Contracting with IT outsourcing companies for software development services is a widespread practice for many businesses. It helps them to minimize development costs, reduce product’s time-to-market, and improve overall efficiency. Although outsourcing provides important advantages and helps companies stay competitive in the market, it also involves some pitfalls that companies can run into, especially if they have little experience in this process.
So, how to mitigate the risks and reap all the benefits provided by outsourcing? For this, companies have to carefully choose their outsourcing destination and IT outsourcing vendor.
Today, Poland is considered to be one of the most popular IT outsourcing countries around the globe. Its IT sector is rapidly developing and the world-known IT companies actively outsource their projects to Polish IT vendors. In this article, we’ll explain how to successfully outsource software development to Poland and avoid the most common pitfalls when doing business with Polish IT outsourcing companies.
Common Mistakes When Outsourcing Software Development and How to Avoid Them
When considering outsourcing software development, companies usually encounter a number of questions on how to do it properly. That’s why, before choosing their software development partner they need to thoroughly investigate the outsourcing market and tap into the experience of seasoned outsourcers.
Below are the most frequent outsourcing pitfalls you should be aware of when outsourcing your software development project.
Choosing Your Development Services Provider Based Simply on Price
Very often for effective budget management and cost reduction businesses might be looking for the cheapest development company. However, this strategy may involve some far-fetching project issues as low prices are always determined by some reason.
For example, the development price can be low if the majority of the project team are junior developers, or they lack experience in some field, etc. In this case, it is worth comparing several vendors and finding the similarities and differences between them.
The best way is to choose the IT outsourcing company in the medium-price segment and with a good reputation.
In the international IT outsourcing market, Polish companies mostly fall into the medium price niche. It means that software development services in Poland are much cheaper than in the US and the EU countries, though at a higher rate in comparison to India and some Asian countries. This becomes possible due to cheaper living costs in Poland than in the US and the EU. In the meanwhile, Polish software developers are highly-skilled professionals with years of experience of working with client companies around the world. By offering software development prices at an average level Polish IT companies manage to maintain the optimum price/quality ratio of their software development services.
Failure in Understanding the Scope of the Project
Even if you’ve already found your IT outsourcing partner, don’t rush with the project launch. At this step, it’s essential to properly estimate your project scope. For this, you need to:
- establish clear product requirements and the deliverables you expect;
- determine the timeline, its deadlines and project milestones;
- define which features you want to include in your app and how many software developers you’ll need to build them.
If you don’t communicate your project details clearly to your software development team, it will result in mismatch between the product outcomes and your product vision. Therefore, you need to resolve these issues at the outset, otherwise the gap between your expectations and product deliverables will expand with each development iteration.
For effective presentation of product requirements, client companies usually create a software requirements specification (SRS) document. This document includes various types of requirements, product functionality, schedules and development process timeline, possible risks, use cases, and other features. A well-elaborated SRS will help you to convey the exact idea of your product and make sure that you and your software development team are on the same page.
Being Unaware of Software Quality Indicators
For a client company that hands over its software development projects to outsource, it’s essential to assess the quality of the requested application. However, if you run a non-tech company and hardly have much coding expertise, it can be rather challenging to understand if the software is well-built.
Software quality consists of various factors, including:
- absence of critical and major bugs in the app before its release;
- clear to read and simple to maintain source code for other developers and its detailed documentation;
- sufficiency of technical documentation and its detailed elaboration, etc.
Those companies that expect their outsourcing provider to maintain high code quality have to be prepared and clearly communicate their expectations, establish quality benchmarks at the starting line, hold regular briefings for work scope reviews, and solve emerging development problems.
To ensure high code quality of the developed app, you need to search for the IT vendors that follow accepted coding standards and implement software development methodologies which have proved their efficiency like Agile.
Loopholes When Signing the Contract
Drafting and signing an appropriate contract that would satisfy both sides – the client and the contractor – involves many nuances. Here are the major points you need to consider when negotiating a contract with your software development company:
- feature-based over time-based contract – feature-based contract prioritizes the quality of the app over its time of delivery; this type of contract motivates software developers to thoroughly work on the app’s documentation and its testing;
- outlining the deliverables and the timeframe – a software development contract should include clear project deliverables, app features, detailed user stories, and the timeframe with starting and completion project dates as well as major milestones; this data will help software development team to break the project into the development sprints and create an achievable timeline for it;
- warranties – this sector guarantees the outsourcing IT vendor and its client that both sides will fulfill the obligations included in the contract; for example, the vendor promises that the requested application will work the way it’s determined in the technical documentation, etc.;
- intellectual property rights – this part of the contract defines that the client company obtains the rights over the developed software and prohibits the IT company from reusing the source code in other development projects;
- confidentiality agreement – a confidentiality agreement can be included in the development contract or signed as a separate document; this contract section guarantees that the company won’t disclose any project related details such as app idea, tools and features used in the app, and other sensitive data to third parties;
- issues resolution – in case of any disagreements both parties should know what steps they need to take to resolve them; also, in this section it’s important to mention the laws that regulate contract enforcement.
Conclusion
Outsourcing development to Poland offers a multitude of advantages from expense reduction to quick acquisition of the most skilled and experienced tallents. There are a number of world-known IT companies that are already outsourcing their software development projects to Poland and many more businesses are considering Poland as a viable outsourcing destination.
Those companies that outsource their software development for the first time may run into common outsourcing pitfalls such as choosing a service provider by the lowest rate or being unaware of how to access the requested product quality. That’s why before signing a contract with an IT outsourcing company, they should carefully investigate the IT outsourcing market and find the answers to all the emerging questions.