Category: Outsourcing

cost-your-software-development-project

How Do I Quote Costs For Software Development Projects?

September 22, 2021

Recently, while conversing with one of my clients, I realised how costing their dream project has become challenging altogether. Costing your software development project means you have to take care of all the nitty-gritty. Costing depends upon the following factors: Size of the project The complexity of the project Design of the project Team composition Platform used Size of the project To understand the cost behind the software development project, you have to understand the project’s size. Size also represents the scope of the project. The requirements that reveal the added features on the pre-existing ones. This will further make you understand the software requirements. Thus, the cost depends upon all. Yes, sizing the project means you cannot leave a minute detail out of it. Or else it is going to show the disparity in cost amount. For sizing the project accurately, follow this checklist. The complexity of the project Complexity plays another important role in costing. Complexity comprises of features required for the development project and thus how you want the features to e designed and put together. Thus the navigation and UI/UX also comes with it. The third element that comprises complexity is the technology required to make those features work. Therefore to cost-effectively, you need to have a clear understanding of these elements. Design of the project The design comes after deciding on the complexity. You understand the market trends and customer behaviour and then decide on the designing part. For example, in the food ordering mobile application, which one will you prefer while ordering the quantity of the same product? Do you want to increase the quantity one y one with the ‘+’ sign, or do you want to type manually or choose the number from the drop-down box? Thus all these matters when designing an app, and the costing depends upon it. A checklist to follow for deciding on the creative design. Team Composition  All these require a team, and for composing your team, you need to choose the right talent. Fortunately, today software development companies have different engagement models or hiring models to hire the resources as per your business objective. You can also opt for a pay-as-you-go model. Platforms Lastly, it is important to decide which platform your application will run and what technology stack should be used to achieve the same. There will be an introductory rate for developing a project, but creating something that will cater to the niche segment requires advanced technology and unique design, which adds to the project’s cost. There are three popular platforms for software development projects – Android, iOS and web applications offered to the client by software development partners. Today users are using various platforms, and thus to stay future-ready, founders need to build different versions of applications for different platforms. Software development cost depends upon various matters apart from the five key factors mentioned above. It also relies on the region of the world from where you hire your developers. In North America, hiring a junior developer takes $90 to $100 per hour, whereas, in Asia, the hourly rate for senior developers varies from $25 to $35.  So when you find costing complicated, always start from the basics and then go up to the complexity. An MVP features also give you a costing idea. After that, find out the design and creatives required to enhance customer experience. Often in low budgeting, developers overlook the market trends and user experience. Thus along with costing, taking care of the quality of the project is important. Remember, you are paying for the brains, too, along with the hands.

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10 Checkpoints To Increase Transparency In The Pricing Of Software Development Companies

