Today we are speaking with Branislav “Banne” Gjorcevski, the CEO of IT Labs, a global technology company that offers mobile and custom software development and technology consultancy. They have been in business since 2005 and have the luxury of 100 team members. IT Labs is in the process of launching their own techcelerator and venture program for startups, allowing startups to tap into their very large pool of resources and strategic partnerships, including financial resources and different distribution markets.
CODENGO: What should mobile developers look for when hiring a good outsourced mobile app team?
BANNE: I think there are several factors to consider when deciding what outsourced team is right for you. They are, in no particular order:
- A good team should strive for innovation. Latest UX, latest tools, lean and mean approaches–improvements, improvements, improvements.
- Agile approach. Mobile teams should be agile–very adaptive to business models and work in sync with back-end teams. By nature, mobile development has a shorter span than the back-end development. But for a mobile team to be able to work in sync with a back-end team without any lag on either side–that is a great accomplishment, even for a fully in-house team.
- Business mind. Having a team that understands both the business and the revenue model of the complete product is very important. It contributes to more efficiency, better productivity, and innovation.
- Experience and price. Obviously, experience is always what each project needs. Experience allows a team to take into consideration its vast knowledge and variety of skillsets and price it accordingly.
CODENGO: What would you say is the biggest hurdle of mobile developers as far as teaming up with an outsourced team?
BANNE: There are few hurdles like scalability, communication, documentation. Not every company can have a team available as needed with the necessary skillsets and for a specific duration of time. That is why we partner with multiple teams to always have resources available as needed. Timing is everything.
You need a team on board now and fully staffed within days, not weeks. That requires a good communication strategy that places experienced resources to facilitate the communication between the teams. It’s vital to assign savvy project managers who do fast on-boarding, execute proper expectations management, and utilize suitable task management tools to automate the task handling and reporting as easily as possible.
Sounds very obvious–but it is amazing how important documentation is when it comes to multiple distributed teams, especially if they are in different time zones and when they speak different languages…crucial. A good business analyst saves the day!
CODENGO: What is the magic strategy for teaming up as an outsourced development team?
BANNE: The magic strategy is the one that is most adapted to the setup on each side. At IT Labs, we do that by aligning the goals and steps, identifying what resources are available on each side, and teaming up on both sides to achieve full team capability with flawless process handling. We then run that setup through a communication scenario for development and maintenance, then define/approve the teams and, of course, start the project.
We are fortunate enough to be able to handle a full project in house A to Z, but a hybrid approach is probably the best practice.
CODENGO: What about pricing? We see a notion out there that outsourced development should be very “cheap” and that anyone can hire developers to build a mobile app…how do you respond?
BANNE: Just like with everything, you get what you pay for. High quality development has its price in every country, even in the most affordable ones. What we offer to our partners and clients is a full package along with the development team, which means they receive a suitable and adapted process, high quality standards, liability protection, vast knowledge and experience that comes from a lot of in-house resources, and a money-back guarantee. This kind of offering guarantees high quality deliverables within time and budget and with appropriate expectation management.
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