Scaling Success: The Right Tools for Offshore Software Development

Running a business and forming an established company with your offshore team will help you fulfill your goals and grow your business, but it is easier to sound but a lot more difficult to do. The problem here is management. You cannot see how your team is performing a task because you are sitting in the office. So to keep an eye on your team, you need the right tools to manage your offshore software development team.

Things could easily go wrong even if you have terrific employees on your project. It is the most challenging thing to do, decide on task prioritization and keep the team productive.

Besides skilled people, maintaining constant touch and transparency are essential in offshore software development. These determine the work’s quality and ensure that the product delivery should meet your expectations.

In this blog post, we collected the top tools for offshore software development that will make a difference in product development. We use these tools in our organisation to manage our virtual employees.

What is offshore software development?

When the company utilizes the team’s service located in a remote location to complete their project is known as offshore software development. Offshore software development is a kind of business process outsourcing where the service provider is located in another country or another continent. Software giants like Google, Apple, IBM and Microsoft have offices worldwide.

Essential Tools for Offshore Software Development

Hiring an offshore development team is not easy as it seems. Choosing the right offshore resource that fits your business requirements is a time taking process. Let’s dive out what are the tools of offshore software development:

Slack

Slack is a cloud-based team collaboration platform launched in 2013. As of January 2021, it has over 12 million daily active users. It offers features such as chat rooms, file sharing, video and audio calls, screen sharing, and integrations with other apps. Slack is used by businesses of all sizes and in various industries.

Slack is a modern communication tool used to communicate with your team. It is a lot faster, organized and secure than email. Slack allows you to message your colleagues. There are dedicated workspaces called channels in which people can share messages with each other.

Slack is a messaging tool through which you can send messages and files.

Slack supports nonsynchronous work. When work is organized in channels, you can gain the information you need in your own time, irrespective of your location and time zone.

We highly recommend always using Slack while working with an offshore software development company. Slack makes transparent communication, and all queries can be discussed. The best thing about Slack is it can be integrated with all the tools mentioned here.

Main features:

Voice and video calling feature
The green dot shown on the person’s profile picture will tell you whether the person is online or not.
Slack allows you to set reminders.
Slack enables instant notifications when someone in a channel tag’s you.

Google Hangouts

Google Hangouts, which was first launched in 2013, was rebranded as Google Chat in 2020. It’s a team collaboration platform that offers features such as chat rooms, video calls, and integrations with other Google apps. It’s available for free to all Google Workspace users and is also available as a standalone app.

Google Hangouts, currently known as Google Chats, is a communication tool that allows people to initiate and participate in text, voice or video chats, one-on-one or in a group. Google Hangouts is also helpful for enterprises. Hangouts also have an option of Google Hangouts on Air, which allows Google+ users to telecast video calls live on YouTube. Hangouts on Air has gained traction as an accessible way for companies to conduct online seminars and podcasts.

We organize daily 10 minute stand-up calls on a hangout with our team to discuss the project’s progress.

Main features:

Group chats of up to 250 people at a time
Free Voice calls
Free video calls
HD group video calls of up to 25 people
Support on both web browsers and a Chrome extension
Screen sharing

GitHub

GitHub is a web-based platform for version control and collaboration that was launched in 2008. It offers features such as code review, project management, and team collaboration tools. As of September 2021, GitHub has over 73 million repositories and over 65 million developers using the platform. It’s used by businesses and individual developers alike.

GitHub is a profit-making company that provides a cloud-based Git repository hosting service. Additionally, it becomes a lot easier for people to use Git for version control and cooperation. GitHub has a user-friendly interface, so even newbie coders can take advantage of Git. Without GitHub, Git usually needs to be more versed in the technical field and command line use.

When you work with the offshore software development team, always remember to use GitHub for your project discussion because the outsourced software team represents their code base fully transparent to you.

Main features:

GitHub Developer Environment
You can easily navigate through files in a repository.
Drag and Drop Gist Code
File Finder

Trello

Trello is a web-based project management tool that was launched in 2011. It uses a system of boards, lists, and cards to organize and prioritize tasks. Trello has a free and paid version, and it’s used by individuals and businesses for project management, task tracking, and team collaboration. As of 2021, Trello has over 50 million registered users.

Trello is one of your team’s best tools for Offshore Software Development to manage any project, workflow, or task tracking. Add files, checklists, or even automation: Customize it for how your team works best.

Trello depends on Kanban’s principle to visualize workflows, providing managers and team members with a simple project overview from beginning to end.

