Time. One of the relevant aspects of software development and IT projects that often determines the success or failure of initiatives. Recognizing this, companies are turning to nearshore development as a solution to streamline their projects and improve productivity.

In this article, we look at how nearshore development can facilitate real-time collaboration and faster turnaround times.

What will you find in this article?

• What is Nearshore Development?
• Facilitating Real-time Collaboration
  • Constant Communication
  • Immediate Issue Resolution
  • Rapid Feedback Loops
  • Shared Project Management Tools
• Faster Turnaround Times
  • Time-to-Market Advantage
  • Flexibility and Scalability
  • Access to Skilled Professionals
  • Lack of Cultural Barriers
  • High-Quality Infrastructure

What is Nearshore Development?

Nearshore development is a business strategy where companies outsource their software development or IT projects to neighboring or nearby countries. The goal is to leverage the advantages of working with teams in close geographical proximity (same time zone or a few hours difference).

For instance, a German-based company may decide to collaborate with a development team in Portugal. The time difference is merely one hour, and both countries are members of the European Union. Additionally, the high level of English proficiency among Portuguese professionals facilitates effective communication and collaboration.

Facilitating Real-time Collaboration

One of the key benefits of nearshore development is the ability to facilitate real-time collaboration between teams in different countries.

Nearshore development teams are strategically located in neighboring or nearby countries to ensure overlapping work hours with their clients. This allows quicker decision-making and immediate issue resolution, while eliminating delays and increasing productivity.

The shared working time creates a seamless collaboration environment, fostering a sense of unity and cooperation that can significantly enhance the project’s success.

Nearshore teams can leverage real-time collaboration in the following ways:

1. Constant Communication

Nearshore development teams offer significant advantages in establishing seamless communication channels and fostering real-time collaboration with clients. They have a strong command of the client’s language and cultural practices, which reduces misunderstandings and facilitates effective communication.

Within our teams, we utilize various communication tools such as Slack, Microsoft Teams, Skype, or Zoom.

Nearshore teams can easily coordinate meetings, brainstorming sessions, and workshops during overlapping work hours. This enables team members to actively engage in discussions, share ideas, and make collective decisions.

2. Immediate Issue Resolution

With real-time collaboration, nearshore teams can address issues as they arise, reducing response times and minimizing delays. This ensures that potential roadblocks are swiftly identified and resolved, keeping the project on track.

3. Rapid Feedback Loops

Regardless of the specific methodology used (such as agile methodologies like Scrum or Kanban), nearshore teams prioritize iterative and incremental development cycles that emphasize regular feedback.

By breaking down projects into smaller tasks and delivering them incrementally, nearshore teams can quickly provide results. This progressive approach enables them to swiftly gather valuable feedback from clients at an early stage of development.

The iterative feedback process has several benefits, such as enabling quick course corrections, avoiding rework in later stages, and accelerating the development timeline. Additionally, it creates a cooperative atmosphere where the team creating the product and the client collaborate to improve it.

4. Shared Project Management Tools

Nearshore development teams and clients typically use shared project management tools or platforms. These tools serve as centralized repositories for project documentation, task tracking, and issue management. They provide real-time visibility into project progress, allowing both parties to stay updated on the latest developments.

Here are some examples of tools our teams use:

• Project and Task Management Tools: Trello, Notion, Asana, or Jira.
• Shared document editing: Google Docs or Microsoft Office 365;
• Real-time code collaboration: GitHub or GitLab.
  

Faster Turnaround Times

Nearshore development is a method that helps businesses bring their products to market faster. It involves delivering projects or software solutions in shorter timeframes compared to other outsourcing models. Several factors in nearshore development contribute to faster turnaround times, such as meeting tight deadlines and gaining a competitive edge.

Here are some ways nearshore development can accelerate response times:

1. Time-to-Market Advantage

Time-to-market refers to the time it takes from the inception of an idea or product development to its launch in the market.

By working closely with nearshore development teams, organizations can benefit from efficient communication and collaboration, leading to shorter project cycles. The reduced communication barriers and quicker response times ensure that the development process remains on schedule. As a result, companies can get their products or services to market faster, decrease reaction time to market needs, and take advantage of new opportunities.

