Top questions to ask before hiring an offshore PHP Development Company

May 19, 2016

10, 70,000. This is the search result for offshore PHP Development Company. As if narrowing on a programming language wasn’t enough, now you have to deal with finding the right company to build your application too. It is granted if you become confused on finding yourself accosted with unfamiliar jargons and terminologies. Top it off with all the prejudices that comes with the mention of “offshore” and you have the prefect recipe for disaster. But it doesn’t have to be this way. With just a bit of planning and a lot of questions, you can find exactly the right offshore PHP development company.

Equivalent to how software development requires proper methodology, finding the right offshore software partner requires proper planning so that no important facet is overlooked and you end up with just the right offshore partner.

Having a relationship with the company developing your project is a lot like online dating. For a successful relationship, you need to ask a lot of questions and get the answers before you can move forward. PHP being a widely used platform, it can be difficult to sift the best ones from the mediocre but you need to keep your standards high, know what you want and keep looking!
Check out some of the best questions that will help you understand whether the offshore PHP development company is the right fit for your project or not.

Experience

When it comes to a programming language, very few things can beat experience. Your thoughts should be towards finding a stable and experienced offshore PHP development company. Find out the years of experience of the company and the work done by them. The idea is to understand how reliable, the said company is and whether they can be trusted with your project. Here are some of the questions which can help you gauge the reliability and experience of a company

  • How old is the company and how long have they been working on PHP?
  • What is the number of projects they have worked on so far?
  • How many projects have they worked on exclusively on PHP and how many of them are live in the market?
  • What is the staffing capacity?
  • What kind of industry do they cater to?
  • How many clients do they have?
  • How many employees do they have and how many work exclusively on PHP?

Expertise

An offshore partner can make or break your business and chosen wrongly an outsourced project can put your business to lag behind the competitors. It is very important to understand if the offshore partner that you are hiring are suitably qualified. Understand their strengths and weaknesses and the details that would be relevant to your project. Here are some questions that you can ask the offshore software provider to understand their level of expertise.

  • What skills, experience and qualifications do the software developers have?
  • What are the delivery models offered?
  • What process and methodology do the company adopt (Agile, Scrum, Kanban, Waterfall, etc.)?
  • What are the other tools and technologies adopted by the company?
  • What is the estimated timescale for completion of work from conception to deployment?
  • What are their thoughts on project documentation?
  • Do the company use tools like Github, Slack, etc.?
  • Can the software be upgraded in the future as new technology becomes available?
  • What tracking system do they adopt to ensure that the project is completed on time and within budget?
  • Which frameworks do they use for the rapid development?

Communication

When it comes to hiring an offshore development company, communication is of utmost importance. You should be able to communicate with them properly and the language shouldn’t be a barrier between you and your offshore partner. In fact, excellent communication should be one of major prerequisite that you should look for in an offshore partner. Here are some of the questions that you can ask.

  • What is their policy on communication?
  • Are the developers/POC (point of contact), project manager available for discussion through chat, calls, Skype at all times?
  • In what time-zone are they located? Will it pose any difficulty in communication?
  • What about after-launch policy?
  • What are the communication and language proficiency (both oral and written) of all the team?

Reference

The best way to understand about a company is to get the review from past clients. Instead of browsing the testimonial page, ask to check the review from past clients. Check out some of the questions you need to ask when it comes to reference.

  • Can the company provide references?
  • Will they show me samples of work they have done?
  • Will they provide contact details of their past clients so that you can get in touch with them?

Apart from these, there are many other details you need to take into consideration for legal, payment, security and post development support. These questions will offer a good prelude for you to start the filtering process when it comes to selecting an offshore PHP development company. There are a lot of horror stories shrouding offshore development from over-promising and under-delivering to security breaches and other factors. But, hiring offshore PHP development team doesn’t have to be a nightmare. In fact, a good offshore development team can drive you towards growth trajectory.

The key is finding the right offshore team to help you out with your projects. With ingenious solutions, progressive business values, and proven track record of 12 years, Carmatec is best suited to help you with all your development needs. We take pride in our customer-centric solutions and innovative approach which has transformed into a suite of happy clients. Providing end-to-end PHP consulting to organizations around the globe, we support our clients with tools and techniques to solve critical business problems. Our mission is to revolutionize the process involved in solving the strategic or routine IT problems that affect business growth.

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