Five Indicators You Need To Outsource Software Development

 Over the past few years, the position of software outsourcing has been strengthened due to more and more companies opting for custom software solutions or involving external experts to extend the capabilities of internal tech teams.

There are certainly benefits to outsourcing, especially since you get a solution that is designed to address your business or technical challenges. But is it the right option for your company, and when is it time to start outsourcing your software development?

Here are the five most prominent signs you need to kick off your hunt for a reliable software development partner.

Lack Of The Necessary Expertise And Skills

Unless your primary business focus is software development, chances are high that you reach a point when the in-house team lacks some specific skills needed to meet project needs.

For example, your project takes an unexpected pivot—now it requires blockchain or artificial intelligence to function properly, but your team has little or no experience working with these technologies. One option is to retrain your existing team or assemble a new one. But both scenarios require an investment of many hours and resources. With outsourcing, you can scale up your team with the right specialist anytime.

An Overloaded In-House Team

With the growth of your business, the need for software development will also grow exponentially. If you have an in-house team working full-time on your project, it may happen that a project load exceeds its timeline, making it nearly impossible to keep up with an ongoing project or take on a new one. Regular work on weekends or late at night isn’t the best way to get your project done since your team will most likely burn out.

In this case, get a reliable software development partner to power up your in-house team. This will help expedite the process and get everything done on time.

The Necessity To Speed Up

Occasionally, the timeframes for a project delivery are limited. That might become an issue as no one wants their release to go live later as opposed to sooner. This is especially true when you’re about to present a new feature in an app or you want to stay ahead of your competitors.

If you feel your team cannot keep up with fast updates and you need help to stay ahead of the game, it’s time to outsource your project development. Once you give it a chance, you’ll be able to speed up the delivery of your project and see tangible results faster.

Flexible Workload Of In-House Team

If your project’s expansion is overtaxing resources that are already stretched to capacity, it’s time to get outside help. Scaling your team with full-time employees is a lengthy and costly process. And you cannot hire a specialist just to carry out a few tasks—you also need to cover their idle time. Choosing outsourcers on a flexible model of cooperation could be the cure to overspending and missed deadlines.

Or what if you find yourself unexpectedly having to deliver a large number of updates to outperform your key competitors or improve your services? A solution to this problem can be found in outsourcing to a third-party vendor that is equipped to manage any volume of development processes that you are not, and they can jump on and off your project at any time.

While outsourcing, you can build a team based on your current workload and high-priority tasks. For example, the time and material engagement model lets you pay the vendor for the amount of time the team spent on your project. If your project requires more hands, you can opt for the staff augmentation model.

Increasing Difficulty Of Finding The Right Talent

Whenever you decide to find a new teammate, you’ll have to grapple with the ever-rising challenge of filling in your talent gaps. According to U.S. Labor statistics, the global talent shortage is projected to reach 85.2 million, which is set to result in a loss of $8.4 trillion in revenue.

Apart from the global tech talent shortage, there is a rising demand for software engineers. Job openings for software engineers, testers and other software development specialists are projected to grow by 25% year over year from 2021 to 2030.

Hiring top-notch talent is easier with outsourcing. You get access to battle-tested software engineers with the right expertise at any time without having to jump on the recruitment wagon again and again.

Outsource The Right Way

Outsourcing all alone can’t do the trick and solve all your business issues at once. However, doing it with the right team that has the right skills can save thousands of dollars and hundreds of hours. Along with this, you have access to a larger talent pool with greater flexibility. It’s not a coincidence that more businesses are looking for software development outsourcing services rather than assembling an in-house team.

However, it’s necessary to find a reliable tech partner that can satisfy all your business needs and deliver a high-quality software solution. Following this algorithm may help you:

• Establish your own requirements and decide on the budget

• Research companies or ask for recommendations

• Create a shortlist of the best software development companies for your needs

• Check their technical expertise and experience in an industry or projects similar to yours

• Pay attention to the chemistry between your potential vendor and you

Hiring a software development consultant is always an option. Even if you don’t end up with the vendor as their go-to company to work on the version of your future software, they can help you with business analysis, research and even finding the right company to work on your project.

With careful consideration, software development outsourcing can take the burden of developing a custom solution off your shoulders so your business can achieve its objectives.

Looking to hire skilled software developers? Contact TP&P Technology - Leading Software Outsourcing Company in Vietnam Today

Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2022/12/01/five-indicators-you-need-to-outsource-software-development/?sh=681ee4c34f75

Top Three Mistakes Clients Make When Hiring A Dedicated Software Development Team

 In recent years, businesses operating in many industries have been embracing the technological revolution and welcoming digital transformation. But software development, while highly demanded, is a niche industry that comes with its own set of required knowledge, expertise and skills.