2. Flexibility and Scalability

Nearshore development teams can be more flexible in adjusting the team size as per project requirements and timelines. They can quickly scale the team up based on the workload, allowing for faster adaptability to changing project needs. This scalability ensures that the project can progress at an optimal pace without being delayed due to resource constraints.

For example, we have two cooperation models (team extension and full teams). Both cooperation models offer flexibility in scaling the team size. And whenever necessary, our clients can discuss their changing requirements with us, and we’ll work together to adjust the team size accordingly, ensuring minimal disruption to your project.

3. Access to Skilled Professionals

Nearshore development allows businesses to quickly assemble a team of skilled professionals with the required expertise. The proximity of the nearshore location means that the hiring process can be expedited, and teams can be set up more swiftly. This quick resource allocation enables the project to start promptly, reducing delays in the development process.

4. Lack of Cultural Barriers

Nearshore development involves partnering with teams from countries that share similar cultural backgrounds, which leads to smoother communication and understanding.

When teams have common cultural aspects like language, communication styles, and work ethics, they can better understand each other’s expectations and requirements. This shared understanding enhances communication channels, minimizes misunderstandings, and enables faster information exchange. As a result, teams can align their goals, exchange feedback, and resolve issues promptly, leading to faster project completion.

5. High-Quality Infrastructure

It’s necessary to have a good infrastructure for a project to run smoothly. Nearshore development locations often boast reliable and advanced IT infrastructure, including high-speed internet connectivity and modern communication tools. This infrastructure enables seamless collaboration, quick file sharing, and efficient remote work.

A reliable infrastructure minimizes technical obstacles and ensures smoother development processes.

Conclusion

As we have witnessed, nearshore development is emerging as a compelling solution for enhancing the quality and efficiency of software development.

Teams located in neighboring or nearby countries can enhance companies’ productivity. This occurs due to the shared working hours, which facilitate constant communication, swift problem resolution, and rapid feedback loops.

It’s no wonder that an increasing number of companies are adopting this work model, recognizing its potential to drive successful outcomes in the dynamic and demanding world of software development.

Nearshore outsourcing delivers companies with greater performance, faster growth, and a higher response when it comes to time to market. All of this is achievable through specialized talent, and at Nearshore Portugal, as a nearshore development provider, we know all about that. Among the many advantages, the benefits of a similar time zone difference are undoubtedly one of the most well-known assets.

So, is there really that much of a difference in developing projects with a time zone difference?

Agility At Its Best

The Agile methodology plays a crucial role in nearshoring, revolutionizing a company’s efficiency and overall output. With Agile development, developers must work closely together. This means, collaboration with cross-functional teams to continually grasp new knowledge with constant communication. This approach is all about turning the collaboration knob to 11. Making sure there is constant information and feedback between the team and the customer.

Here’s a typical scenario: Imagine you have a team on the other side of the globe, both parties arrange a specific time for a meeting to discuss the project, it’s evolution, and issues. Meetings done, everyone goes home, and the developer from your provider realizes there’s a high probability of disaster concerning a deployment that wasn’t discussed in the meeting. Instinctively, this must be discussed ASAP. Urgent matters of this sort can’t be delayed. Otherwise, the whole process of communication becomes inefficient, and there’s a name for it: Offshoring.

With Agile development, constant communication prevents such situations. Allowing the customer to be well aware of any potential problems, progress, and decisions making needs on the minute. Practically speaking, there’s no beating the efficiency that nearshoring can provide when comparing to the offshore way. 

Nearshore Development More Relevant Than Ever

Organizations worldwide are working at full-speed, preparing for the future economic struggles created by COVID-19. More than ever, companies need to balance their software development projects output, and nearshoring is the solution. According to a study by Statista, 39% of surveyed CIOs and IT executives worldwide expect a decline in their IT budget for 2020 as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. On the other hand, 21% expect their IT budget in 2020 to increase, while 40% forecast no change in the IT budget.