March 11, 2021

When we say “Embrace the new ethos of price transparency!”. We mean B2B companies must maintain transparency while charging for their services. But the question is: how many of us are doing so? When we place ourselves in the shoes of customers, we will be in a perplexing situation and finally lost while searching for the “best software development companies”. We can say non-transparent pricing has corroded the trust of the users. Even if we assume that the users have good knowledge of the software requirements and understanding of the charges involved for the defined services, still it becomes hard for them to reason out the differences in pricing charged by different software development companies.   If you have ever bought software then you must have faced this:  stuck in-between staying confused about the genuinity of pricing charged and quantifying whether you have cracked a good deal or not! One major problem highlighted by our new customers often is the reluctance shown by software providers in providing the full financial picture to the client. The reason is: revealing price structure might help the competitor in undercutting them and winning the contract. Another major issue that we see with the vendors is the lack of expertise to quote the price on the basis of the actual worth of the project and not on how much clients are willing to pay.  In such an industry, where maintaining transparency can make us lose our clients to the competitors, we don’t want to be another “ worn-out business”, because of our trust and quality matters!  Based on our years of experience with our clients and working on their feedback we came up with the best practices to evaluate and onboard vendor. 1. Understand the Process of development: It is important to assess the process of project development as it shows us the transparency level maintained in the operation. Experience vendor will segment the project’s budget into the following: Project Requirements Team Structure Process Followed Resource Requirement Reporting Mechanism  Risk Mitigation Plan 2. Align the process with the business objectives: The process followed by the vendor and the outcome should be checked. The alignment of business objectives with the forecasted business outcome should be a measure to measure the transparency of the investment. 3. Aligning the engagement model with the project requirements: Different pricing model suits different projects thus it becomes important for you and your vendor to decide on how much, when and how the payment should be. Many such models are the Flexi-hiring model, dedicated team model, fixed price model etc. 4. Creating a clear-cut contract between vendor and customer: Clear contract will ensure transparency by enabling the customer to see what they are paying for. The estimates task and the required budget, a process that will be followed with the requirements of the investment at every stage of project developing should be defined clearly. This will make the customer understand what the money is getting spent more. 5. Checking for the “code-warranty”: “Code of warranty” means a final price won’t change if something happens due to the fault of the vendor. A vendor providing a code of warranty signifies their efficiency in the job. 6. Assess the reliability in the quality process: Vendors must be assessed on the basis of the following metrics to check the reliability of the process with the project requirements. The money spends on each quality process must have a quantifiable outcome. The metrics are: Engineering process maturity Certification Project management tools Visibility of offshore team activities Escalation procedure 7. The vendor has an experience team structure: When talking about transparency in pricing, a reliable and experienced team is linked with it. A team that can deliver the project on time guides the client throughout the development process and has quicker turnaround time worths the pricing of the development cost. Assessing domain expertise is important for price transparency because time is money. 8. Vendor must ensure a steady flow of information: irrespective of time zone, by employing Kanban and Scrum, vendors can ensure the free flow of communication between the vendor and the client. Transparent communication means all the activities surrounding the project is recorded and well-documented. This enhances transparency in the working process which further ensures clients that the vendor is not having hidden cost in the pricing. 9. Ask for the Customer Review: Transparency isn’t completed unless your vendor provides you with reviews from former clients. It is better to check the vendor’s ranking and position in authentic B2B reviews and rating pages such as Clutch and the Manifest. Remember former client speaks all. 10. Check their shared risk plan and the alternative solutions: A well-defined risk management process should be presented in a structured form that also includes the probable risk and the mitigation plan. Proper action plans to increase transparency must be present.  Final Words Establishing transparency means fostering trust. Being a software development company, we can recommend the investment to our client at every stage by guiding them on certain aspects such as what to avoid to make the project successful, what is the customer persona, and etc. This value-driven approach followed by us gives us an edge over our competitors. Transparency is our key values and it is the foundation of creating a sustainable product. Let’s get to know each other and experience a transparent partnership to see where it can lead us to!

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Software-development-Products

When Should You Pause Your Software Product Development?

December 8, 2020

In the 21st century, most of the world has moved far ahead than our civilization had in the last century or even the last millennium. Software products have become such an integral part of our lives. It’s quite difficult to picture any of our everyday activities without the use of some sort of computer-based application or procedure! But the sad news is, according to a PMI report, nearly 14% of all software projects fail. One of the prominent reasons behind the failure of software projects is not adhering to software product development.   So, you have to constantly follow a step-by-step strategy to go from one stage to the next. Thereby, it ensures you don’t fall behind as you progress from a concept to a launch.  While developing, some precautionary measures would lead to inefficient software product development or faulty software products if ignored. So, let’s discuss some of the major aspects to avoid such mishaps. Pre planning before developing software products One of the key and vital aspects of developing software products is chalking out the requirements and analysis. You need to spend a lot of time planning the right way to understand the problems. Because a wrong analysis of the project might lead to the development of incorrect products.  There lies the importance of good planning! It can help to avoid the extension of the development time. Eventually, it reduces the overall expense of the project.  Quality of Documentation: The documentation personnel needs to be in regular touch with the developers. Based on documentation suggestions, you have to decide about documentation changes & additions. Thereby, it ensures that the documentation remains up-to-date. The developer team needs to remove any unnecessary documents. Besides, the team has to be alert to spot any missing documentation. Customization: At times, we as creators or developers feel very overwhelmed with our work. By doing so, we may overlook the actual requirements of the product owner or clients. That’s why developers need to think from the client’s perspective too. And make sure that the software product becomes fruitful to the clients.  MUST CHECK: So, check the development of the product at all phases. And if you come across any anomalies, update the same to your vendor.  Software products – Design and development Conceptualizing the whole System Design: You need to spend considerable time to figure out the whole process and the ways to accomplish it. So, you need an expert in System Designing who has been in this field for at least 7 to 10 years. He or she can guide throughout the product development, and make the blueprint of the whole architecture. MUST CHECK: Don’t forget to ask your contractor about the process they are going to take and the ways by which they are going to fully fill it. A good System Design would lead to a strong foundation. Eventually, it will lead to sustainable development and a scalable product. Key strategy to software product development: There are various ways to develop software products, like Prototyping, Waterfall, and Agile methodologies, etc. Agile methodologies are popular and trending in software development. It runs in various sprints ranging from weeks to months. You need to list some features based on their priority. For example, in the case of an e-commerce app:  A must-have feature would be a good UI with a showcasing all the products on their website and an easy payment system,  Good features may include a 360-degree view of the product. An add-on feature would be an intelligent recommendation system for cross-selling or upselling. Taking wrong inputs from the requirements analysis would lead to wrong product development or missing features. Thereby, it will increase the overall cost or delay the deadline of the project.  MUST CHECK: Hence, you should always have a check on the products being developed at every phase. And try to find out which phase the development has reached. On that basis, the team should come up with an ALPHA version and release it within a time. After that, the developer team should release a BETA version with improvements from the previous versions.   QA testing in software product development No room for Negligence: While developing software products, any bugs, functional defects, or security issues are major concerns before rolling out to the public. So, you need to handle these issues in advance. A loophole in such practices would lead to a huge monetary loss or data breach of the end-users.  MUST CHECK: Hence, the stakeholders should be clear about the approaches taken by the software vendors. Also, they should know the ways to deal with it in the future to avoid such catastrophic events. Conclusion Evolution is a fact of life, and software products must develop in order to stay competitive. The present technology will always reach a point when it no longer meets the demands of the product owner and end-users. There is always room for more development and additional features. Outsourcing to an offshore software development partner can lead to faster development, cost-effectiveness, and better creative output than the competitors. But at the same time, you should focus on the points we discussed above. By doing so, you can expect a superior result. And eventually, a long-term relationship and growing trust factors in the market.

