How Can Outstaffing Mobile app Development Relieve Your Headache?

Outsourcing is a type of collaboration when you’re handing over your project to another party. If talking in terms of mobile development, you find an appropriate agency, set your tech and business requirements for the app, make the payment and just control the process until all work is completed.

Afterward, you can repeat this cycle as many times as you need to improve your app, add new features or UI elements, release updates and so on.

The main idea behind outsourcing: you delegate your project to another team which has all the necessary resources and expertise.

The project manager is usually your link to the chosen team. His work is to make sure that both parties have heard and met each other’s requirements on purpose.

Your role as a client in the outsourcing process is simple as that: you send your requirements to the PM, provide him with all needed information during the project and then enjoy the final result. Yet, if you wish, you can also be more active and participate as a fully fledged product owner and take part in the planning of sprints and tasks.

Outstaffing is a type of remote employment when you hire a specific professional from the chosen agency to work on your project. The outstaffing company isn’t responsible for completing your project - it just provides you with an employee (one or as many as you need) who will become a remote member of your team and will adjust to your internal processes.

This model is especially useful for hiring kiosk software developers who can seamlessly integrate with your team while bringing specialized experience in building secure, interactive kiosk applications.

One of the main reasons of communication delays is the difference in time zones. If it is about 2-3 hours, it may be inappreciable. However, sometimes it can be up to 8 hours or more and then you will need to find a convenient and appropriate way to communicate with your worker or outstaffing company.

What’s the way out?

The most obvious solution, in your opinion, is probably not to look for too distant options. However, sometimes it may be quite difficult.

For example, companies from the United States often prefer to cooperate with outstaffing companies from Ukraine and other countries of Eastern Europe. This region can provide you with skillful and qualified developers with relatively low hourly rates ($25-$50 compared to $120-$170 in the USA). That’s why it’s often more profitable to find an effective way to deal with the difference in time zones rather than try to avoid it by all means.

So here are our 4 practical recommendations that we’ve prepared for you:

1) Set up a clear communication strategy

For this purpose, find the answers to the following questions:

• What tools are you going to use for communication? Skype calls, emails, chatting via messengers? We recommend to use messengers for short daily communication sessions and Skype (or any other) calls for discussion that may take 20 minutes and more.
• How often do you need to communicate on a regular basis? For example, your developer may send you a short written report at the end of each day and call you once a week to discuss the current progress and future plans. Yet, the answer to this question significantly depends on the development model that you’ve chosen (Scrum, Kanban etc.).

2) Turn your communication into a good tradition

Do not think of it as something unnecessary and unimportant. Try not to avoid planned communication sessions even if there isn’t much to say.

3) Keep in touch with your employee but don’t micro-manage

If you don’t have any urgent questions, collect them and ask closer to the end of the day. This will not distract developers from work.

4) Make an onboarding plan for the chosen developer

Tell him about the way the development process is set up on your end. Do you work in a Scrum environment? Fine - tell him about your Scrum ceremonies. You work in Kanban? Not a challenge - tell him and your new developer will adjust.

Risk # 2: Cultural differences 😶

Cultural barriers are another thing you should pay attention to during your app development. Many people neglect these differences since they suppose that in the modern globalized world they don’t play a great role.

But this is not quite true.

National beliefs, norms and values directly affect behavior even of the dedicated development teams. Sensitivity to criticism, usual models/styles of communication, work culture, tendency to be initiative - all these and many other factors in one way or another can either make your cooperation better or create additional issues.

What is to be done?

Although our previous recommendation sounded like “instead of trying to avoid the issue, make the best out of it”, this situation is totally opposite.

Thirdly, arrangement of the workplace also isn’t an issue for you. Imagine, that you need a couple of iOS developers to work on your project. In this case, you should have enough space in your office for all of them, provide each with a table, seat and Mac (you can code iOS apps only using Apple Mac devices as you know).