Not every business, technologically inclined or otherwise, has the capacity to hire in-house software teams. A lot of startups often do not have the funds. Larger businesses may not want to go through the hassle of permanent, long-term recruitment.

This is where outsourcing comes in. While there are countless upsides to outsourcing software teams, such engagements can often easily go wrong.

Why Businesses Outsource Software Development

Outsourcing software development teams allows companies to hire professionals based precisely on what they need. They can choose which roles they need and which ones they could do without. Any budgetary constraints can also be easily accommodated. Here are a few other benefits that outsourcing has compared to hiring a team that works in-house:

• Controlled costs

• Lower risk

• Improved efficiencies

• Faster results

• Controlled costs

• Lower risk

• Improved efficiencies

• Faster results

Three Mistakes To Avoid When Outsourcing

While hiring an external third party for any purpose seems like an easy task, you must exercise some caution. Based on my experience, here are three mistakes that many businesses make that can result in regrettable experiences with their outsourcing partners:

1. Not Having A Proper Plan Ready

In order to succeed, you need a solid strategy. As a buyer, you will not be able to develop a powerful strategy to meet your end goals if you do not know what those goals are. Therefore, problem definition is a crucial phase of the software development process.

The process of searching for a software partner involves reaching out to multiple vendors and shortlisting the best after a detailed comparison. If you do not know and understand your requirements, you will have a hard time speaking with the vendors.

Here are some questions you can ask yourself at this stage:

• What are my requirements for the project?

• What do I want the software to do?

• Who will be using this software?

• Designers, developers, QA engineers, managers—which roles do I need on my team?

• When do I need the software to be ready?

• Could cost difference be a dealbreaker?

You do not have to prepare extensive answers to all of these questions, but it is always a good idea to write down whatever you can in the form of an outline or brief. This can help effectively gather your thoughts as well as avoid possible confusion, miscommunication and misinterpretation. Some clients go one step further by using basic sketches as visual aids in initial meetings.

2. Failing To Review Candidates' Previous Work

These days, for even the smallest purchase, most buyers make sure to quickly scan reviews of past customers to authenticate the seller’s credibility. Bigger investments, such as custom software development, warrant more extensive research.

For this reason, platforms such as Clutch and GoodFirms exist. These are review sites that work much like online business directories in that they list different software companies from all over the world. However, they take it one step further by posting verified testimonials from vendors’ past clients, along with star ratings out of five.

Another reason why it is important to check out potential vendors’ past work is so that you can make sure they have relevant experience. If your chosen vendor has previously worked in your domain or industry, they are more likely to be able to understand the product, its purpose and its users.

3. Not Discussing Communication And Collaboration Channels

Like any other partnership, a business relationship also requires effective communication. Therefore, right from the beginning, you need to set some ground rules for yourself and for the team. Asking the following questions can help:

• How involved do I want to be throughout the development process?

• How often do I want to be updated?

• Which team member(s) would I like as my point(s) of contact?

• Am I more comfortable with Zoom meetings, Skype calls, emails or text messages?

Another great mindset to have is to think of the team as working with you instead of working for you. Encourage open communication so that you and your dedicated team are always on the same page. Make sure to not be too overbearing with status updates or other forms of micromanagement. It is important to have faith in the team and trust the process.

Wrapping Up

From cost savings to greater availability of talent, outsourcing software development carries a horde of advantages. It is important, however, to not get carried away when making the crucial decision to hire a dedicated team. Ensuring you don’t make the same mistakes that many other clients do will not only help you find the right fit for your company but also help avoid irrecoverable losses.

Looking to hire skilled software developers? Contact TP&P Technology - Leading Software Outsourcing Company in Vietnam Today

Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/02/software-development-time-estimation-how-long-should-it-take-to-develop-a-product/?sh=4a2370e76cee

3 Machine Learning Tricks To Improve Team Performance

 Hype about performance data has been high for some time now, whether collecting it, presenting it, or interpreting it. Managers at all levels have been on a quest to quantify employee performance, and therefore codify how to achieve it. But after decades of data gathering, a good formula for creating the perfect employee hasn’t yet emerged.

“I think we're really at the beginning of what I see as a correction of the overreliance on metrics and easily measured quantities that has really characterized the last century of business,” says best-selling author Brian Christian. “We’re at the beginning of putting human values and preferences at least on an equal footing with that.”

Particularly in the past decade, organizations have seen an overall shift toward more human values such as empathy and inclusion. But how does an organization track and measure something like empathy? In other words, how can a system accurately capture and incentivize intangible data? Those questions are what inspired Christian to write his latest book, The Alignment Problem: Machine Learning and Human Values.