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Think beyond Cost Optimization When Looking For Technology Partners

October 12, 2020

This morning I had a very interesting conversation with one of my clients regarding rebuilding their web platform ground up. Out of curiosity, I asked him, “Is there any problem with the existing one in terms of performance and design?” and the reply astounded me, “We are happy with the design but yet I had to reinvest on the web platform with a similar design”  After engaging further, I realized it was a classic case of “mis-selling”. Their previous software development partner wanted to keep the source code and hosting contract with themselves and deployed the website in a headless CMS with a platform server free deployment. In my experience, this is not the first time I am hearing such instances. Earlier also, I have heard a client’s agony with their existing technology partner. In my opinion, every misalignment has two sides of the story. Of course, the technology partners didn’t mention the hidden technical burden and inflexibility of code mobility. The responsibility of the client during the vendor selection process should not be overlooked. This situation primarily arises when the focus and weightage is primarily on cost optimization rather than solution optimization. Being a firm believer of “Marry the problem, not the solution” ~ I believe, one should not bring solutioning bias when solving a problem as each problem is unique on its own. It is recommended to clients to be cost-conscious but the primary focus should be on solutioning as it will yield a larger return in the long-term. Businesses should look to use a “DO – ACT” framework to assess their technology partners and align on expectation together. “D” Defined Deliverables for Each Stage: Waterfall model is a native and for a lot of projects, a pure agile model is not able to keep the cost in check as they are a good fit for enterprise mobility. Having a mutually agreed scope and understanding of clear deliverable ensures the expectations are aligned from both ends. “O” Ownership: Do your due diligence on your offshore/onshore software development partner’s ability to take delivery ownership. Understand the internal hierarchy and resource engagement in your project. If possible, have an all-hands discussion with the software development agency on the solution approach to assess the fitment. This is a good way to assess how open your technology partners in terms of exposing their technical consultants to you. Once you are confident that your vision is well understood by your partners and they will take as much ownership on the delivery as your inhouse team would have, you need to assess the project governance model for delivery. A simple way to do that is “ACT” framework: “A” Accountability: Understand the roles and responsibilities of each stakeholder in the engaged project and assess the capability of your point of contact in the organization. Make sure that your Software development partners are exposing the escalation matrix to you within the internal organization and are clear about the SLAs and delivery process. “C” Communication: Understand the channel of communication, frequency of communication and real-time collaboration platform your technology partners use for project delivery. Assess how much flexibility they can bring in their communication process as per your comfort. “T” Technology Approach and Timeline: Focus on the solution approach when assessing a technical proposal. Understand your partners’ solutioning approach, hosting needs and how well they are tying up with your feature requirements with technical solutions tailor-made to deliver optimized performance within a reasonable timeline. Once you are confident that your probable technical partners have met all the conditions on the two steps “Do-ACT” framework, compare the budget and hourly rate of resources. This approach might not be very cost-effective as you might go with a vendor whose hourly rate is moderate but think of it as an investment you made in your business to yield long-term return. You will realize your cost optimization in the form of the reduced cost of rework, constant monitoring and lower support and fixes. Focus on your core competency and leave the technology support activity to partners who deliver success. “Every Decision has an associated opportunity cost, choose the one that yields return in the long run.” Let’s win together! Want to discuss more, drop me a direct message and will be happy to connect.