These projections force companies to look at their current situation and evaluate what type of outsourcing solution is ideal. Yes, offshoring can be less expensive but will compromise cost-effectiveness in your teams, collaboration, time to market, and potentially increase delays. On the other hand, nearshoring become less costly over time, has competitive rates, provides expert developers experienced in an agile approach, delivering greater performance with one key advantage: a similar time zone. This means a much larger communication window, proximity, reduced expenses, and quicker travels when you decide to visit your providers HQ

Quality Regardless Of Location

Nearshore development companies have top-class developers and engineers with competitive rates as the ones offered by offshoring companies. With over 10 years of experience and 400 IT professionals, Nearshore Portugal provides customers with seasoned and expert professionals in multiple technologies, experienced in nearshore projects across Europe. Furthermore, Nearshore teams have little cultural barriers. What makes these experts so efficient and adaptable is precisely their different backgrounds. This drives better problem solving, increased creativity, innovation, and new solutions. As a result, building optimal software becomes quicker and less troublesome.

This level of innovation and adaptability are essential trades. Especially in current times where businesses worldwide need resilient, yet flexible and focused professionals to deliver results even with unpredictable lockdowns. With remote working common with nearshore developers, an adjustment comes easier as developers are used to remote meetings with a flex-work approach. This is turn, enables these talented individuals to optimize their environment and workflow to the max.

More than ever, ensuring your business is as agile as possible is key. With leading talent and an experienced provider, organizations can guarantee they project continuity with access to specialized developers.

Is your organization looking for greater innovation and support? We provide a Team Extension, End-To-End Teams, and Project Development services.

Get to know more about our methods at

https://nearshoreportugal.com/how-it-works/

Contact us at info@nearshoreportugal.com, we’re eager to hear from you!

When it comes to adding specific tech talent to your existing in-house IT team, the team extension model has become the first choice for my companies. However, some companies choose a “Do It Yourself”. An approach that can become costly since the talent they seek, in general cases, has specific skills. In other words, it takes time and effort to find these people. A process that can become costly, even more, if the company doesn’t have a dedicated team of tech recruiters.

So, what can you do if you need to add new people to your existing team of developers but you don’t want to deal with the extensive hiring process? Nearshore Portugal is the answer!

As a leading company offering Nearshore development services, we focus on finding the right fit for your business. To achieve this, we’ve developed a successful approach, a business model for companies of all sizes. Nearshore Portugal, as a Nearshore software outsourcing provider, operates a team extension model. Considered one of the most reliable and convenient models when you already have developers in your in-house team.

What is the Team Extension Model?

When planning to work with a Nearshore outsourcing provider, such as Nearshore Portugal, the team extension model is a great way to operate in a more direct and tight business partnership as it enhances productivity and improves communication. In essence, a team extension model focuses on augmenting your in-house IT staff with experienced and specialized developers that fill the skills gap in your team, providing you with greater control over the project.

Once you have at your disposal the desired talent, approved in advance by you through an involvement in the recruitment process, you gain operational control. In other words, the developers become your resources to manage by you, with our support. Although a paid service provided by us, they become part of your company, its culture, methodologies, practices and vision.

At Nearshore Portugal, we optimize this model by creating teams with outstanding tech talent. Developed with the desired know-how and experience needed to surpass challenges, improving your time to market. Through our model based on constant support, advice, and transparency established on open and direct communication, we have become partners of international brands in the forefront of their fields.

Key advantages of the Team Extension Model

Among the benefits mentioned above, by blending your need for seasoned professionals with the talent pool of Nearshore Portugal, not only will you gain a competitive edge over the competition, but will at the same time acquire several other advantages:

• Allocate responsibilities and tasks as you see fit to enhance team effectiveness;
• Scale your team as needed, with the possibility of additional resources being provided at short notice;
• Members of the extended team work closely with your in-house staff. This enhances the building of your product with the same commitment, while teams share the same responsibilities;
• You define the direction, resources, and schedule;
• Experience faster time to market;
• Gain greater transparency and efficient communication among teams by eliminating the middleman;
• The remote development team will have access to the latest equipment, working from a modern office;

By working with a partner such as Nearshore Portugal with a developed team extension model, you’ll achieve greater speed, productivity and reliability. While at the same time, removing any straining from your internal team of developers.  When it comes to software outsourcing, it all comes down to an experienced Nearshore provider with the right track-record.