Sounds like a headache, doesn’t it?

And, again, this isn’t what you have to take care of when using remote outstaffing services. Your partner will make sure that the employee has everything he needs to perform his tasks in a comfortable working environment.

# 2: You have flexibility in choosing employees 🌍

When looking for a new team member, you have to be sure that he meets all the requirements: has enough years of experience, has the right needed development stack and can implement specific technologies. However, your searches can come to the deadlock if you’re considering candidates only from the area of your living. And outstaffing services for mobile app development help to avoid this problem!

When you expand the range of search for the whole world (or at least some of its regions) you greatly increase the number of options and variants to choose from.

Moreover, as we’ve already mentioned above, it gives you the opportunity to hire an expert from another country with significantly lower average wages.

During the last years, Eastern Europe and Asia Pacific became the leading regions in providing outstaffing and outsourcing mobile app development services.

Countries of the Asia Pacific region usually charge the lowest fee and it’s often considered as their main advantage. Yet, when cooperating with agencies from there be ready to face cultural barriers and less skillful programmers since these are the common troubles of the region.

On the other hand, outstaffing companies from Eastern Europe are often appreciated for their favorable “price-quality” ratio. They charge noticeably less than dedicated development teams from the US or Western Europe but can easily create products of the same quality than their western colleagues.

# 3: Full access to developers = full control over the development process 👩‍💻

Direct project management may sound like an additional headache to someone but it, actually, gives you more opportunities to supervise the development process. When hiring a freelance developer, there’s always a risk that he can just disappear one day.

Outstaffing, on the other hand, makes such a situation impossible. The agency you are cooperating with are always behind the developer, so you (or your PM) can communicate with the remote employee on a daily basis without any troubles.

Moreover, if you already have an ongoing project with an assembled team and an established development process, outstaffing is the best way to incorporate a new developer without disturbing it. This is another significant feature of outstaffing since you can’t achieve the same when using outsourcing services.

Also, with the direct access to your remote employee you’re able to control his work and be sure that it lies within the current development process. It will be easier for him to work on the product in the team which already understands it.

# 4: You don’t spend time on solving organizational issues ⏳

Despite you work directly with the hired developer, your partner (the outstaffing company) doesn’t disappear too. During your cooperation he is responsible for taking care of all organizational matters:

• Sick leaves and vacations aren’t something that you should foresee. Generally, this is discussed and resolved within the company and agreed with you.
• In case of emergencies, agencies usually provide a substitution.
• Your partner can also provide a substitution if you’re not on the same page with the current developer or dissatisfied with his work.

That’s a great benefit for you and your project! Leaving all the organizational issues aside lets you concentrate on creating and improving your product without spending additional time and efforts on side tasks.

# 5: You can adopt the experience from other developers 🎓

This headache is especially relevant for small-scale agencies and development departments. By outstaffing app developers, you enlarge your indoor team and improve the working environment. How can it help you?

App development is a creative process that often requires innovative and non-standard approaches. Outstaffing agencies often have many developers that are involved in different projects. Thus, it’s usually possible to find the one who is very skillful in the field of your interest.

By having such a comrade who has its own unique skill set and expertise, your in-house team can adopt his experience and use it when working on your project.

Simply by sharing their knowledge with each other, your in-house and external developers will work as one coherent mechanism. Together they will be able to find more appropriate solutions in the shortest time.

# 6: It helps your startup grow 📈

Finding an appropriate candidate for your in-house team may be a tricky task. Sometimes this takes months and consumes a lot of your resources. Well, if you have ever faced the recruiting process, you know what I’m talking about.

This approach is the best for the companies that already have in-house teams, established development process and a clear vision of the product but lack a specific team member. The main advantages of outstaffing are:

TL;DR: Using outstaffing services, your startup will be able to grow faster.

If you face a challenge with finding a good Mobile Developer for your Product Team, hit the button below. We will help you to save the world :)