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Negotiating IT Services – How Much Is Too Much?

September 3, 2020

How to negotiate for an IT service? Many of my clients find this a baffling question. And what should have been a negotiation of cost vs features/choice of platform, ends up being a bargain. But they are not to be blamed. Though the last decade has seen an increase in the overall awareness of the tech side of IT services (people now understand what they are asking for) but the number of people understanding the business side of it is still marginally low. Everything can be done at a lower price, well, almost everything. Margins can be continuously pushed to the bottom. There will always be another vendor who will do the work for a lower cost. But the cost that you pay for your project is not just the cost for software development. Here are some of the other factors that you are paying for (or choosing not to): 1. Brand Value: A bigger company has a reputation to live up to. It will do all it can to maintain that hard-earned reputation by making your project a success. 2. Cost of Experience:  A bigger company cumulatively has more experience. They have already been exposed to most of the challenges your project is going to face and have solved them. Resolution time will be shorter. 3. Better Skill:  Bigger companies hire from the upper strata of a city’s skill. Since these resources are expensive, smaller and mid-sized companies cannot always afford them. Though it is not universally true that a higher-paid resource is by rule better than a lower-paid one, but when we generalize performance with pay, we do find that performance tends to improve with experience, exposure and pay grade. 4. Support System:  Larger companies have more teams and employees which enable them to route resources, both human resource (developers) or knowledge resource (internal consultation of senior PMs and architects) to provide a robust network of support systems to keep the project moving forward without losing teams. Smaller teams and companies often face a roadblock in such situations and wait for resources to free up or external consultants to mitigate the blockage. 5. Customer Relationship: Larger companies do not make much profit from the first project. The actual profit is made from returning projects from existing clients. Thus Client Relationship Management is highly valued by a large company. Not only does the company invest in developers to get the project delivered, it invests heavily on improving customer experience. For example, my organization has a different team altogether called the Customer Success Managers (and I was a part of this team for over 2 years) who form a bridge between the delivery team and the customers and are busy round the clock to internally audit the project, updates, deliveries and communications to ensure the client gets what he/she is paying for and if possible, a little bit more. These are some of the factors that you need to consider while negotiating the value of a project. If you are comparing apples with pears, then it is an inappropriate comparison. While negotiating IT services, consider the overall service package and not just the cost of coding.

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Is Offshoring The Need Of The Hour?

June 12, 2020

According to Gartner, nearly 74% of companies are planning to reboot their workforce to remote positions permanently after this quarantine. Why? Considering the pandemic situation, when maintaining in-house teams are posing health and financial threats collectively, remote working is none but a survival imperative. The benefits? It’s more affordable, yields productivity while keeping your overhead costs down. Offshoring your tasks will allow you to access multi-dimensional teams on a need basis. Ranging from your software development cost cuts to the challenge of finding people with functional expertise, offshoring your process can mitigate your financial as well as operational risks in a more streamlined manner. The Biggest Challenge in the Route The vertical escalation of offshoring has opened organizations to new security risks with data breaches as the prime concern. Since remote working comes with the inevitable transition to the Cloud, it involves a lot of information shared online. The Solution In recent times, however, companies are becoming more vigilant in reducing the points of vulnerability. Besides, establishing a secured connection through a VPN, organizations can also enforce password safety to business-sensitive documents to strengthen security. Remote Working is Becoming a Trend Companies mostly rely on remote teams to scale up their operations in the most cost-efficient manner. Offshore delivery models are designed to offer the benefits of dedicated as well as Flexi hiring as per the clients’ needs. It gives organizations an excellent opportunity to connect with the best talents without much investment. The trend has increased in leaps and bounds during the past ten years, says a recent report from Global Workplace Analytics. Scale-up with Flexible Hiring Model Today we have multiple models that are best fit for both short & long-term projects. In scenarios where the skill matrix of a company lacks expertise in specific areas, hiring a dedicated model with required skillsets can is the best-suggested approach. Even if there are multiple skill sets and doesn’t have a fixed requirement, Flexi Hiring can be a great alternative. Looking back, we can see how one of the most widely used chatting app WhatsApp completely relied on their remote workforce. Starting off, barely with a capital of $250,000, they sourced the tech talent from Ukraine. While handling customer support & operations in-house, the most popular chat app had a dedicated team of developers offshore. The benefits they realized down the line is quite impressive. In a nutshell, they could: Access to a full-fledged team having various skills and expertise, without keeping it directly at company’s payroll. Keep the development costs minimum Work on projects with high scalability chances at the same fixed billing The rise of Flexi Staffing The outbreak of pandemic has posed unprecedented challenges to the fore. Sustaining critical activities has become a challenge. Sudden disruption has necessitated the need to fill the voids, as needs arise. Thus, flexi hiring comes to the scene where employers can recruit ‘just on-demand’ or ‘on a need’ basis, rather than carrying a large bench. For example, you can hire a remote IT support team or an individual as long as you need. Even Google hired a geographically dispersed workforce for everything, starting from virtual assistant work, IT work, development” for as long as they want. Today, Google has more than a thousand representatives worldwide managing their customer support as needed. The benefits of flexi hiring comes in the following ways Access the right skill as per the project requirement More competitive workforce without much investment We have been at the forefront, always As a digital partner, INT has offered a Talent Cloud, that lets several fast-growing organizations scale operations, diversify skillset in a cost-efficient manner. Our focus has been beyond just a technology partner but a partner who will work beyond contracts. Wrap Up “Over these years, entrepreneurs have seen offshoring as a model reserved for big enterprises. But, with technological advancements foraying the digital realm has made it quite accessible for the SMEs as well. In fact, remote delegation of the tasks bolster growth productivity and bottom lines on a large scale. Today as we sit at conjunction of technology, marketing and analytics, we know that having specialized skillset matters more than the proximity”, says Bharat Berlia, CIO of Indus Net Technologies.

