The Challenges of Outsourcing in the Age of DevOps
DevOps brings fluency to businesses, making the operations streamlined and successful. Outsourcing ends up with the same benefits, as it helps close the gaps in talent in a timely and budget-friendly manner.
Yet, combining the two is often prone to challenges, causing business owners to take extra time and effort to solve them.
In this article, we’ll outline the main obstacles to outsourcing in the age of DevOps and share some tips on how to circumvent them. Yet, we shall start with the main benefits of employing DevOps and outsourcing into your business operations.
What is DevOps, and how do you profit from it?
DevOps is a new philosophy of project organization in which people who do tech (development) and people who do papers (operations) work closely and simultaneously on the same product. Previously, they worked in a chain fashion, reviewing or altering a piece of code only after completion. Now, the product can be modified at any development stage. That is possible with the close communication between all the teams.
The results are fewer mistakes, faster development, frequent updates, and satisfied clients.
What is outsourcing and its benefits?
Outsourcing is employing another team or company to do a piece of work that otherwise could be handled internally. Outsourcing is a cost-cutting measure, but it is often used when there is a quick need to bridge the talent gap without interrupting a project’s lifecycle.
As a result, a company gets the work done within time and budget, often with considerable savings.
Therefore, the global outsourcing market is on the rise and reached a total revenue of nearly 400 billion U.S. last year. Outsourcing is so popular that even commerce giants like Boeing, headquartered in the U.S., outsource operations to India.
The challenges of outsourcing in the age of DevOps
Despite DevOps project organizations not excluding the possibility of outsourcing, the need for tight and frequent communications is not easy to curb if the teams are located remotely. There are other issues, too.
- Issues with vendor selection
There are over 300 million companies worldwide, and to select one as a vendor, you must go through a long sorting and drying cycle.
- Compliance, agreements, and NDAs
Different countries have different rules. For example, Germany has a different definition of property than Britain or France. A company requires much legal work to avoid conflict of law cases.
- Lack of trust
Everyone can stumble on an unfair vendor, especially if you are a non-techy person. Even if you are a strong market player, you are not insured from troubles. Several years ago, Boeing went through a horror scenario when two of their 737 Max plains crashed, and several others experienced issues due to low-quality codework from outsourcing vendors.
With the press buzzing with cases like this, concerns about unfamiliar service providers are understandable.
- Issues with integration
The company’s macro-culture and the team’s micro-culture are essential to the working process. Sometimes, an unproperly understood joke can bring undesired disruptions and financial loss. Once, a system administrator of an unnamed company fixed a bug in the new employee’s laptop, saying the newcomer owed him a pack of “Pringles,” which was a usual joke inside the team. That ended up with the H.R. department investigating the accusation of bribery. Thus, a thing that usually amused within a micro-environment with shared culture led to turbulence across the company, as it was said to the person without the company’s cultural background.
Tips on how to set up your outsourcing process in the age of DevOps
- Select a vendor who embraces DevOps – if you want to benefit from the flexibility DevOps provides fully, you need to find a vendor that employs the same business organization principles and is trying to eliminate unnecessary organizational efforts.
2. Set a seamless and collaborative working environment – even if some aspects of your business still involve a good portion of bureaucracy and rigid structure, involving another team is a great chance to change the overall work culture. Often, a DevOps outsourcing company can improve your internal organization by sharing their best practices of development organization (read here to learn more: https://mlsdev.com/services/devops)
3. Check if your vendor is compatible with your company – work style, time zone, holiday schedule, and even sense of humor matter (besides the tech skills and rates) for setting up seamless communication. A similar value set is essential, too. Various business consultors from Forbes to Zapier recommend selecting a business partner who aligns with your work ethic and morals.
4. Choose a vendor who’ll love your pain points – outsourcing allows you to contact companies from any part of the world, which increases your chances of finding the right specialist who knows precisely how to help you.
Summing everything up
Finding a reliable outsourcing vendor may be an issue in a world where information technology companies are counted in millions. Still, if done correctly, you’ll benefit significantly from the combined advantages of both methods.
Author’s bio: Anastasiia Lastovetska is a technology writer at MLSDev, a software development company that builds web & mobile app solutions from scratch. She researches the area of technology to create great content about app development, UX/UI design, tech & business consulting.