Mary AtamaniukHow to establish trust at the initial stages of your product development
Why is it so hard to trust your offshore development team has been one of the most difficult problems of business relationships, and the IT industry is not an exception. Mutual trust is a paramount factor of setting up a productive and successful workflow with the software engineers. Ultimately all of the fears of tech companies boil down to a question of trust:
How can I be sure a partnership with a software development vendor won’t f*ck up my business?
Despite a wide range of advantages, offshore development also has drawbacks, such as:
- long distances
- different cultures
- poor communication with remote teams
- lack of information about the developers
- risky payments, and some more.
Aside from these issues, the key problem of remote team management is the lack of mutual trust. Furthermore, it is critical to establish trust in the initial stages of forming an offshore development team before your product development has been failed.
With this in mind, we build YouTeam – a marketplace that connects its clients with the world’s best offshore software developers and the entire teams. The main difference of our marketplace from a freelance portal is that every developer, UX designer, DevOps, and QA in our database are actually not freelancer (no hard feelings, we respect freelancers and do also work with them ourselves; however, we also realize that very often the core development team has to be extended with ‘managed’ software developers).
They work on a full-time basis at web development shops in offshore countries. The clients sign contracts with those dev shops and the latter become fully responsible for their employees, from the quality of their work to all additional expenses, such as vacations or sick leaves.
How a Tech Talent Marketplace Can Help You Trust Offshore Development Team
Let’s see how collaboration with your team via the YouTeam platform can help you create trustworthy relationships between your head office and the offshore team members.
#1 Strict Vetting
This is essential for both web development shops and developers employed by them. You can trust the dev shop vendors that are featured on YouTeam because each of them undergoes a thorough screening process. Experts at YouTeam analyze all legal and HR aspects to see if the shortlisted firm complies with all of the necessary rules.
We can even visit the offices of our vendors to see how they organize their workflow and communication. Moreover, each of the software engineers that our clients select for their projects undergo additional screening by the vendor.
Each stage of our multi-level vetting system brings you one step closer to mutual trust between your head office and the offshore team. And if still for any reason some developers demonstrate the low quality of work (though it happens very rarely) – we take immediate measures and ban the dev shop from the platform.
#2 Updated Developer Profiles
Completed developer profiles and portfolios that are constantly updated. Lack of information about your new team members can lead to mistrust. That’s why it is always important to know who you are going to cooperate with, especially when it comes to remote software engineers.
YouTeam will never accept any empty or incomplete developer profiles; detailed information about all of the completed projects and tasks is a must for everyone who would like to join our platform. Moreover, we encourage the developers to update their profiles on a regular basis in order to showcase their recent projects. Check this profile of a Drupal developer, for example.
#3 Direct Communication
Ability to directly communicate with the team is crucial. In some cases, traditional offshore development outsourcing companies do not allow the client’s direct communication with the developers. They delegate the communication to the offshore project manager who acts as an intermediary between the two parties. This is actually not the best practice if you are aimed at building trust with your offshore development team.
Communication via someone else will lead to misunderstanding and can even ruin the project. On the contrary, YouTeam clients can personally interview the candidates and communicate with the already hired programmers at any time in the course of the project.
#4 Secure Payments
Our clients can securely transfer all of the payments through our platform.
However, the offshore team members do not receive these payments until you approve the delivered work. As a result, collaboration through the reliable and trustworthy system also improves the trust between the team members.
Guided by the tips listed above, you will manage an offshore development team much easier. By the way, do you remember what was written at the very beginning of this article?
The crucial problem of cooperating between remote teams is the absence of mutual trust.
With that said, you cannot leave any frustrations behind until you learn how to trust your remote co-workers. The tricky thing is that the internal problem cannot be solved externally.
Apart from choosing a reliable tech talent marketplace, you should change your state of mind a bit, switching a focus from control to trust.
The reason is obvious – trust is the key to successful cross-organizational and inter-agency collaboration.
As research shows, trust has an overall positive impact on team productivity levels. One Harvard study took the world by storm having revealed the surprising truth about the neuroscience of trust. According to the research, trust improves teamwork in multiple ways. In particular, it does the following:
- boosts energy by 104%,
- reduces occupational stress by 74%,
- increases employee engagement by 76%,
- decreases burnout by 40%,
- streamlines productivity by 50%.
The results are pretty impressive, right?
If you want to foster productivity & engagement within an entirely remote working environment – the best time to start doing it is now. We at YouTeam can help you build an offshore development team from scratch. With special tools for cross-agency messaging, automatic invoicing, and contract issuance, your hiring process is becoming absolutely hassle-free
Looking for an offshore development?
We at YouTeam will be happy to help you find the best candidates on the market. Sign up on youteam.io today and make them a part of your team tomorrow!
Svetlana Shevchuk
