums, discussions, and feedback.
Besides this, ensure you inform the team beforehand of meetings and deadlines set in your time zone. Be mindful of how and when you can reach out to them, within and beyond their work hours.
An experienced global team could start any time of the day or night according to the requirements under special circumstances, provided you respect their time.
Learn the seven tips to handle time-zone differences when working with an offshore team.
11. Constant Communication & Regular Updates
When offshoring, make it a rule not to allocate a task and vanish for a long before checking on it again.
You should hold regular meetings daily in the initial phase to ensure the teams are on the same page as you. It may sound daunting and time-consuming initially, but who knows if things will skyrocket in the right direction.
Lack of regular interaction with offshore teams can lead to negligent behavior. Your team may gradually lose motivation and excitement because they believe that you are unconcerned with the team’s growth. Regular communication is especially important to keep remote team members engaged and accountable.
This may result in sloppy work, delayed deliveries, and reduced productivity among the team members. Hence, it’s essential to have daily scrums regarding the project’s development.
Moreover, you can schedule a meeting every morning before the team starts to work for a quick rundown of challenges and how they were addressed.
12. Keep An Eye on it, But Don’t Micromanage
Understand.
When you hire an offshore software development team, you are onboarding experts with extensive experience and vast knowledge in their fields.
Micromanaging them will only create frustration and loss of trust among your offshore developers. This will result in a loss of enthusiasm and productivity. The team may feel that their ideas are not welcomed and would refrain from sharing suggestions to improve your product.
I am not suggesting that you don’t monitor the work of your offshore developers. Still, a better approach is to designate a senior developer as a tech lead or hire a project manager with proven team handling and management techniques to produce successful outcomes. These strategies help you effectively manage offshore teams by promoting communication and teamwork without the need for micromanagement.
13. Acknowledge Their Contributions
When you hire developers in an offshore setting, showing appreciation for your offshore team is crucial to building relationships.
Appreciating their efforts shows that you value their contributions and hard work. It motivates them to put their best foot forward when working on your project.
It also enhances productivity and improves team retention while preserving good team camaraderie.
Ways to show appreciation to your offshore teams
- Send thank you note to show that you appreciate their hard work and dedication.
- A gift voucher or monetary incentives are thoughtful ways to show your appreciation.
- Give promotions to the team members by increasing their responsibilities and pays.
- Public recognition is a great way to show appreciation. Give them a shout-out in a meeting or write an appreciation mail about their work.
- Recognize the achievements and contributions of individual offshore team members to highlight their unique impact and dedication.
- Provide opportunities to grow, learn new skills, and take on new challenges.
- Be flexible with your expectations and be understanding of their situation.
Following the above tips, you can be sure to make your offshore software development project a success.
But following best practices for managing offshore resources is the second step, the first being finding a reliable offshore development company like Your Team in India (YTII).
How YTII can help in building a successful Offshore Team?
YTII is one of the most trusted offshore development companies that can help you build your offshore team in India. YTII can provide a dedicated team or outsourced team tailored to your specific project requirements, ensuring effective collaboration and high-quality results. With an industry experience of 13+ years and a team strength of 200+ software engineers, YTII has assisted many businesses in maximizing efficiencies & profits by working with the pre-vetted offshore software development teams in India.
One successful example of this offshore collaboration is - ‘GoHire’an ATS(applicant tracking system). GoHire partnered with YTII to scale their team quickly and economically. With YTII’s help, they built a team of 2 software developers, 1 HubSpot Migration Expert, and 3 digital media experts.
Companies globally trust YTII for offshoring their software development projects. In the past decade, we have delivered over 1000 projects and have over 90% client retention rate.
If you, too, seek a guide to hire offshore developers? Talk to our experts today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
1. What is an offshore team?
2. What is the difference between an offshore team and an onshore team?
Offshore teams are hired from offshore countries that offer large talent pools of skilled resources at a lower price. The main reason businesses offshore their projects is to reduce operational costs. Onshore teams are hired from within the same geography/continent where the business operates. It does not provide significant cost benefits to the company but offers resources in the same time zone, enabling easy operations coordination. Maintaining a local team is important for focusing on core business activities, such as sales and marketing, while offshore teams can handle non-core tasks.
3. Why is managing an offshore team challenging?
Managing an offshore team is challenging because when you work with developers from different countries, there are usually challenges in communication due to different languages and cultural practices, which can create misunderstandings and delays. Besides this, your offshore teams work in different time zones, making coordinating work difficult, resulting in missed deadlines.
It's important to note that an outsourced team may include offshore team members, but is typically contracted through a third-party organization for specific projects.
4. How to establish effective communication with an offshore team?
You can establish effective communication with an offshore team by creating standard communication channels, setting up required tools and technology to enable seamless collaboration, and ensuring that your offshore team understands the project goals, timeline, and deliverables. Besides this, one must connect with the team often to take regular updates and share feedback.
While offshore teams are based in another country, a distributed team may include members working from multiple global locations.
5. What strategies can overcome time zone differences in managing an offshore team?
Businesses can overcome the time zone difference in managing an offshore team by practicing agile project development methodology, creating overlapping time zone work windows, setting up the right management tools, and conducting regular project scrum calls to ensure the team is on the right track regarding deadlines and deliveries.
6. How can cultural differences impact offshore team management?
Cultural differences can impact offshore team management in many ways. It can create communication barriers amongst the team members due to differences in language and work ethics, resulting in delays in decision-making and deliveries. Developing soft skills is essential to improve collaboration and understanding within culturally diverse teams.
7. How can companies ensure quality work from their offshore teams?
To ensure quality work from offshore teams, companies must understand project scope and delivery deadlines, establish communication channels and project management tools, define KPIs for each team member, and conduct regular meetings to ensure the development timelines are met. Additionally, having a well-defined development process is crucial for maintaining quality and ensuring that all team members follow organized procedures throughout the project.
8. How to ensure a successful transition when setting up an offshore team?
For a successful offshore team setup, businesses must establish a comprehensive team onboarding and project download process. Integrating offshore staff into business processes during onboarding is crucial for a smooth transition and effective collaboration. This will help facilitate a seamless transition and ensures successful execution.
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