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Scaling Your Business with a Nearshore Development Team in Poland.

As your business grows, you will eventually need to scale up your operations in order to accommodate increased demand. Nearshore development teams can provide the extra manpower and expertise you need to get the job done right.

What is nearshore software development anyway?

The companies have been using outsourcing for many years. It helps them to focus on their main goals and leave the development of some products or services to other organizations. The main difference between nearshore and offshore outsourcing is the geographical proximity. Nearshore software development means that the provider is located in a neighboring country.

The advantages of nearshore software development are that the off-site team will always work at the same time as your team. For face-to-face events, this makes it easier to catch a plane and fly a couple of hours to meet the remote team.

For instance, our Swiss customers can enjoy working with our team in Poland (Central and Eastern Europe). It’s only 2 hours from the Basel, Zurich or Geneva airports.

Many organizations use nearshore development teams for a variety of reasons:

– Cost-effectiveness: Usually the overall cost of development is reduced against local resources. – Time to build: Hiring one great developer is time-consuming. By building a nearshore team in a few weeks, you build a team with different profiles. – Scalability: Companies might need specific skills only for a period of time. Instead of growing their local team, they could rely on a nearshore team to benefit from scaling. – Flexibility: It’s complicated to hire people only 25% of the time. With a nearshore team, companies can properly plan the number of resources needed.

Global nearshore software developers rates.

Did you know that CEE software developers are among the most affordable in Europe. Their rates are up to 60% lower than the rates in other Western European countries. The typical hourly rate for a Polish offshore developer is $25-$35, which is much lower than the rates in the UK ($50-$100) and the US ($75-$150). The table below shows some more details on this topic.

The potential risks you should be aware of when considering IT outsourcing

Offshore outsourcing is a great way to reduce the cost of software development. However, our goal is also to maintain the quality. This is why nearshoring is becoming more popular in recent years. Make sure you do your research and select a partner you trust to avoid any potential problems. Nevertheless, here are some risks that you should be aware of before you make the decision to build your team in another country.

The hidden costs
The software development process is inherently unpredictable, especially if you’re creating a new product and still determining whether your product-market fit is right. It’s possible that the project will take longer to finish than planned. You may also protect yourself by selecting the correct sort of contract and implementing best practices that give you complete control over your project’s cost.

Confidentiality and security Some data, on the other hand, should never leave your company’s premises. You must provide certain information to a nearshore development team vendor in order to finish your project. To stay safe, prepare a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) that prevents the vendor from releasing any sensitive data that could harm your business.

Language barrier When selecting a nearshoring service, you can’t usually be sure that their first language will be the same as yours. This does not imply that effective communication is impossible. Just make sure the firm you choose has a focus on communication and that all of the experts are fluent in the language you share. After you’ve gone through the company’s portfolio, set up a meeting to see whether your potential partner understands the language they claim.

Cultural differences Even if you and your nearshore development team are both situated in the same region, there can be big cultural differences that influence the way people communicate and do business.
When selecting a nearshoring service provider, take the time to learn about their culture. Do they have a similar work ethic? Do they share your company’s values? The answers to these questions will help you decide whether they are the right fit for your project.

Political instability The political situation in some countries can be unstable, which may have an impact on the nearshore development team’s ability to work. If you are considering working with a team in a country with a history of political instability, make sure to do your research and select a partner you trust.

The best locations to build your nearshore development team.

The most common nearshore teams location for Western-European companies is Poland (Central and Eastern Europe). Other popular nearshore destinations include Bulgaria, Romania, Ukraine, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, and Serbia.

In South America, the most common nearshore destination for Western companies is Brazil. Other popular locations include Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Colombia.

Some companies looking for very attractive rates choose to build remote development teams in countries like Morocco, Nigeria (Africa) or India, Philippines (Asia).

For more information regarding nearshore software development services rates please take a look at this article: https://nxtide.com/offshore-development-center/global-offshore-software-development-rates-comparison-by-country/.

When selecting a location for your nearshore development team, consider the following factors: – The time difference between your country and the Nearshore country. You will need to coordinate closely with your team, so take time zones into account. – The cost of living and wages in the nearshore country. You want to make sure you’re getting value for your money. – The political stability of the nearshore country. You don’t want your team to be disrupted by political unrest. – The culture of the nearshore country. You want to make sure the team you choose shares your company’s values.

Polish software engineers position in global ranks.

The latest ranks from the world’s biggest offshore software development companies show that Polish developers are highly sought-after. They are ranked 5th in the world in terms of quality and 9th in terms of cost-effectiveness. This puts them ahead of countries such as India, Ukraine, and Belarus.

