Choosing between Nearshore and Offshore? Understand the nuances: from time zones, cultural affinity to cost structures.
By now, every company in the world knows how important it is to implement technology-based strategies in their operations. However, as we have seen many times, hiring the best software developers to make the most of your digital acceleration journey is not an easy task.
This is exactly why both nearshore software outsourcing and offshore software outsourcing have become so popular across industries. However, each of them has unique characteristics that make them work differently for each person. So, if you want to get the best custom software developers for your next project, it's best to keep in mind what we'll talk about in this article.
Onshore, Nearshore and Offshore
Let's start by taking a look at the three most common types of custom software developer outsourcing: onshore, nearshore, and offshore. These terms are tied to the location of the customer and supplier and are commonly understood as follows:
• Onshore outsourcing occurs when a client hires software developers in their own country or region.
• Nearshore outsourcing occurs when companies located in countries with similar time zones enter into a partnership.
• Offshore outsourcing brings together customers and suppliers in distant countries or continents.
For North American companies, for example, this would mean that a partnership with a Canadian company would be onshoring, and a partnership with a Latin American company would be nearshoring. Everything else could be considered offshore outsourcing.
Let's see how the three types of outsourcing compare on a chart.
How to Outsource Custom Software Developers
If you want to add the best custom software developers to your team, there are three main ways to do so: delivery teams, staff augmentation, and project-based outsourcing.
Delivery teams
Delivery teams are perhaps the most popular form of developer outsourcing due to the many benefits they bring. A Delivery Team, also known as a Dedicated Team, is an autonomous group of engineers that works in parallel with the client's internal team. Most often, the team is made up of an Engineering Manager, a Scrum Master, and any necessary software development specialists, including software testers and QA engineers.
A delivery team is cost-effective, fast and offers guaranteed high-quality results because it has the best developer profiles for your specific needs. Some of the best software development companies can hire a custom team of custom software developers in about a week, starting your projects right away.
Your delivery team will rely on agile methodologies to achieve goals quickly and efficiently. The PM will divide the project into sprints and address backlog priorities as the cycle progresses. This way, the project will evolve constantly, adjusting course based on feedback and new discoveries, which will lead to successful progress without leaving mistakes behind.
Delivery teams are an ideal choice for companies that want to hire a full team of custom software developers to develop high-quality software, but don't have the infrastructure or talent available to do so.
Staff increase
Team augmentation is exactly what it sounds like: adding new, select, temporary members to your team. This is the preferred solution for companies that already have some type of in-house software development team. By “expanding” its team, the client can gain on-demand access to the best custom software developers on the market.
The increased team works in complete synchronization with the client's internal team, to the point where outsourced engineers still participate in daily meetings and report directly to the client's managers. It is up to the client to decide when to increase, decrease or change the roles of specialists in their expanded team, following the needs and progress of their project.
In recent times, staff augmentation has increased in popularity due to a central truth of the IT industry: technology evolves too quickly for companies to easily keep up. Any company wants to have a team of the right size and with the right knowledge for its purposes. Staff augmentation simply provides the speed, professional acumen and flexibility needed to achieve this.
The team bypasses all obstacles related to hiring, recruiting, and retaining talented software engineers. This makes it the perfect choice for companies that need to quickly onboard exceptional software engineers into their team, whether it's hard-to-fill temporary roles, scalability, or project development efficiency.
Project-based outsourcing
You can go beyond hiring custom software developers and transfer all control of a project to a third party through project-based outsourcing – or, as most people call it, software outsourcing. PBO is an end-to-end process in which the vendor commits to every aspect of the software development process. All you have to do is put the idea on the table and give feedback every now and then.
Outsourcing an entire project gives you access to the same global talent pool of software engineers that delivery teams and staff augmentation have, but gives you less responsibility so you can focus your attention on other pressing matters.
Project-based outsourcing is a great alternative for enterprise-level solutions that have complex requirements and far-reaching goals. It is also a very popular choice for time-sensitive projects, as transferring all control and responsibility to the vendor often results in faster development cycles. In any case, your partner company will also act as a consultant in project management, choosing the technological stack and any other area of the client that requires support.
Packing
As we've seen, there are many paths you can take when outsourcing custom software developers. However, the main conclusion we can draw from this article is this: if you are looking for value, then nearshore software developers are probably the best option for you.
Whether you're thinking about working with a freelancer, hiring a new team member, adding temporary talent to your technology department, or even outsourcing the entire software development process to a third party, both nearshoring and offshoring have a role to play in your outsourcing strategy.