So if you’re looking to scale your team in the most efficient way, we would love to hear from you and discuss your project needs via skype!

Ensuring that your nearshore team operates with full efficiency and productivity means there must be a partnership on both sides. How can you achieve this? By implementing these four easy steps!

A full picture of your project

The start of any project must begin with the objectives but also with your product vision. This means explaining what are the goals, where is the project going and what sets you apart from the competition. Making sure all this information is delivered clearly and straightforwardly means your teams will be included from the start. This means complete knowledge of future tasks, and what requirements must be met. Remember, a clear message with no questions left behind is the start of a path focused on organization, time management, and effectiveness!

Open communication

Much more than passing information from person to person, communication is one of the most important features in any organization. Communication is the bass of any IT project and to make sure there is an open line it’s crucial to make it easy for everyone to communicate. The option may vary from project management tools or simple platforms such as email, slack, or skype. It’s important to keep in mind that distance is not an excuse, nor is it a setback. In today’s tech environment, faulty lines of communication can become very costly mistakes. Maintaining a dialogue, be it online or face-to-face will avoid misunderstandings. This will contribute to a higher quality performance that will influence the project at hand.

Engagement with a nearshore team

Making sure your project is moving according to plan isn’t just about keeping an eye on the overall performance of the teams and the objectives. It’s equally important to get to know the people involved, especially your nearshore team leader. Knowing the people that are spearheading your project is as important as the project itself. It’s all about building a partnership where necessary outcomes and quality are clear. Of course, involvement on your side is just as important as the collaboration between your in-house team and your nearshore team, since both will need to work together. Consider introductions in the beginning, allowing for a quicker collaboration of your project from both teams.

Top-tip: visiting from time to time is always a great way to ensure there is involvement from all sides. A proximity advantage that the nearshore model provides.

Rewards

Every project regardless of the sector can be extremely demanding and this seems to be especially true in IT. The combination of challenging deadliness, unexpected objectives, and last-minute adjustments can become exhausting. Of course, nearshore has the advantage of having the same time zones, as well the language accessibility and little to none culture barrier. These key features come together to provide not just the best resources for your project but also rewards for your teams, opening the door for conferences, meetups, training opportunities, and team-building activities.

In essence, ensuring you get the most out of your nearshore team is all about building and maintaining a rapport, focusing on coherent and uncomplicated communication where all team members and engaged. This, in turn, will result in what a nearshore team does best: decreasing costs and accelerant objectives and delivering your product with the best quality.

Even though nearshore IT is beneficial, the question stands: in what way can nearshoring support the challenges faced by businesses?

New technology is constantly being developed, which translates into the need of having the time to learn it, apply it, and ultimately, master it. However, realistically, it’s not always easy to learn new technology. Besides the reduced availability to train your in-house team, it isn’t feasible to assume that your team has expertise in every area of demand. When it comes to adapting to new technologies, organizations face three challenges. Once grasped, what was a challenge will soon become a path for an opportunity.

Grasping the new technology

Let’s face it, with so many rising technologies coming into the market, it’s difficult to stay up-to-date with every new thing. As said previously, it’s not viable to expect your team to implement flawlessly a “just on the market” technology. So, what can you do? On one hand, you need to keep up with competitors and above all, innovate to keep delivering the best service. On the other hand, there’s the need to start applying this new tech in projects. The answer is nearshore IT provider but not just any provider. What you need is an experienced partner that executes the best practices, as we explained in our article: The value of the right nearshore IT team.

A nearshore team comprises a seasoned group of people that understands your needs, your costumers, and the technology. Partnering with nearshore experts means you’ll reduce your costs since you’ll be outsourcing. Thus, avoiding re-training your in-house team, as well as buying licenses, hardware, and overall, ensuring you have the needed infrastructures. Ultimately, it’s less time and less money spent, all thanks to a team that knows the tech and the paths.

