Outsourcing and freelance. Version 2016.

Here we go, it’s 2016 ladies and gentlemen. People can pay with the help of the watch and see the Times Square on the sofa using VR headsets. Looks like the future is now indeed huh?

The main advantage of this technical revolution is literary being mobile. No matter if you are the developer, project manager of a customer who needs to hire the staff. Let’s take a look at all the positions. I will try to provide the main things all of us should remember of.

Developers.

If you need a laptop to work and produce the final product of your work successfully, you’re a happy person because now you can do it siting at the cafe somewhere near the beach. Of course it’s not available  for everybody yet and you need to have the following mind-set to make it happen:

1. Self-motivation. It’s the most important thing. You need to clearly realize the aim of your professional life. You need to be interested in improving all the sides of it and understand that there are some things to work on before relaxing. Otherwise you will find yourself surfing (not in web) as the result. Or gaming online.
2. Skills of specialization. If you work in the team there is the way to get help immediately from your team-mates. If you work alone, you have to be a pro as there are some issues which cannot be resolved simply digging into stackoverflow. Believe me.
3. Ability to keep the focus. Another important thing for any freelancer who works for his/her own, especially in a nice location. There are tons of things at home which can disturb you, starting with your cat or neighbours. Close FB and twitter and work! I mean if you’re not a SMM manager working with those, if so please open up.
4. Responsibility. It’s simple – if you care for the project you’re working on then it’s going to be alright. Most probably.
5. Communication. You really have to keep your customers informed all the time and make it that way when you’re not hiding for a week or annoying the customer with all the minor updates. Keep it balanced.

Project/product managers.

There are some lucky persons who worked their ass of to build a team they can fully trust to manage all the processes online. I’m proud to be one of them. And more proud of my team I can rely on. So here are the main thing PM should have to work watching the palmas and not walls:

1. The team. This is the most important thing. Human resources. You need to be perfectly sure in each team member you work with. To achieve that you need to personally know everybody and know the skill-set of each developer. It doesn’t matter if you get this kind of information directly or via HR manager or whatever but you have to have it in place.
2. Management skills. It obvious, but I need to rephrase: strong management skills and experience plus orientation to the area you work with. It’s not a surprise, there are many countries and nations and every territory has its own mental differences in business approach and you definitely need to know how to work with it.
3. Perfect memory and productive usage of management tools. You need to remember every tiny thing about the project not to lose any detail. And of course there’s a chance to forget something so please use the tools which are provided, record everything, sync all the devices. My main list contains of evernote as a notebook for everything including thoughts, mock-ups, web screenshots, etc., Jira as the main tasks tracking tool, toggl for time-tracking, and Skype and Hangouts accounts always being online.
4. Availability. Please remember, if you are the PM of remote team (and customer) you should always be in touch. No weekend or holiday period anymore. 27/4 online. Run the email sync or IM at least at one of the devices you’re using daily to be ready to help both of the sides. In other words you must have…
5. Obsession of the work. It’s easy guys, you really need to love your job. Otherwise you will lose this game. Read all the side-related information about IT daily, always get to know something new about your profession, try different Agile approaches, etc. You need to be a maniac in a good way, so get crazy.

Clients/business.

No need to hire the staff in our local area, gentlemen. No need to support government guaranties even if it sounds bad. You can pay for your product development only, excluding office rents, HR managers, corporate events, etc. Cool right? So what’s the main criteria for it?

1. Risk management. You need to be ready for the worst scenario when the developer is getting lost with nothing left and you already invested in him/her. It happens rarely but shit it happens. So the most efficient way to work with the outsourcing developer or a team is: use hourly rate basis (this way the developer is confident in you) and daily commits to your own repository on bitbucket or github (this way you are confident in your developer). The most popular platform to use is UpWork which is common oDesk and Elance being united.
2. Well-documented requirements. You need to make sure that your requirements are clear not for you only but for each person involved. So please get the detailed specification/wireframes prepared before you start to seek for hands. This is the main part of your job so please take it responsibly and prepare a great documentation set. It will help the developer to follow it directly and help you to trace the progress.
3. Involvement. You need to dedicate time for the project if you have no project manager who supplies you with daily updates. Yes, updated should come in daily, even if the spring is scheduled to be ready in 2 weeks. You need to keep an eye on that being ready to help the team and yourself as a result. Create control points and follow them.

Those are the main principles of outsourcing business from my humble point of view. Needless to say it a way more complicated for each side but if you are thinking of going online with your work or business I believe it would give you the main idea. Please remember that IT area is a place for talented people so don’t hesitate to work with the approaches and find your own way to work best of it, standard solutions are good to be your basis but there is also something to be your personal style which will define your of you.

Thanks for reading.