{"id":4555,"date":"2017-05-24T19:00:03","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T19:00:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cheesecakelabs.com\/blog\/?p=4555"},"modified":"2022-07-01T17:40:58","modified_gmt":"2022-07-01T17:40:58","slug":"dos-donts-choosing-virtual-team","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cheesecakelabs.com\/blog\/dos-donts-choosing-virtual-team\/","title":{"rendered":"Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts when choosing a virtual team"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>With a highly-competitive software development market, it\u2019s becoming increasingly harder to find engineers to work along and develop great apps. In light of this issue, many startups and enterprises are turning to look at alternatives to hiring, being <em>nearshoring<\/em>&nbsp;one of the most common practices.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>Opting for developing an application with a virtual team, as your sole \u2014 or complementary \u2014 design and development crew is certainly different from having your engineers in-house. However, a few choices might considerably ease these hurdles, and it\u2019s fairly common to see successful products built within this model, such as:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.skype.com\/en\/\">Skype<\/a>, which was outsourced to Estonia in its early days (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/young-entrepreneur-council\/how-to-outsource-successf_b_9040046.html\">source<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/slack.com\/\">Slack<\/a>, which outsourced its design to <a href=\"http:\/\/metalab.co\/\">MetaLab<\/a>&nbsp;(<a href=\"https:\/\/www.startupgrind.com\/blog\/these-8-successful-companies-were-built-using-outsourced-developers\/\">source<\/a>)<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.alibaba.com\/\">Alibaba<\/a>, which first outsourced its development to a US firm (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.amazon.com\/alibaba-Inside-Creation-Biggest-Marketplace\/dp\/006167219X\">source<\/a>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Being in touch with this market for quite a while, and having experienced many success and failure cases in the business of apps and outsourcing, I\u2019ve decided to write this post to provide some important points that ought to be taken into account when choosing a virtual team.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">1. Choose a team that is located in a country with overlapping work hours<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Although remote, it is fundamental to have a sense of proximity with the team you\u2019re working with. Being able to quickly assess your teammates via <a href=\"https:\/\/slack.com\/\">Slack<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/hangouts.google.com\/\">Hangouts<\/a> helps the project flow with ease, and enables both ends to feel more secure about what they\u2019re working with. Therefore, it\u2019s essential for them to have some overlapping working hours, so that one of the sides doesn\u2019t have work at uncomfortable times, generating unnecessary stressful situations.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">2. Your virtual&nbsp;team should speak&nbsp;your language and value communication<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">It\u2019s paramount to be able to get clarity on what\u2019s being worked on. Besides using tools like <a href=\"https:\/\/www.atlassian.com\/software\/jira\">JIRA<\/a> or <a href=\"https:\/\/trello.com\/\">Trello<\/a> to get an overview of the project\u2019s progress, it\u2019s also a good idea to choose a team that you\u2019re able to reach out to individually, and that\u2019ll be able to quickly respond \u2013 in your language \u2013 with a status update.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2>3.&nbsp;Make sure you&#8217;re being asked the right questions and&nbsp;being included in the process<\/h2>\n<p>Building software is&nbsp;a complex task and requires&nbsp;lots of planning and iterating. If you&#8217;re not familiar with&nbsp;this environment,&nbsp;you might even need guidance on <a href=\"https:\/\/cheesecakelabs.com\/blog\/blog\/much-cost-build-app\/\">which questions to ask<\/a>, and you want to be sure you&#8217;re extremely included in this process, to make sure your application evolves and remains loyal to your vision and goals.<\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">4. Be careful with miraculous estimates<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Similarly to a building, a piece of functioning software can be developed in several ways. Some quick &amp; dirty, some well-architected and scalable. If you\u2019re estimating your project with several companies, and one of them stands out for being too fast, be extra careful \u2014 they\u2019re probably not worrying about how your product might grow and evolve in the future.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">5. Lower prices might be interesting, but they\u2019ll turn out to be expensive in the long run<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Software developers\u2019 and designers\u2019 work quality is highly-related to how satisfied they are with the work they do \u2013 and how much their compensation is. Some companies work in a production-line system that is very cheap (and provide the worst working conditions to their developers). Similarly to #3, be careful: you probably won\u2019t get a great product by working with dissatisfied people in poor conditions.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">6. Value companies that want to participate in the success of your product<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Some companies charge for their work on a pure hourly basis, and won\u2019t necessarily leverage the business experience they\u2019ve gathered throughout time when working on a new product, since they wouldn\u2019t benefit from its success. When choosing a virtual team, try to find people that are willing to get part of their compensation proportionally to the product\u2019s success (or in form of stock options, for example), so that you\u2019ll be sure they\u2019ll make every effort to build&nbsp;the best product they can.<\/span><\/p>\n<h2><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wrapping Up<\/span><\/h2>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">All in all, there&#8217;s no magic rule: you should find a company&nbsp;that is willing to&nbsp;team up with you and work towards the same vision. If you have any questions, or any other tips, feel free to leave them in the comments section.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>With a highly-competitive software development market, it\u2019s becoming increasingly harder to find engineers to work along and develop great apps. In light of this issue, many startups and enterprises are turning to look at alternatives to hiring, being nearshoring&nbsp;one of the most common practices.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":65,"featured_media":4632,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[318],"class_list":["post-4555","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-business","category-opinion","tag-tag-workflow"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v27.1.1 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/product\/yoast-seo-wordpress\/ -->\n<title>Do\u2019s and Don\u2019ts when choosing a virtual team<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Many startups and enterprises are turning to look at alternatives to hiring, being nearshoring one of the most common practices.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, 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