Acquiring top-notch talent

Finding the best talent for your project is a must. Be that as it may, with so many headhunters and companies with above-average competitive rates and benefits, hiring an individual with the right skill set can be a very difficult task and an expensive one as well. IT outsourcing companies such as Nearshore Portugal have seasoned specialists and teams, experienced in providing the ideal solution for businesses. These teams can benefit organizations tremendously through their innovative thinking and understanding of technologies, problem-solving skills, and forward-thinking, providing an advantage. As a plus, it is less costly to acquire talent from an outsourcer than to hire one since you may only need an expert for a specific period of time.

Budget discipline

At one stage or another, the speed that a company needs to grow can achieve maximum levels. This, in turn, can make the costs of training your in-house team an expensive operation due to the rapid growth. Keep in mind, there is no guarantee that your team can master all the necessary knowledge at the required speed. As we know speed plays a major role in any project. Usually, companies have a set budget for a project which may not be viable to keep due to the speed vs learning time of the in-house IT staff. How can you tackle this issue? Nearshore IT experts are all about adapting to a time-frame and a budget while still providing the same support. You’ll still get the A-team or expert you need while matching your requirements.

In short, nearshore IT supports businesses through experts, experienced in the technological requirements of organizations, and ultimately, a dedicated partnership. Providing a service-based on innovation and the future. Working closely with companies such as Nearshore Portugal translates into a wide range of professionals for all tech necessities, resulting in a booming business.

Time is a resource that businesses don’t have and recruiting talent is expensive, specially seasoned IT talent. Not having the right people at the needed time means your project may experience delays, a word no company appreciates. Yet, lengthy recruitment isn’t the only answer. Partnering with experts that outsource nearshore developers is a strategic and cost-efficient approach. Making sure you have the ideal specialists working on your project, adopting the correct methodologies is a must. What you need is a nearshore team.

Nearshore developers: Experts in their field

Assembling a team of the right professionals is gaining access to technologies, markets, and how everything is connected. Firstly, these tech gurus have worked with other companies, some of which might be industry leaders. Secondly, taking individuals that already have the know-how and business understanding is a major benefit when it comes to integrating them into your company. The advantage? Highly skilled nearshore developers that will optimize your company culture. Thus leading your business to a range of clients and new possibilities. At Nearshore Portugal, we have been successful in connecting our expert consultants to industry leaders in IT, business management, and software, among others. This, in turn, contributes to the knowledge and proficiency in other business sectors. As well as the means for clients to be exposed to new methodologies, ideas, and approaches that may have never considered as a new practice.

Innovators and growth starters

Having the contribution from these experienced professionals means your business will gain a new edge and acquire two very important opportunities: their knowledge and access to the latest technologies. Acquiring this explosive one-two combo is what defines a business as being in motion or static. As you might have guessed it, the right nearshore developers will impact your product, implement more efficient procedures, advise you and ultimately, influence your business. Their agile methodology and constant tech-savvy mind will allow your product to be delivered more rapidly, resulting in better development.

There is no escaping questions

That’s right, there is no dodging questions and that’s a good thing. The right nearshore developers will push your business in the best direction, this means plenty of questions. As you know, questions play a critical role in any organization. They establish the motivation of your team, their interest, and engagement which undoubtedly leads to commitment. Being fortunate to have engaged members also means being able to answer tough and eye-opening questions. Suddenly, giving vague answers with little information is not acceptable and the right nearshore developers will let you know that. Answering “to my knowledge, that’s how some of our former team members did it” will trigger your team to a much-needed conversation about what can’t happen and what needs to happen. In the wink of an eye, your team will bring the best out of you. Starting you as the main player for the championship final.

When it comes to developing your business, the model of a nearshore development company such as Nearshore Portugal allows any business to hire nearshore developers. This, in turn, gives access to a pool of specialized talent, experienced in developing solutions in an ever-changing market. Having these professionals on your side is providing your business with a valuable on-demand resource, allowing you to reduce costs compared to an internal full-time hire. This is turn will allow you to gain expert knowledge and insight for the duration of your project while making sure targets, performance and quality are met.

Although offshore outsourcing can provide fair ROI, the talent gap between Offshore and Nearshore often makes Nearshore a better choice.

