How To Effectively Manage The Onboarding Of Outsourced Software Developers

Whether you run a startup or a company that has already started, sooner or later, you will find yourself in need of more technological support. In some moments in the company’s life, it is necessary to expand the IT resources for a limited period (even for a few months) to complete a particular project. Developing the internal team may seem like a winning choice because it guarantees greater employee control and more efficient communication. However, expanding the company workforce is much more expensive than hiring one or more outsourced developers.

Furthermore, in some moments of the company life, it is necessary to expand IT resources for a limited period (even for a few months) to complete a particular project. This is why more and more companies are turning to external collaboration. If you think of integrating one or more outsourced professionals into your company, it is good to make the most of the onboarding process. Are you wondering how to do it? This article will give you some ideas to make this phase more effective.

Pre-Onboarding

Although the concept of onboarding is often associated with the beginning of a collaboration with the vendor or freelancer, the process begins before officially welcoming the outsourced resources into the project. Just as in the case of hiring an internal team member, to minimize the risk of misunderstandings that may occur later, a preparatory pre-onboarding phase is required.

One of the most critical steps to be completed during pre-onboarding is managing the various bureaucratic aspects. Make sure you have drawn up a contract that regulates all the design phases to mitigate possible points of conflict with your collaborators. Another aspect of being carefully evaluated in choosing the type of contract to be applied.

Remote Onboarding

This is the actual stage of the resource onboarding process. Usually, when a new employee is hired into the company, a short meeting is planned to introduce the new team member to the rest of the company. Likewise, to foster a sense of unity, present the outsourced resources to your internal collaborators, especially those involved in the project just started. In this way, you can rely on your employees to convey your company’s values, talk about the product to be developed, and elaborate the best communication strategy between the two teams.

Clarify Expectations

Once the presentations are finished, it is time to introduce the project and its objectives.

Just like you would when hiring an on-site developer, let the outsourced team know what the business mission is and how a given project will support the process of achieving the goals. It is also beneficial to assign a supervisor to whom to communicate the progress of the work and ask for any clarifications. But beware of the phenomenon of micro-management: too invasive control of the activities by the coordinator could slow down the development process.

Effective Communication

Structuring effective communication with outsourced resources is one of the fundamental aspects of achieving objectives. Define what kind of information should be communicated, through what channel, and how long it may take for the internal team to respond to emails to avoid misunderstandings.

Convey Business Logic

The last but not least point is integrating the remote outsourced team by providing them with an excellent and in-depth introduction to the project they will work on. Focus on the business logic and technologies adopted, but don’t let other important information, such as past mistakes, lessons learned, present challenges, and best practices, be left out.

Conclusion

To sum it up, onboarding is a complicated process. We don’t think the process shows up, signing a contract, and letting outside resources do the assigned work. In reality, as you may have understood, it requires careful planning.

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