Main features:

In Trello, subtasks can be made with checklists.
The deadlines for the tasks can be mentioned.
Trello employs boards, cards, and lists for project management.
An activity log keeps the team up to date.

JIRA

JIRA is a project management and issue tracking tool developed by Atlassian. It’s widely used by software development teams and offers features such as agile project management, customizable workflows, and reporting. JIRA is available as both a cloud-based and on-premise solution. As of 2021, JIRA has over 65,000 customers.

Jira is a software application that enables teams to track errors, project management, and automate workflows. With the help of JIRA, it is easy for team members and product managers to see the big picture of the product.

The software roadmaps build a flexible plan for what the agile team aims to achieve, providing a visual of how to integrate the element. If you use JIRA, you don’t have to use Trello to see the project’s progress. Using applications which do the same task only makes things complicated.

Main features:

Custom Workflows
Agile Reporting
Bug and Issue Tracking
Team performance tracking

Google Drive

Google Drive is a cloud storage and file sharing platform launched in 2012. It offers features such as file storage, sharing, and collaboration tools. Google Drive is integrated with other Google apps, such as Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides. As of 2021, Google Drive has over 1 billion active users and over 2 trillion files stored on the platform.

Google Drive is a free cloud-based storage platform that allows users to store and access files online. Google Drive also provides access to free web-based applications for creating spreadsheets, documents and spreadsheets. With the help of Google Drive, you can open your files from your computer’s Drive folder on the desktop or your browser. Files you create with Google Docs are open in your browser or mobile app. Users must have Google client software running on a device to use Google drive.

Main features:

Google Drive is designed in this way so that people can easily share their files with anyone.
15GB of free storage and can be expandable up to 200TB at different prices.
Co-editing documents and tracking changes
Team collaboration
Drag and drop uploads
Automatically convert uploaded files to Google Docs editor format

DocuSign

DocuSign is an electronic signature and digital transaction management platform launched in 2003. It allows users to sign, send, and manage legally binding documents from anywhere, at any time, on any device. DocuSign is used by businesses and individuals in various industries and has over 500,000 customers and hundreds of millions of users worldwide.

DocuSign is a SaaS company that enables users to send documents electronically to be signed. The e-signature platform is designed to accelerate the signing process of documents, provide an easily accessible audit series of papers and provide a paperless substitute.

Users must upload their renewable templates to the DocuSign platform and invite parties to sign them through their email addresses. They will receive notifications to sign the document electronically.

Docusign can be signed on a mobile device or its mobile app as a user-friendly platform. Users can streamline their contracting processes by getting the templates they have uploaded quickly and efficiently without wasting paper. Docusign also has vital integrations with other software providers, like Google, to ensure users can drag and drop documents and operate a smooth workflow.

Main features:

DocuSign includes support for group signatures and individual signing.
DocuSign integrates with over 350 applicants
With DocuSign, send, sign and track documents quickly and easily
Increase the accuracy of agreements.
It helps to save time by reducing manual work.

Use case of these Tools for Offshore Software Development Team

Tool	Use Case for Offshore Software Development Team	Pros	Cons
Slack	Real-time communication and collaboration among team members	Easy to use, integrates with other tools, supports voice and video calls	Limited customization, can be distracting
Google Chat	Real-time messaging and collaboration, integrated with other Google apps	Easy to use, supports voice and video calls, integrates with other Google apps	Limited customization, not ideal for complex project management
GitHub	Version control, collaboration, project management for software development teams	Easy to use, customizable, widely used by software development teams, supports integrations with other tools	Can be overwhelming for non-technical users
Trello	Project and task management, team collaboration	Easy to use, highly visual, customizable, supports integrations with other tools	Limited customization for advanced project management needs
JIRA	Project management, issue tracking, and agile software development	Highly customizable supports integrations with other tools, widely used by software development teams	Can be overwhelming for non-technical users, requires training to use effectively
Google Drive	Cloud storage and file sharing for collaboration on documents and files	Easy to use, widely used, integrates with other Google apps	Limited functionality for project management

Tools Use Case for Offshore Software Development Team

Final Words

Offshore development has its own advantages and disadvantages. The only suspense working with remote teams is whether they deliver the expected result. But with the help of tools for Offshore Software Development, it will be easy to work with the remote team. We always recommend using the tools or alternatives of these tools mentioned in this blog while working with your remote team.

Are you interested in hiring an offshore team but don’t know where to start? At Invedus, we can help you set up dedicated teams remotely. Contact us today, and let us know all your business needs.