Developed from interviews with computer scientists attempting to align an AI system with human values, these are three machine learning tricks Christian learned which can help you track and improve team performance.

1. Cultures are limited by the information put into them.

If you’ve ever prompted an AI to write a story or create an original image, you know firsthand how limited the results can be. An artificial intelligence is limited by the information that is put into it, whether that’s a collection of short stories or the entirety of Google image search results.

“The question of AI bias, AI fairness, has been one of the fastest growing areas within the field of AI in the last five years,” Christian explains. “If you say [to an AI], ‘Show me pictures of nurses’, they're going to be overwhelmingly female. If you say, ‘Show me pictures of CEOs’, they're going to be overwhelmingly western white men wearing suits. There are these stereotypes.”

The same is true of your organizational and team cultures. If you want a culture of high performance on your team, you must make sure the right information is in place to make that culture possible:

- Whose values are being implemented in this culture? Are they being implemented, or merely given lip-service?

- Are values actively or passively absorbed by this culture? How can values be more actively communicated, implemented, and rewarded?

2. Experience allows you to succeed at a higher level.

Imagine you’ve walked into a casino, knowing that some of the slot machines pay out more than others. It’s up to you to figure out which ones have the higher wins. This is the basic premise of what’s called the multi-armed bandit problem, a question that aims to find an algorithm for the most optimal solution.

“It was considered for most of the 20th century to be an unsolvable problem,” Christian says. “But shockingly, it turns out that there are solutions to this, and my favorite are a group of what are called regret minimization algorithms.”

This is how Christian explains it:

In the multi-arm bandit problem, you're really trading off between the payout itself and the information that you gain from trying different things. Your uncertainty about a given machine can be represented by a huge error bar. The more experience you gain, the more you can kind of tighten those error bars down and say, ‘No, I'm pretty sure this pays out 60% of the time. I've played it enough to know.’

The more experience you have, the more accurately you can plan a path to success, assessing your risk and failing smaller while succeeding at a higher level. Encouraging your teams to adopt this kind of thinking may result in more calculated risk-taking, which ultimately results in better outcomes.

3. Incentivize the best behavior you see, not the perfect ideal.

Sometimes as a manager you may feel you’ve communicated a certain performance expectation ad nauseam with no change. What gives? The solution here may lie in how rewards are structured.

“There's a famous computer science paper called Policy in Variance Under Reward Transformation. Basically, what that means is there are ways we can modify the reward structure to make it more easily learnable, but without changing the behavior that we get at the end,” Christian says.

For example, say your goal is to have a computer put a golf ball into a hole. You could withhold any reward until the ball is in the hole, or, you could “transform that into a reward that has to do with proximity,” according to Christian.

But remember, all systems are flawed.

Christian advises leaders to keep in mind that the point here is to adapt machine learning to human systems, not the other way around.

“If all you care about while hiring is giving yourself the best chance of getting the very best candidate, then there is this beautiful rule called The 37% Rule,” Christian explains. “Interview the first 37% of the candidates, send them all home. As you interview everyone else, the very first person who's better than the best person from that initial 37%, hire them immediately on the spot.”

That might be the optimal way to solve the problem of how to hire the best candidate. But, there’ s a pretty major flaw, Christian says.

“The 37% Rule only succeeds 37% of the time,” he laughs. “You can follow the optimal strategy and you'll still fail 63% of the time. A lot of the time when you do fail, you will end up with no candidate at all. That might not be a realistic tradeoff for a hiring manager.”

“If you get points proportional to how close the ball is to the hole, that might produce a system that's a lot more easily learned.”

Looking to hire skilled software developers? Contact TP&P Technology - Leading Software Outsourcing Company in Vietnam Today

Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/02/software-development-time-estimation-how-long-should-it-take-to-develop-a-product/?sh=4a2370e76cee

The Pros And Cons Of Software Outsourcing For Startups

Launching a product-based startup and successfully managing to keep it afloat is a resource-intensive activity. Alas, for most startups, resources are scarce. In fact, barely 1% of startups succeed in securing investment capital.

A great product idea requires perfect execution. How can you make the most of the limited resources available to you and successfully achieve your short- and long-term goals?

As a startup, you have the option to hire a team for in-house software development or outsource development activities to a third party. Let’s explore the pros and cons of outsourcing and whether or not it is an option to consider for your startup.

Pros Of Outsourcing

The primary benefits of outsourcing software development include achieving time and cost efficiencies, launching products on schedule and being able to focus on the entire business instead of spending all your energy, effort, time and money on software development.