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agile-product-development-team

Agile And Outsourcing Product Development. Get It? Else, Forget It!

October 14, 2019

In today’s world, Agile methodology and outsourcing product development are hot topics. The beginning of the 90s witnessed the starting of outsourcing product development. Companies jumped at the opportunity to save bucks by hiring top talents at reasonable rates. Agile methodology, when infused later in the 90s, became the cherry on the cake.  Agile is a well-known methodology and most development teams prefer it. It all started in Oregon in the spring of 2000. A group of seventeen software professionals got together to talk about how they might shorten development periods and get new products to market faster.  We have studied the scaling up of the Agile method at most companies, including small firms. Larger companies like Spotify and Netflix were born agile and have become more so as they’ve grown. Also, big shots like Amazon and USAA (the financial services company for the military community), are already in the transition from traditional hierarchies to more-agile enterprises. The CollabNet VersionOne 13th annual State of Agile Report shows a 71% increase in project cost reduction as a primary reason to adopt agile. There was also a 27% increase in “Project Cost Reduction” as a reported benefit of implementing agile.  Additionally, there was a 74% increase in accelerated software delivery from which we can easily conclude that the talent pool became smarter than ever. What is outsourcing software product development? Software product development outsourcing means assigning a third-party company for a particular or all operations linked to a product’s development and maintenance.  The outsourcing vendor provides necessary skills and resources for providing solutions during the product development lifecycle.  Is it possible to implement Agile in outsourcing product development? Many experts had a misconception that the Waterfall approach is the only feasible option in product development outsourcing. Customer satisfaction is a top priority for the Agile method, which aims to accomplish it by delivering software or solutions early and frequently.  Usually, Agile methodology uses practices like: DevOps Scrum Crystal Extreme Programming  However, while outsourcing, implementation of Agile methodology can be challenging. But it’s not impossible either! After all, overcoming challenges will help you achieve success.  Challenges in implementing Agile in product development outsourcing  As we discussed earlier, following Agile methodology can be challenging while outsourcing. So, here are a few challenges that you may face: Insufficient Agile Experience Does your outsourcing vendor follow Agile methodology? This is the first thing that you need to ensure. Due to its growing demand, many IT outsourcing companies are adopting Agile methodology. So, try to choose an outsourcing vendor that follows the Agile way.  The absence of a team structure Teamwork is an integral part of Agile methodology. It requires cross-functional teams to collaborate to provide outcomes to the end client. Assigning software development to individuals can obstruct the Agile way. Because a single person cannot collaborate in the same way as a team. So, make sure to assess the teams of outsourcing vendors. And find out whether they are compatible with Agile or not. Focusing on groups rather than individuals might assist you in developing a network that allows you to remain flexible. Not having clear communication The Agile method is largely reliant on open, continuous communication. So, managing an outsourcing team might be difficult. One of the most efficient methods to tackle this problem is through email or video conferencing. Besides, you can schedule a few team visits every year to better connect with your offshore development team. “We are trying to figure out how to transition from our regular, current cubicle kind of workspace to a more collaborative workspace,” Rajesh Gopinathan, CEO at TCS, tells ET Magazine. Source: Targetprocess blog Why might this be? What led to the rise of the agile manifesto is that people slowly started to realize that the waterfall approach they’ve used with their outsourcing vendors is not that great after all. Fixed price contracts stopped making sense as they do not guarantee real value. The more labor is outsourced to other countries, the higher are the costs. Hence, the main point for outsourcing which is cost-saving loses its foothold. There’re other even deeper-lying consequences. On one hand, the country which outsources – or businesses in this country, not the country itself – they save bucks but lose in the long run as they do not grow their own engineering minds, let alone all the problems that you have working with remote teams – yes, we have all this telecom and internet in place, yet face-to-face communication is irreplaceable. If you often go on business trips to the outsourced destination to talk to your team – again, it’s more costs. Well, the crux is not about how good or bad outsourcing is. The companies which outsource on the other hand – have legacy outsourcing teams. They need to get going as well, to stand up to all the funds they’ve already invested in their outsourcing partner. Agile adoption at INT. 80% of the projects of INT. in FY2020 are classified as Agile. The remaining 20% are the projects whose life cycles are highly predictable. In such cases, the client was clear of the feature set and scope. Eventually, it led to the outcome being divided into a known set of deliverables. These projects usually follow the traditional Waterfall model. Scrum framework adoption at INT. A major chunk of Agile projects at INT. use a Scrum framework. Those Agile projects that do not follow Scrum are typically small (<5 persons). In those teams, the Scrum framework can become a ‘heavy’ process load. In such cases, lighter processes surrounding agile processes are followed. Client Process Adoption at Indus Net Technologies (INT.). Process adoption before working with INT: 31% had a full process in place at the project start 25% had a partial process in place at the project start 46% had no process in place at project start Process adoption after working with INT: 75% had a full process in place 14% had a partial process in place 11% still do

