Companies that choose offshore product development (OPD) can have the benefit of releasing their products faster than their competitors due to time differences and 24-hour’ development. In a digital world, speed is a massive advantage.
Moreover, with offshoring, you will save a significant amount of recruiting, training, and managing costs for your company. OPD vendors can also offer you a skillful and experienced team if you choose your partner wisely.
What is offshore product development?
Offshore product development is the practice of outsourcing software products to a team of professionals located in a different country or region. The offshore team may be responsible for a variety of tasks, such as design, development, testing, documentation, and project management. This approach is often taken to reduce costs, access specialized talent, and speed up product development.
In the concept of ODP, Your company collaborates with a remote team, which may require a different time zone, language, and cultural differences. You can build an offshore development team through outsourcing companies or set up your own offshore development centers.
However, due to distances, managing an offshore development team to make sure they are on track is quite challenging. Fully acknowledging the process will help enterprises have better control over the product’s outcome.
Advantages and Disadvantages
Offshore product development can offer a number of benefits to companies.
Cost savings: Companies can often hire skilled developers in other countries for a lower cost than in their own country. This can help reduce development costs and increase profitability.
Access to specialized talent: Companies have access to specialized talent that may not be available in their own country. This can include software engineers and experts with specific technical expertise or industry knowledge.
Increased flexibility: This model can also provide increased flexibility, allowing companies to scale up or down as needed. This can be particularly useful for startups or small businesses that may not have the resources to maintain a large in-house development team.
Faster time-to-market: Offshore product development can help companies speed up their product development process. By leveraging the expertise of offshore teams, companies can reduce development time and get their products to market faster.
In general, offshore product development can be a strategic move for companies looking to reduce costs, access specialized talent, and speed up product development. However, it’s important to carefully consider the potential challenges and risks associated with offshore development and to implement effective communication and management strategies to ensure success.
One of the biggest challenges is communication. Offshore teams may be located in different time zones and may speak different languages, which can make effective communication more difficult. In addition, cultural differences can also impact the success of offshore development projects.
To mitigate these challenges, companies need to implement effective communication and management strategies. This may include regular video conferencing, clear project guidelines, and a well-defined project management approach.
Factors to consider when choosing an offshore partner
Finding a reliable partner for your offshore development needs is an important process that requires patience and careful evaluation of potential partners. Choosing the wrong partner will cost you a lot of time, costs, opportunities, and risks. Here are some of the key factors to consider when choosing an offshore partner:
Technical expertise: One of the most important factors to consider is the technical expertise of the vendor. Companies should look for vendors with experience in the specific technology stack and development methodologies required for their projects.
Portfolio and references: It’s important to review the partner’s portfolio and references to get a sense of their past work and client satisfaction. This can help you evaluate the partner’s capabilities and reliability.
Communication: Effective communication is critical for successful offshore development projects. You should look for partners with clear communication channels and a strong commitment to regular communication and status updates.
Cost and pricing model: Cost is often a key factor in choosing an offshore development partner. You should evaluate the vendor’s pricing model and ensure that it aligns with their budget and project requirements.
In addition, you can evaluate other criteria such as Brand Reputation, Cultural fit, Location and time zone, and security.
The offshore product development process
In general, there are 7 main steps in TECHVIFY’s offshore software development process:
- Defining customers’ demands.
- Analyzing and Designing solutions.
- Programming and Encoding.
- Examining and Testing the software.
- Debugging and Exporting the software.
- Installing, Delivering, Documenting, and Conducting software maintenance and warranty.
- Releasing and Distributing the software.
Step 1: Defining customers’ demands
Customers will discuss their technical problems that need to be solved, as well as specific requirements with TECHVIFY. From there, we will consult customers with reasonable solutions that balance your requirements and your budget. By discussing and resolving all concerns, TECHVIFY will come up with a suitable proposal estimating the working process, phases, effort, and costs.
Step 2: Analyzing and Designing solutions
After finalizing the deal, TECHVIFY will provide a detailed action plan for customers to follow the working progress. We will receive customer data to analyze and convert the solution’s big idea into step-by-step technical guidance, like which programming language to use, or which technical method is the most suitable for your request. Subsequently, a team that was specifically assigned to conduct the project will start designing the framework.
Step 3: Programming and Encoding
Our team of talented senior developers will start encoding to convert all customer’s data and demands into a compatible programming language.
Step 4: Examining and Testing the software
After developers finished programming, the product will be thoroughly examined by TECHVIFY’s tester team. Testers will test the software for bugs, errors, defects, or any problem that the end user may come across, and provide reports to the project team about any issues or improvements that the product may require.
Step 5: Debugging and Roll-out
Through testers’ reports, the developer’s team will detect and remove existing and potential errors (also called ‘bugs’) in the software code that can cause it to behave unexpectedly or crash. After scanning through and fixing all possible errors, the software will be tested in a prepared environment to make sure it will perform well under real conditions. When all the criteria are checked, the software will be verified to roll out and go live.
Step 6: Installing, Delivering, Documenting, and Conducting software maintenance and warranty
TECHVIFY will help to install the software, as well as provide a proper installation manual and user guide to instruct clients to run and manage the program. In order to protect customers’ privacy, we will hand over all data, documents, and reports right after delivering the final product. Depending on the Maintenance and Warranty Policy in the contract, TECHVIFY will offer relevant services to ensure the product’s performance.
Step 7: Releasing and Distributing the software
In the last step of offshore product development, the software will be released and distributed into a real environment and start operating as a completed program.
Final Thought
Those are the 7 basic steps of how TECHVIFY would conduct an offshore product development process. The procedure could be modified depending on different clients and requirements to ensure the expected outcome.
Nevertheless, TECHVIFY’s ultimate goal is to solve clients’ technical problems by carrying out satisfying solutions. When choosing TECHVIFY as your offshore development vendor, you can rest assured that we are a professional team with a transparent working process, aiming to meet customer satisfaction is our top priority.
If you are looking for a dedicated, flexible, and obliging offshore product development expert, TECHVIFY is definitely a competitive option at the top of your list!
As CEO of Techvify, a top-class software outsourcing company based in Vietnam, I focus on pursuing my passion for digital innovation. Understanding the customer’s pain points to consolidate, manage and harvest with the most satisfactory results is what brings the project to success.
