OFFSHORE DEVELOPMENT TEAM: HOW TO GET OUT OF TROUBLES WITH A BAD TEAM?

There’s a staggering number of vendors who claim to deliver the offshore development team that you dream of. But how do you know how to choose among the numerous available options? Not all vendors have the excellent level of service, quality, flexibility, and pricing that you are looking for.

Making a wrong choice in hiring an offshore development team leads to many serious consequences. You will be stuck in a mess of problems, mistakes, bugs, delays, keep losing your time and money without any launching products.

We know what brought you here. You have made a bad hire and now you’re doubtful about offshoring. We will share how to fix the troubles that a bad offshore development team caused. Let’s start!

Stay away from bad offshore development team

Key Summary

This article from InApps Technology, authored by Tam Ho, addresses the challenges of hiring a bad offshore development team and provides actionable solutions to mitigate risks and recover from poor outsourcing experiences. It highlights the benefits and pitfalls of offshore development, warning signs of problematic vendors, and the advantages of choosing trusted providers, with a focus on Vietnam as a prime outsourcing destination.

• Context:
  • Offshore Development: Outsourcing software development to a team in another country, driven by cost savings, access to talent, and scalability.
  • Risks: Poor vendor choices can lead to delays, bugs, financial losses, and unlaunched products, as illustrated by real-world experiences shared on platforms like Reddit.
• Definitions:
  • Outsourcing: Delegating business functions to another company.
  • Offshoring: Outsourcing to a company in a different country.
  • Offshore Development Team: A dedicated team in another country, under your control, executing your software projects.
  • Offshore Development Center (ODC): A structured offshore team tailored to meet project requirements with high qualifications and experience.
• Pros of Offshore Development:
  • Reduced costs and financial savings.
  • Access to highly skilled, systemic teams.
  • Faster delivery and improved focus.
  • Enhanced quality and risk mitigation.
• Cons of Offshore Development:
  • Language, time zone, and cultural barriers.
  • Mismatched quality expectations vs. cost.
  • Delivery delays and loss of operational control.
  • Potential exposure of confidential data.
• 5 Signs of a Bad Offshore Development Team:
  • Lack of Documentation: Failure to provide clear project requirement specifications.
  • Underestimation: Unrealistic cost and time projections.
  • Incompetency: Lack of necessary skills or expertise.
  • Poor Infrastructure: Inadequate tools or technology stack.
  • Ambiguous Ratings: Unreliable or unclear vendor rankings.
• Consequences of a Bad Hire (Reddit Example by SofaAssassin):
  • HCL (India): Slow, incompetent team; simple feature testing took excessive time (2 weeks development ballooned to 3 person-months).
  • Turkey Team: Frequent breaking of master branch, requiring local team fixes; reckless deployment (e.g., untested SSL fix crashed production).
  • China Teams: Issues with technology theft, abuse, ignorance, and impatience, leading to project failures.
  • Impact: Wasted time, financial losses, damaged team morale, and disrupted operations.
• Solutions for Recovery:
  • Discontinue Contracts: Terminate agreements with underperforming vendors to avoid further losses.
  • Research Trusted Providers: Use platforms like Clutch.co to evaluate vendor rankings, portfolios, skills, experience, and IT infrastructure.
  • Due Diligence: Review past projects, verify technology stacks, and assess infrastructure before signing agreements.
  • Act Decisively: Learn from mistakes, counter risks, and pivot to reliable offshore partners to complete unfinished work.
• Why Vietnam for Offshore Development?:
  • Competitive Costs: Lower labor costs compared to other countries.
  • Talent Pool: 430,000 software developers and 1.03 million ICT professionals, with strong foreign language proficiency.
  • Global Recognition:
    • Ho Chi Minh City in Top Outsourcing Cities for 8 years (Tholons, 2009–2016).
    • Ranked 1st in pioneering location and cost environment (Cushman & Wakefield, 2016–2017).
    • Top 10 for engineering graduates globally (Forbes, 2015).
  • Supportive Policies: Open government policies for foreign companies.
• InApps Insight:
  • InApps Technology, led by Tam Ho (Founder & CEO), is ranked 1st in Vietnam and 5th in Southeast Asia for app and software development.
  • Offers Offshore Development Center (ODC) services, leveraging technologies like React Native, ReactJS, Node.js, Vue.js, Microsoft’s Power Platform, Azure, Power Fx (low-code), Azure Durable Functions, and GraphQL APIs (e.g., Apollo).
  • Serves startups and enterprises with Millennial-driven expectations, delivering cost-effective, high-quality solutions at 30% of local vendor costs.
  • Specializes in world-class software development, dedicated talent teams, tech startup consulting, and growth-hacking marketing.
• Call to Action:
  • Contact InApps Technology at www.inapps.net or sales@inapps.net for reliable offshore development services, tailored solutions, or to recover from bad outsourcing experiences.