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Deep Work Is The New Secret Of Enhanced Productivity Among Remote Workers

June 25, 2019

Imagine sitting on your office desk, trying to concentrate on your work and suddenly the phone rings. Well, you are not only distracted but also diverted from the thoughts you were initiating. You might have seen a number of managers around the world getting excited the moment they come across a new way to improve the productivity of teams/individuals. They dream of that one ideal day with zero error tasks delivered on time. Deep Work can be a solution to this dream. What is Deep Work?  Deep Work is a concept coined by Cal Newport, a Computer Science professor at Georgetown University. He defines Deep Work as the ability to critically focus on activities which are highly important without any distractions. By doing this, you can avoid “shallow” work. Let us help you understand this better. Rewind your life and imagine a day where you had strict deadlines to meet. Calculate how many times you were forced to go through your email because someone wanted something urgently.  You will debate and see that if things were prioritized it would not have happened, but often a number of things are not in your control. Deep Work is a philosophy, not an initiative  Well, to initiate the process of Deep Work, Newport advices on developing an agile task list which has all tasks listed and is shared with your co-workers so that they are well- informed about their schedule and know when to approach you and for what. With remote colleagues, this philosophy continues as they can follow the same as per their time zones. With remote workers, the biggest advantage is that they can follow their own schedule and every information exchanged is well thought of. Why is Deep Work important for you as well as your team?  Deep Work helps to improve the core abilities for thriving in this competitive environment. It allows developers and designers to work on complex projects in a strict deadline with complete accountability. At Indus Net, we have created an ecosystem which fosters deep work from the onset. Teams based on the client’s needs and not skill sets are set up to ensure minimum distraction and maximum return. Some real-life instances In a survey of 450 remote workers, TalentLMS found that around 90% of survey participants get work done properly and adequately when working remotely. They have highlighted why concentration level is high if people work remotely and where they create a zero distraction zone. At Crossover, managers use Deep Work, productivity and work habits using a number of customized tools to know how effective their culture is. At Toyota, managers often go for short walks through the factory floor to have a look at the work of the team members. They use tools to find out the blocks of time wasted and use these insights to create a rectification plan and provide training sessions correspondingly. So how can you start? Create an agile methodology of work with well-defined tasks and responsibilities for 2 weeks Hire a remote worker and treat all colleagues as remote workers Define your and your team’s work schedule Ensure zero distraction during working hours Measure productivity using smart tools like Worksmart or develop one yourself Understand trends and improve Today, deep work needs discipline, efficient planning along with a change of mindset to understand why remote working can yield maximum results. Just imagine what you can do outside work with all those extra hours!

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outstaff-outsourcing-case-study

Out-Staffing Vs. Outsourcing: Is There A Better Approach?

