Top 15 Ways To Improve & Track The Performance of Your Software Outsourcing Team
Effectively tracking the performance of developers when client companies outsource their projects to a software development company is a common challenge. It is crucial to understand whether your investment in hiring developers was worthwhile because you can't really monitor the outsourced team full-time, especially when it comes to offshore outsourcing.
Here are 15 tips that can provide you with much-needed insights into the performance of the software outsourcing team.
- Track velocity as in-house
Tracking velocity is a standard when working with an engineering team, regardless of whether they are in-house or outsourced. The software development outsourcing team should be considered in the same way as full-time talent and be responsible for the same tasks as full-time staff, relative to the hours they work. And outsourcing shouldn't reduce effectiveness and productivity.
- Leverage the time to the market metric
Time to market (TTM) is the total length of time it takes to develop a product from conception to market availability. Businesses can use TTM metrics during new product development and new product introduction as they desire to gain first-mover benefits like revenue or market share.
- Focus on the outcome, not the output
In software development, focusing on the quantitative factors of the product being produced is never the solution. In order to consider the software development and delivery procedure, the product being deployed should be evaluated for stability. So,
an outcome-based approach indicates that instead of measuring the quantitative aspect of output -- the outcome -- the software product is evaluated to measure the performance of the tech team.
- Follow milestones and deadlines
A project milestone is a management tool that is used to delineate a point in a project schedule. These points help managers know when the project starts and finishes and mark the completion of a major stage of work. The business can start the first milestone with less work and then evaluate it and the relationship. It will show you their behaviour and ability and allow you to see if it’s a good choice.
- Define success
Describe what success for the particular outsourced project looks like. Success in some situations might just mean crossing off a few outstanding tickets, while in others you might be seeking more detailed strategic recommendations for your tech stack or DevOps. Approach the outsourcer with a defined definition of success and a clear understanding of your needs.
- Conduct Daily Stand-up
Every piece of software is the result of skill and human collaboration. And daily stand-up is a practice. During the daily stand-up, teams report their progress so that everyone can see how the project is developing. We also need a code review and quality assurance team to ensure their work is the best it can be.
- Define which Metrics To Track
Metrics are quantifiable measures used to follow processes and evaluate the performance levels of various areas within your organization. Depending on their goals, companies can define the metrics to track and where to focus their attention. To evaluate the software development and delivery process, take into consideration the stability, delivery time, and frequency of software deployment.
- Efficiently Communicate With Your Developers
It's important to note that communicating with developers isn't always the same as communicating with managers or other employees. It means that you should consider how best to communicate with those teams. With a few modifications to your usual efforts, you can efficiently and effectively communicate with your IT team and keep your business humming along.
- Consider Quantitative Outputs
Besides quantitative measurements, businesses can also think of qualitative attributes. Do they apply their expertise to help the business guide strategic decisions? Can they offer solutions to solve the problems? Do they upgrade their technical knowledge and security skills?
- Build a transparency workflow
Workflow transparency refers to the ability to consider a business process independently of the workflow implementing it. Trusting an outsourced company with your code is the hardest part of any project. However, full transparency builds trust, facilitates communication, and keeps the project on track. You should have real-time access to the workflows, job sheets, hours, and progress.
- Utilize workforce analytics
Workforce analytics is a method to measure the behaviours of individual contributors within an organization, analyze the results, and offer improvements in business performance. Additionally, it assists businesses in understanding how much time the IT team spends on projects and connecting that data to results for a complete picture of productivity and performance. That data helps the business compare internal team performance and evaluate outsourcing investments.
- Utilize Qualitative KPIs
Quality outsourcing is frequently risky. especially when conducted as a cost-saving measure, as the trade-off between quality and cost is often understated. Due to delivery centers' focusing on time-based milestones rather than quality-based stage gates, this enables outsourcers to concentrate on the quantity of work rather than the quality of the work.
- Setting a Framework
Software frameworks may include lines of code, compilers, code libraries, toolsets, and application programming interfaces (APIs) that bring together all the different components to enable the development of a project or system. It emphasizes the result rather than the output and achieves a balance between productivity and quality. Setting a framework within organizations will help to measure the performance of software development outsourcing. Set some KPIs as well to evaluate the performance of the outsourced software development team.
- Look At Their Cultural Fit
Outsourced developers' cultural fit is defined as their ability to conform to and adapt to the core values and group behaviors that define an organization. For instance, if your business has set working hours, you might need your developers to work shifts at particular times. For a developer who only works flexible shifts, this might not be effective.
- Provide a weekly status report
Hardware development results are correlated with testing, whereas there are well-established metrics for quality and quantity in software development. A weekly status report to contractors keeps them on track and accountable. It is also a complete overview of your week at work, covering projects you've completed, ones that are still in progress, and upcoming plans for the future.