Definitions related to Offshore Development Team

Outsourcing — When your company designates another company to undertake any part of your business.

Offshoring — Outsourcing to an organization located in a different country.

Offshore Outsourcing is desired by numerous companies considering the premiere factors like quality, access to resources & tools, time, cost etc.

Offshore Development Team — A development team located in a different country, will implement your software development project.

Structuring an offshore team is how you build a desired team with great qualification and experience to meet your requirement for the project. Hence, offshore team will be your own dedicated team under your overall control.

>> Learn more about: Offshore Development Center (ODC) Service

Pros and Cons of Hiring an Offshore Development Team

Pros of outsourcing an offshore team:

1. Diminished Cost
2. Financial Savings
3. High proficient and systemic team accessibility
4. Rapid delivery time
5. Excellent concentration
6. Quality acquirement
7. Risk mitigation

Cons of outsourcing an offshore team:

1. Language, time zone & cultural barriers
2. Anticipated Quality (vs.) Huge Cost
3. Delivery delays
4. Disclosing confidential elements
5. Slipping control over operations

>> Learn more about: Which country is best for offshore software development?

5 Signs that You’ve fallen into a bad Offshore Development Team

Offshore software development has gone a long climb in the market over the years. Its overwhelming benefit to reduce production cost while maintaining competitive strength in the market made it popular among startups and small-medium businesses.

However, a lot of offshore development disasters are circulating on the internet.  That is why we compiled five signs you should watch out for before falling into the trap that an offshore software development company sets out for you.

Read them, beware of them, and learn how to get away from bad offshore development companies.

1. Failure to provide well-documented project requirement specifications
2. Underestimation of cost and production time
3. Incompetency
4. Poor infrastructure
5. The ambiguity of ratings and rankings.

Serious Consequences of Hiring a bad Offshore Development Team

Let’s read through a comment below:

Question: Tell me about your experience working with offshore teams?

Answer:

“Terrible overall. I had bad experiences with a team we subcontracted from HCL (a major Indian outsourcing firm), who were all very slow and downright incompetent when it came to working. I had to push some new feature for a piece of software I was building, and the QA team for the product was the HCL team. Two weeks of my development time somehow became 3 person-months of testing time even though the functionality wasn’t very complex and fully documented. That was one of the most egregious moments I remember, but I wouldn’t say I liked working with them.

More recently, I managed a team locally and worked in a company that outsourced some development work to a team in Turkey because of cost, and the local dev team was being rebuilt. The offshore team would break the master branch all the time and leave work, right about when we’d start our day, so we as a whole would have to fix their mess before we could start our work. The dev on the Turkish side who worked closely with me broke our production system multiple times because he was quick to leap before he looked – security fix for SSL needed? Boom, let’s push the fix without making sure to test the fix! He took down our site, and I had to fix it while on vacation. One of their team members also insulted my team, and that spelled the beginning of the end of our contract with them when I brought it up with my manager.

And I’ve worked at companies that had offshore teams/partnerships in China. Those always ended up being absolutely awful for various reasons (technology theft, tech abuse, complete ignorance of technologies they were using, extreme impatience, etc.).”

– A comment of SofaAssassin on Reddit.com

You have hired a bad team – What are the solutions?

You are done with the bad team and confused about how to solve the problems of unfinished work? Don’t make a wrong choice twice!

You have a bad team, what is your solution

You can always find a better software development provider that will give you better output.

In business, it really pays to know but it pays more to learn how to counter risks and take action to fix problems. Business will always be a compilation of risks and success but all you need to do is conduct your research and learn ways and techniques in preventing the risks. If you find your business in these situations, don’t hesitate to discontinue your contract and search for a new service provider. 

The quickest way is to only hire from trusted offshore development companies.

You can browse the websites such as Clutch.co to look up the category rankings of offshore companies that you may be working with. Then visit their website to find a portfolio of past projects they have handled and have a quick check their skill, experience, technology and value. Don’t forget to evaluate the IT infrastructure of the offshore service provider before you settle into an agreement.

Offshore Development Center Services in Vietnam

In recent years, Vietnam has been the destination for IT outsourcing thanks to the competitive labor costs compared to other countries, a large pool of IT talents with foreign language proficiency and open policies regarding foreign companies of the government.

• Ho Chi Minh City in Top Outsourcing Cities in 8 consecutive years (Tholons, 2009-2016)
• Vietnam is ranked 1 in pioneering location and cost environment (Cushman & Wakefield business process outsourcing and shaped service location index, 2016-2017)
• Top 10 countries with the most engineering graduates (Forbes, 2015)

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