February 28, 2019

Outsourcing product development as a concept took off sometime during the 1990s when the digital revolution enabled client companies to waive off their software development projects to service providers who would then realize it internally. Primarily, the clients can choose a fixed cost per project which is agreed upon a mutually agreed deadline (Fixed Cost Project model). Otherwise, they can also hire developers from a staffing agency who would be managed by the client’s internal teams. Outsourcing is primarily associated with the Fixed Cost Project model, whereas out-staffing is associated with the Full-Time Equivalent model. Both the models have pros and cons, but the success of its implementation depends upon your project and staffing requirements. Here is a quick comparison between the outsourcing and out-staffing models. What’s outsourcing all about? In an outsourcing scenario, a particular project (e.g. Software development) is dished out to a service provider, who remains responsible for execution and delivery. The service provider is responsible for the successful completion of only the project. The provider manages the end to end execution, and can also hire talent if required. Apart from that, the client doesn’t need to take any added responsibility to complete it. This allows the client to focus on core business activities and delegate specific project(s) to the chosen service provider(s). Advantages Talent Acquisition responsibilities are taken care of by the service provider. Eliminates overhead costs associated with the completion of the project. A client does not have to manage the project or the service provider’s team. Disadvantages Client loses quality control of the project. Communication with the development team is not direct and lucid. Pain points may not be communicated with the offshore team accurately. Costs can soar if additional projects are added along the way. Case study: A manufacturing company based in New York City intended to launch a mobile application to manage its field staff. The company outsourced the project to a client based in India. While the quality of the application was excellent, the company realized that it needed IoT sensor integration as well. The service provider agreed, but this resulted in additional fees to the client. What went wrong? This scenario could have been avoided through transparent and ease of communication between the client and the service provider. Lesson: The outsourcing model is great for simple single one-off projects. With more complex projects on the sleeves, a more flexible model is required. How is out-staffing different from outsourcing? In an out-staffing model, remote workers who are employed by another company are recruited temporarily to perform certain tasks. The external agency acts as the employer of the remote team and is responsible for their salaries, bonuses, and equipment etc. The client provides and manages the assignment directly. This is a great model to choose when the client company has begun a project and requires specific assistance from professionals with certain skills that are not available in-house. Herein, lies the advantage because you can hire a top level talent for a fraction of the full-time hire.  Additionally, the client company’s managers oversee project management and completion. Advantages This model is perfect for ongoing projects. Specific skills that are required only for a short duration could be hired based on specific projects. Direct access and control of remote workers either onsite or offshore. Disadvantages Client bears the management responsibilities. Communication channels need to be of high quality and transparent. Deliverables are the client’s onus. Case study: A San Francisco Bay Area software company required to execute Python-based projects. Unable to acquire in-house talents, they decide to hire two skilled Python developers from an out-staffing company. While the projects were completed in time satisfactorily, the company realized it needed to complete more projects in other newer technologies such as Kotlin. This resulted in the client having to hire more remote workers from a different out-staffing agency. What went wrong? Hiring multiple remote workers could have been avoided if the client company hired from the same agency and paid for the development time, rather than for the number of workers. The client also didn’t receive the necessary guidance. Lesson: Out-staffing model is suited for a large IT company that already has well-defined processes and management but is looking for specific skills temporarily. It is not suitable for companies with dynamic requirements. What a flexible model looks like? A flexible model combines the outsourcing model with out-staffing services and adds IT consultancy to the mix. Most outsourcing and out-staffing models fail because consulting is often ignored and the fact that project requirements change along the way is taken for granted. Software development and digital requirements are always dynamic and cherry picking projects and remote workers can both prove to be expensive. Dedicated hiring is a flexible and dynamic solution that erases constraints placed by traditional models such as outsourcing and out-staffing. It combines the advantages of traditional project outsourcing and remote workers with that of consultancy so that businesses only pay for skills used and services rendered. Most importantly, businesses do not have to squander temporal and financial resources on multiple project outsourcing and parallel remote hiring. Advantages of a flexible model As project requirements and skill demands can widely oscillate, a flexible model is leaner and cost-effective Such a model gives the client company access to developers, designers, digital marketing consultants, security experts, project managers, ScrumMasters, etc. It also stresses on the importance of an agile framework, which helps businesses to scale down or scale up depending on their evolving needs. Dedicated hiring can be understood as an amalgamation of the benefits of outsourcing and out-staffing models with added benefits of IT consultancy. This is a flexible model that allows businesses to manage projects the way they want while having access to a multi-disciplinary team of IT professionals and consultants. Key takeaways The traditional outsourcing model focuses on project completion by an external service provider Out-staffing model focuses on hiring remote workers to fill specific gaps temporarily Dedicated hiring addresses the pain points associated

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offshore-agile-marketing-team-success

