Offshore Software Development Team – 11 Collaboration Tips

Introduction

Only high-quality input from a client guarantees high quality output from an offshore team.

Below we explain which information to prepare to help a chosen company do their work best.

How to manage offshore software development team?

High-quality input = Highest quality output = No surprises

The most common mistake that we’ve noticed on the market is the expectation of having high-quality output without great input. What I mean by high-quality input are:

1. Well prepared brief/specification – Clear vision/business goals of the project, timeline, budget range, features description, tech stack description/proposition,

2. Mockups and wireframes attached to user stories (not only main views, but states of elements, eg. on click, on hover, and error handling – error messages etc.) – The developers shouldn’t decide on those things, they should have a clear information on what they should code,

3. Backlog – User stories in the backlog should be properly described according to the art of doing it, developers should have a clear Definition of Done checklist, the user stories should be organized in JIRA or other similar software,

4. MVP scope

5. Communication – Clear channels of communication (Slack/Email/Zoom/Skype) that are being used properly

6. Consistency – clear plan of meetings (Daily standups, weekly demos, sprint planning, retrospective) – this is especially important in an Agile environment

7. Acceptance criteria (QA) – transparent criteria that a User Story needs to be checked against and meet in order to be considered an acceptable increment

8. Client’s testing – regular input from the client is very helpful

9. Project roadmap – the outline of how the project will progress in time, even after the current phases

10. Project’s Definition of Done – clear, measurable criteria for the work to be considered finished in current release or increment and to minimize additional post-development workload, especially when deadlines are involved.

11. Strong leadership – a person that both grooms and enforces good practices, projects goals and priorities, technical requirements. Someone who is easily available for the team to supply information.

So, remember next time, if you are expecting high-quality output, then help the team by preparing them clear input to help them stay productive with the highest performance possible.