So, what’s the difference between Nearshore and Offshore?

Offshore refers to sourcing developers from a country far away from the client’s office. While Nearshore means working with a team in a nearby country rather than the other side of the world. Nearshore is often pointed to as the best choice due to its advantages like time zone, cultural alignment, and accessibility.

According to a research study conducted by GoodFirm, 74% of companies decide to outsource for the long-term savings in hiring staff and infrastructure, and 60% expect to achieve Staffing Flexibility when outsourcing.

Companies that refer to “Low price” as one of their primary motivations to outsource, take the risk to partner with offshore countries. But, as shown below, there are on-going and substantial issues associated with Offshore software development today.

The truth is: Offshore is cheaper yet hard to maintain!

Nearly 31% of the participants consider time zone difference as a significant challenge while outsourcing work to countries like India. But there’s a lot more to consider, such as the real cost of an Offshore Project.

Offshore extremely low labor rates tell only a fraction of the story about Offshore outsourcing costs. Here are some other sources of expenses:

Limited communications

It’s imperative to have high-quality communication between the offshore team and your company. If you’re a whole day behind your team, you have limited opportunities for feedback.

Fees for additional work

You can get the most out of software development by partnering with a company that practices Agile methodologies. because it works to mitigate risk. However, Agile requires frequent and iterative releases, and these rely on real-time collaboration. It all comes down to the development of trust, and shared understanding between developers and project owners.

Low quality work is often redone In-house

Offshoring software development can lead to delays in the feedback of ideas and deliverables. This can make slow productivity during waiting periods and messy production from rushing to meet deadlines, creating mistakes.

Travel Costs with offshore

Despite technological advances, there’s not really a substitute for face-to-face communication. So when working with a company overseas travel costs should be considered.

Some Nearshore companies seem to be more expensive than Offshore companies, but most of them provide cost-efficient services. Moreover, companies looking to outsource their software development should take into consideration how distance affects the quality of communication and control that they have over the developer’s direction, evolution and priorities.

In conclusion, Nearshore companies have the advantage of sharing similar time zones, offering the savings of outsourcing with the dynamic of an in-house team. Besides, Nearshore teams are closer to your office, there is an excellent opportunity to have more frequent meetings in person.

I am Nuno Campos of Nearshore Portugal and this is our Blog!

Being the inaugural post of Nearshore Portugal, it makes a lot of sense that the topic should be: what is Nearshore and what exactly we do?

We can find several Nearshore IT Services definitions everywhere. For example, Wikipedia defines it as: “Nearshoring is the outsourcing of business processes, especially information technology processes, to companies in a nearby country, often sharing a border with the target country. These expect to benefit from one or more of the following dimensions of proximity: geographic, temporal (time zone), cultural, social, linguistic, economic, political, or historical linkages. The service work that is being sourced may be a business process or software development”.

We think these definitions are a bit simplistic and we go way beyond, creating our own model and definition.

At Nearshore Portugal, we offer a complete TAAS (Team as a Service), which gives our clients the best of solutions for their software development. With our TAAS model the client hires a remote team of experts to work with him directly. We handle recruitment, salary negotiations, payroll, workstations etc., but the client has a final say over who gets hired and what profile they should have.

“The client is in control! Teams created, are fully dedicated to their project.”

On top of this, we offer our Training Academy to all our staff completely free and more important, our clients benefit from our Internal Tech Community.

TaaS model is flexible and contrary to the traditional outsourcing model, it allows companies to create the model that works best for them.

They define the tech stack, the working methodology, the team size, allowing also for scaling up and scaling down within certain rules. Again, this is their team, as if they were their employees, but without all the hassle inherent to HR management.

Nearshore Software development allows companies to cut the risks and cultural barriers involved in offshore outsourcing and come with language and time zone proximity, as well as cost efficiency, making companies more agile and focused on what is important: Their business.

So, in the Nearshore Portugal blog we’re going to explore a little bit this nearshore world, as well as create a space to talk and debate about what we love most: technology.

Want to know more about Nearshore Portugal? Drop us a line! We will be glad to help.

From Lisbon to the World, we are here for you!