Building An Offshore Agile Marketing Team

February 6, 2019

According to McKinsey, “Agile, in the marketing context, means using data and analytics to continuously source promising opportunities or solutions to problems in real-time, deploying tests quickly, evaluating the results, and rapidly iterating.” An Agile marketing strategy particularly helps to manage offshore marketing teams. It allows quick and efficient coordination with teams to complete several disparate marketing processes simultaneously. The best part of offshore agile teams is clear communication. You can assign roles and targets to your offshore teams and monitor them on an ongoing basis via Scrum meetings. In this article, we will discuss how you can build your own offshore Agile team for marketing right from the scratch. Points to keep in mind before building an offshore Agile team for marketing Start with identifying agencies which specialize in multiple disciplines. An agency that only specializes in digital marketing may not be able to help you with certain technical aspects of your marketing campaigns.  According to Gartner, your team should comprise a group of multidisciplinary generalists.  The team should be able to connect with several pain points that your customers may face. Based on that, they should intuitively use their skill sets to build, execute and monitor marketing campaigns autonomously. Only those agencies that specialize in multiple skills such as digital marketing, design, development and consulting will be able to achieve such a feat. Look for an agency that can work autonomously and lead itself. Gartner specifies this to be the second most important quality while identifying a team. It also adds that you should choose a team which proves its strength in data analytics too. Identification of roles and responsibilities Well, you can divide your marketing teams into five groups, like: Content team: This team works with everything related to the content of your campaigns. This includes text, audio, video, and images. You will need a great copywriter, a blogging team, and a social media team. Sales team: They are responsible for everything related to lead acquisition and making sales. This team may also have marketing professionals involved or if you want to create a separate marketing team to develop campaigns, you can do that too. Monetization team: This team is responsible for converting leads into customers by taking on multiple roles. This could be client-servicing, customer service, or plain old sales. Data and analytics team: You should prioritize hiring people who are good at data and analytics. Agile marketing depends on data and you will need people with a strong IT background to work with analytical tools that can derive market insights. Strategy team: The strategy builders should be multi-disciplinarian in their approach and should combine insight with creativity to come up with marketing and sales campaigns. Hence, they should also be experts in Agile management and should be able to conduct daily and weekly Scrum meetings. How many people should be in each team?  Well, there is no specific answer to this question. Because It depends on the size of your own company and also your marketing goals.  Agile marketing revolves around the idea of scalability. It makes sense to keep the team(s) as small as possible.  There are cases where just a single team manages all the functions we described above. Sometimes, just 2 to 3 members can form your offshore Agile marketing team, and their roles may overlap. In other cases, you can have multiple teams with as many as 10 to 15 members in each team. And respective ScrumMasters will lead these teams.  Organize your offshore Agile marketing team and assign leadership roles To build your high-performing offshore Agile marketing team, start small and identify your marketing approach. The crux of agile methodology is scalability.  A good vendor will only assign those members who will work on your project. This can be as few as just two individual members, one of whom could be the ScrumMaster.  As your marketing requirements grow, you can add new members to your team. Because the prospects of dividing your team into multiple ones increase with each additional member. At this juncture, you can refer to our guidelines regarding a full-fledged marketing team. Agile leadership varies across organizations and there can be different kinds of leaders. Some of the leadership roles that companies often hire externally include Editorial Director – Leads the video, blog, image, social media and community management roles Director of Acquisition – Leads the data analytics, sales, and marketing teams Director of Monetization – Leads other roles such as monetizing campaigns, measuring Agile success, and achieving targets. The one who leads the team should have a decent intellectual capacity. And he or she should be able to arrive at solutions in a creative manner. These are the primary qualities you need to look for in an agile marketing team leader: Entrepreneurial spirit Multidisciplinary skills Creativity Individuality Leadership skills If the marketing leader has all these qualities, he or she can play the role of the Scrum Master as well.  Managing your offshore Agile marketing team Once you have a team(s) in place, it’s time to manage the offshore Agile team as your own. Agile marketing works similar to Agile development. And the basics of Agile marketing is tracking and measuring success via regular Scrum meetings.  Daily standup meetings, also known as Scrum meetings, should not last for more than 15 minutes. You can hold these meetings through video conferencing tools or even on JIRA. You can conduct weekly review meetings. Eventually, it will help you to ensure that your marketing strategy is aligned with your offshore Agile marketing team’s progress. Assign KPIs for each role and for each team. Measure these KPIs regularly and track job responsibilities and accountabilities. We would suggest assigning the role of ScrumMaster to someone from the offshore Agile team. This way, the ScrumMaster can conduct a daily 15-minute standup at the offshore location.  On the other hand, your internal representatives can conduct the weekly reviews. This is an easier way to manage and monitor campaigns while keeping team dynamics

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