A product development partner should be ‘jack of all trades’, someone who has expertise in different skills ranging from engineering, programming, designing, to marketing and PR. This is a strategically significant role for every technology company. When you think of a new product, it’s imperative to realize that it will require innovative technology and huge resource commitments. In order to derive the actual value for your investment, it is advisable to outsource it to a third-party. Post hiring a new business partner/resource, the challenge lies in preserving these relationships.
The statistics mentioned below will help you realize what can happen if you choose the wrong offshore product development partner:
- As per 4PM, “Most organizations have a 70 percent project failure rate.”
- As per PMI, 2017 “Only 28 percent of companies use project performance techniques.”
- As per Gallup, “Only 2.5 percent of companies complete 100 percent of their projects successfully.”
- As per Wrike, “Only 64 percent of projects meet their goals.”
- As per Calleam “17 percent of IT projects fail so badly they can threaten the existence of a company.”
- As per Calleam, “49 percent of 840 federally funded projects were found to be poorly planned, poorly performing, or both.”
As a company driven by innovation, the decision to outsource certain tasks as you move ahead in the development cycle becomes quite critical from the perspective of value addition. So what are the main factors you should consider while hiring a product development partner? One major factor being experience in developing products and components that you’re interested in.
Factors to consider while hiring a ‘Product Development Partner’
1. A diverse set of experiences
Product managers gather valuable experience as they work on multiple projects, where they need to overcome a lot many hindrances to deliver the final product. They can utilize the acquired knowledge to reduce your software’s time to market and lower project risk. Additionally, a product development partner should have experience in:
- Multi-platform portability
- End-to-end product development sequence
- Multiple release cycle management
Hence, considerable experience in tackling product deliveries can make a huge impact at the time of product releases.
2. Exposure to technological innovations
The passion of a product development partner to learn new technologies and implementing them for solving complex challenges lends a cutting edge to your product.
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3. Domain knowledge
Your product development partner needs to have an exhaustive knowledge about the respective industry, whether it is airlines, digital music, hospitality. They need to keep track of the current trends, how the industry is shaping up, and what things will likely make an impact on the industry.
We have helped a client in uniting the culinary world with a unique social media platform. We have created a hassle-free end-to-end wedding planning and management web app for a Las Vegas-based client. We created a state-of-the-art SaaS solution for remote patient care using RAD frameworks and MVP based product development approach.
4. Technical knowledge and data understanding
Good technical knowledge about the product is always beneficial to ensure coherent communication with product engineers. A data-driven culture is equally significant as it helps to monitor metrics related to consumer-centric product usage, drop off points for customers, and product misses and hits.
With our full-stack development expertise, we partner with you and help you think through, experiment, iterate and get your idea built into a demonstrated success. Our expertise in open-source, MVP and RAD frameworks ensures future-proof products and customer validation. Our expertise in connected devices, IoT, AR/VR, AI/ML helps you embrace the digital world faster than ever.
5. Project Delivery Technique
Once you gain an understanding of the core competency of the potential hire, you can delve deep into their project delivery and management techniques. You can enquire for some project-centric information, like
- Details of project scope
- Project costs and budget
- Set expectations
- Project completion deadline
- Project reporting and analysis
6. Inquisitive
A successful product team should be quite inquisitive, they should come up with questions to get better clarity on your requirements. In order to successfully develop a product, there should be a thorough understanding of product manufacturing, the way of selling, and the end-user. After gathering enough knowledge about the existing product, the outsourced team can solve the issue and come up with something innovative.
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7. Best project management practices
Different solution providers follow numerous frameworks and methodologies for successful project implementation. You need to know which structured project management methodology – Scrum, Agile, Lean, the prospective hire adheres to. They must have a robust quality assurance system that offers visibility and consistent performance reporting.
Factors Responsible for Making a Project Successful
- It’s delivered on time
- Cost doesn’t surpass its budget
- It runs as designed
- People use the product
- Those who funded the project are happy with it
- It meets the goals that drove the project
Conclusion:
Though, you can’t specify a particular strategy for hiring an offshore product development partner. You need to choose a partner who is capable of building core business applications that are crucial for a company’s operations. Also, keep in mind that a potential hire has vast experience and knowledge of different stages of the product development cycle.
If you have any questions regarding product development/design or if you are looking to hire product development partner, feel free to contact us at info@people10.com
Author
Co-founder of People10, a 'total agile' software development and consulting company.