The Nearshore software development companies.

The Working with a nearshore development team can help you scale fast and build quality digital solutions to stay ahead of your competition. But how to start a remote process in a country that you don’t know anything about? Well – this is a perfect occasion to cooperate with a nearshore development partner. Nearshore software development companies have become popular in recent years as a way to scale fast and build quality digital solutions.

At NxTide for example, we help large enterprises and startups with their digital transformation in North America and Europe every day. The dedicated Project Managers are taking care of all aspects of building your team from the scratch.

Our customers have plenty of options to build a dedicated team. They can leverage local engineers as well as embed some of our nearshore resources in their project to build a technical team for a long time period.

Following this delivery model helps them – avoid the struggle of the hiring process – focus on creating value for their company – growing their business with technical innovation straight away. More information about what we do can be found in this article: https://nxtide.com/software-development-teams/how-to-build-a-successful-nearshore-software-development-team/

The right way to build a nearshore development team.

The distributed vs concentrated model

There are several ways to build a nearshore team. – The remote team can be made of several developers working in various locations (distributed) – Or the remote team can be located at the same location (concentrated)

At NxTide, we are used to working with teams in one country (Poland). We believe that this way is a perfect compromise between in-house and remote strategy. Here are some advantages of this model: – Better collaboration both between and within the local teams (they work like in-house teams) – Stronger team culture and people relations – Cost management is more predictable – Hiring new resources and scaling up is much easier (no cultural differences, time zones, etc.)

The communication and management aspect

Communication is key for the success of any project and especially when you are managing your software developers in a remote way. The most important thing is to be clear and concise in your communication. When communicating with your team, always remember to: – Be respectful – Be clear and concise (KPIs, requirements, tasks, expectations) – Use a simple, common language – Never assume anything (only the facts matters) – Try to celebrate the success with your team

Tools to keep people collaborating and contributing

Technology is essential to enable effective communication. At One Inside, we are used to working with the classic technologies such as:
– Slack for the team day to day business
– Zoom, Skype, or Teams for team meetings and presentations
– Confluence, the wiki to gather all requirements and meeting notes
– JIRA where all the tickets (bugs, tasks, improvements) are written, to work in an agile way and get an overview of the development to be done

Processing an Agile methodology within your remote software development team

Following clear processes and embracing agile methodology is a crucial element for the success of your nearshore setup. At NxTide, we have improved our process and methodology to work in an effective manner with our customers while offering nearshore development.
Growing up as an agile team means that we are able to constantly respond and adapt to customers’ changes.
The teams we create for our customers are used to and work seamlessly in a very collaborative environment, based on trust and experience, as well as thanks to smart and high-achieving people that excel in self-managed groups.

After switching to more agile ways of working, we’ve noticed a number of benefits:
– Team members collaborate on projects in a dynamic way
– Agile takes less effort to make work where the team members are not co-located
– Employees have the freedom to choose the tasks they have interest in and develop skills sets accordingly
– Everyone works more efficiently
– Creates a happier workplace

To be able to respond dynamically to changing requirements of modern software ecosystems, we usually set up a self-organized team based on the SCRUM framework to be able to perform successfully.
– This tactic includes following some standards of Scrum such as:
– Daily Meetings
– Kick-off meetings (every second week)
– Sprint refinements (occasionally the whole team is included)
– Having sprints with no fixed length (2-3 weeks or a month)

Scaling your team with a nearshore vendor will help you to:

– Achieve your project goals faster
– Get more flexible and be able to respond to changes on the go
– Focus on other important tasks while we take care of the development
– Adapt the team size according to the project phase – start small, then scale up or down as needed
– Keep the same people on your team throughout the project for a more efficient process
– Save money by using the same team members that are already familiar with your project
– Get better results thanks to the trust and collaboration between the team members

The typical software development team composition.

Team composition can also heavily depend on your company needs… for example, if you are working on a website, the team will need to include web designers as well. Additional roles that you might need to hire: mobile developers, QA automation developers (Selenium), and/or Dev-ops engineers. In fact, every software development team needs to be balanced. It’s a simple rule – to succeed, your team needs great programmers, experienced testers, and outstanding project leaders. The basic structure of nearshore teams should therefore include:
– Back-end Developers
– Front-end Developers
– Quality Assurance Engineers/Managers
– Project Managers

If your budget allows it you can also add business analysts, QA automation engineers (using QTP/UFT or Selenium). There is no golden number when it comes to size. At NxTide we have seen very successful nearshore software development teams with no more than 10 people on board. In fact, we believe that smaller teams perform better in the remote work environment, The real thing you should focus on is “the quality” not quantity.