How outsourcing teams can make or break your company

The last two years the world around us changed rapidly. From centralized offices to moving big parts of our business outside the Netherlands and working 100% remotely. From 'Well I prefer having my people working from the office' to 'Well it seems that we are more productive working from home!”.

The last five years I have worked with teams all over the world. From Armenia to Vietnam, Italy, Croatia and Serbia. On payroll and by partnering with small and big partners. Below you will find my key learnings, combined with the takeaways of our remote session with outsourcing experts Randy Keyers & Abhishek Sharma combined having 40 years of experience working in and with outsourcing teams.

The Netherlands as a technology hub

I have never seen so much demand for Product Owners and developers as now.

A couple of weeks ago I talked to a high placed product manager at booking.com.

He told me that the struggle is real as “It's getting harder and harder to find good people since we have a lot of competition now from companies like Adyen and Mollie, therefore we need to change the way we attract new talent and how to present ourselves in the job market".

Outsourcing as an utopia?

You could be good at building and selling your product but outsourcing is a whole different ball game.

A lot of companies simplify and think lets just add a team and start delivering. This dream could become a nightmare fast.

Horror stories about security issues, crashing applications, spending millions without any working increment. How to prevent this?

Outsourcing as an solution?

0.Finding the right partners

To ensure quality try to connect with people that already scaled companies. This will save you a lot of time as they can help you partnering with the right outsourcing professionals that they recommend. This prevents spending a lot of time and money.?

If you're not careful you're paying a lot for people with manipulated resumes, senior on paper but junior in reality and sometimes have no idea how to develop software.

Next to this always assess people that join the teams and prevent companies selling you worthless project managers. Partners also want to make money and therefore will always try to present resumes better than they actually are. Another tip is to ask how long the developers are working for the company, if there is a low retention? it could be a red flag.

1.Face to face

Start by getting to know each other. You can't collaborate with anyone without knowing who you're working with. Embrace your new partner and introduce them to your company and colleagues.

Invite them to the Netherlands for e.g. for two weeks, a bit challenging now but face to face is always best. Organize informal events to get to know each other, grab a beer and understand how they like to work. The best is to visit them as well to understand their culture. Try to connect two to four times a year.

2.Start strong

I always start with a week of sessions explaining the vision, strategy, culture of the company.

Share an organizational chart and introduce them to the most important stakeholders.

Explain the roadmap, your way of working, where to find what kind of information etc. Make sure that you prepare as much as possible so the teams can onboard fast! Combine this with introduction and knowledge sessions. Spending more time in the first month will save tremendous amounts of time later on.

3. Start small and fail fast

Start with small sprints and let the teams get used to each other and the company. Weekly sprints e.g. can help to understand the capabilities of individuals and the team as a whole. Validate and adjust every sprint. Don’t forget that retrospective!

4. Us instead of them

I prefer mixing up the teams. There is always a lack of updated documentation and legacy code, otherwise teams tend to be very dependent on people outside their team who are busy. This can cause a lot of bottlenecks and frustration on both sides. One of my most favorite experiences is letting the team members choose their own team, team name, and what features they want to work on. You can set some rules to prevent lack of expertise. Also invite them to company outings and share the culture!

5. Protect and take your time

Management teams often don't have experience with building complex solutions. Which means that they tend to simplify things and expect teams to be fully operational within a week. It takes on average 8-10 weeks before teams get productive, depending on the availability of proper documentation. Be transparent about that and make sure that you add this to the roadmap as well. Otherwise you will experience a lot of pressure on the teams to deliver, while they still have no idea about the why, what and how.

6. Behavioral driven development

Last but most important is clarity. Nowadays everyone talks about self organizing, behavior driven development and letting teams decide how things need to be done. When teams 'members’ are not mature enough it will be very difficult to manage expectations. Be very clear about what you want to achieve with your epics, features and stories. Make sure that the customer journey, ux-designs are ready, focus on refining stories and clear user stories. The most important rule is if it's not clear, don't do it!

Want to learn more? Join us!

We have recorded a 1,5 hour outsourcing session with outsourcing experts Randy Keyers and Abhishek Sharma. Join us here ! for the full video, get free to get access to our experts, the past and upcoming knowledge sessions, our PO toolkit & new job opportunities. More than 500 product professionals joined before you.

If you have questions or need assistance in scaling your organization feel free contacting our partner Randy Keyers from HyperQ.