Speeding Up The Process

There are a limited number of hours in a day, and one person cannot possibly oversee every aspect of running a startup. Thus, an extra pair of hands can make a world of difference.

Every startup owner aspires to outpace all potential competitors. They know why their product must beat any other substitutes to market: to capture greater market share. With a professional development team, your project may head in the desired direction right from the start.

Achieving Cost Efficiency

Most software development service providers offer highly flexible and scalable engagement options to startups. This helps accurately estimate expenses before the process begins, and you can manipulate the various determining factors to control the costs.

For example, if you have a fixed product vision and budget in mind, you can approach vendors that offer fixed-cost outsourcing for startups. If you want to be able to change the outsourced team’s composition depending on how each phase of development progresses, you can opt for a dedicated development model. You will be able to add or remove team members as per your evolving requirements.

Additionally, recruitment costs associated with hiring full-time in-house teams will be eliminated, as the software partner will likely handle the recruitment itself.

Saving Time

Some startup owners lose sight of the product itself. Your offering taking the shape of a software application should not distract you from the fact that the product idea still needs work and attention to be perfect.

With a dedicated provider taking care of all your software development needs, the time you save can also help you focus on your core business activities instead of getting caught up in the technical complexities. A responsible software partner will offer end-to-end services that take care of all aspects of the development lifecycle, from design and programming to launch and support.

Risks Of Outsourcing

Despite the many advantages of outsourcing for startups, some founders are concerned about the possibility of matters going sideways. These worries greatly revolve around losing control of the product development process and experiencing barriers to effective communication.

Ineffective Communication And Collaboration

As a startup owner, it is highly likely that the vendor you end up outsourcing your project to operates in a different country or time zone. Many people find it difficult to bridge this physical distance due to ineffective communication and collaboration practices. Differences in work hours and availability will stifle progress. This risk further multiplies when you fail to choose a partner with whom you can build a relationship of openness and understanding.

In modern times, the world has achieved unbelievable levels of interconnectivity. AI-powered project management tools, next-level video conferencing apps, real-time transcription and improved translation services and a vendor team’s willingness to adjust their work hours to overlap with yours can easily tackle these communication barriers. Despite that, as a startup founder looking to outsource, you must do your part. Remember to put considerable effort into choosing the ideal provider and building proper communication channels and collaboration procedures.

Losing Control Of The Project

Owning a business can make you feel possessive of your product, making it hard to delegate essential parts of your new venture. Thus, entrepreneurs are wary when giving up control of something as significant as the entire product development process.

This is a valid concern because there is often a gap between the client and the vendor. Remember to do your due diligence during the vendor selection process and be sure you feel confident in trusting them.

Outsourcing For Startups—Yay Or Nay?

Considering all the advantages and downsides of software outsourcing that we’ve gone over in this discussion, the final decision rests in your hands. There are many benefits that software outsourcing can offer. Similarly, there are also always risks involved. You must carefully think about not only what you are trying to achieve not only with the outsourcing model but also with your business idea.

Looking to hire skilled software developers? Contact TP&P Technology - Leading Software Outsourcing Company in Vietnam Today

Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbesbusinesscouncil/2022/12/02/software-development-time-estimation-how-long-should-it-take-to-develop-a-product/?sh=4a2370e76cee

Software Development Time Estimation: How Long Should It Take To Develop A Product?

Once you come up with the idea of creating a software product and have proof of concept, you can start thinking about how much it takes to bring it to life. There is much work to be done before your product hits the market, but the question I want to discuss in this article is how much time it will take to develop the software.

The Metaverse Will Stir Up Software Development In 2023

 Software is an expression of the business. To achieve this expression, developers face a sea of constant opportunities — and challenges. For every API champion coming out of the business, there’s a security threat to citizen development at the permitter. For all the progress in value stream management, there is little progress being made in metaverse API standards. Software development is a continuous set of ups and downs that people must navigate, whether they are professional or citizen developers.

Machine Learning Enables Inclusive Access To Financial Services

 Technology in financial services can be somewhat of a double-edged sword. On one side, new technological innovations, like artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML), are striving to make financial products and services more available by making it easier to identify customers, expedite credit approval, and improve access to financial services for all. On the other side, if the proper precautions are not taken, companies in the industry might be using data to power AI applications that hold intrinsic biases, which work against efforts to make technology more inclusive and accessible.

Digital Transformation In The Software Industry: Changing The Game With Data And Analytics

Although digital natives, software development companies still benefit from digital transformation processes that enable them to integrate data-driven decision-making into all business areas. As the general landscape becomes more competitive and the need for agility increases, tech leaders need to know how to master data and analytics as critical elements of their organization’s digital transformation.