The following article outlines what are the 3 criteria you should be looking for in a potential technology partner. This article will help you — as an organization, or as an individual — make the best decision possible.
1. Team structure and management
One of the first things to consider when shortlisting technology partners is how they structure and care for their development teams. If a company doesn’t show love for its employees, how can you expect them to care for your project?
Great companies have great culture
Good software partners will nurture and maintain healthy work relationships between team members. This correlates directly with lower employee attrition, increased productivity, and higher employee engagement. Fantastic partners will be able to combine your company’s culture with their own to provide an engaging experience for new candidates and team members. A 2021 Glassdoor report showed that organizations that invest in delivering a strong candidate experience and employer branding can reduce their turnover rate by up to 28%.
Intelligence is the ability to adapt to change
Unforeseen problems and bugs can quickly cause a project to end up behind schedule. No employee enjoys a crunch, but having flexible teams and management can help ease stress in a pinch. Throughout the lifespan of a project, there may be times when the size of your product engineering team needs to be scaled rapidly to meet new goals. A competent software development service will allow for this and have a large network of qualified — and pre-trained! — engineers to pull from at a moment’s notice.
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Business maturity leads to project success
A reliable development team is essential to charging your trust battery and allowing your company to focus on its core business development without having to worry about the processes of day-to-day product development. Experience and business maturity should always be front of mind. In fact, only 56% of projects meet their initial goals when working with ‘low-maturity’ organisations according to a recent 2022 report by Plaky.com.
2. Technical skills and work readiness
Ensuring your new remote team has the technical skills to get the job done is obviously important when considering a technology partner. However, an often-overlooked requirement is making sure that staff also have the soft skills crucial for clear communication and conflict-free work relationships. Let’s start by looking at the technical side.
Technical ability sure – but there’s more
Of course, development teams should be well-versed in the technology stack and programming languages necessary for your project. But they also should be able to articulate a methodological approach to their design architecture. A common architecture for many modern development companies is ‘MACH’ – Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, and Headless. This approach definitely gives your team lots of flexibility throughout the development phase. It’s allowing them to pick the most effective and up-to-date technologies for each area of functionality.
A MACH Overview
- Microservices: Individual pieces of business functionality that are developed, maintained, and deployed as separate entities.
- API-first: APIs allow for the exposing of functionality and integration of platforms with other services and applications.
- Cloud-Native SaaS: Full leverage of cloud technologies allows for hosting, storage, and rapid elastic scaling of resources.
- Headless: Back-end logic is separated completely from front-end UI&UX and linked through APIs. This allows for total design freedom on both ends of the system.
And here we can see the top-10 in-demand programming languages of 2022. JavaScript still holds the number one position being used in a huge range of solutions across almost every industry imaginable.
Communication works for those who work at it
In terms of soft skills, communication issues are the number one cause of breakdowns in trust between clients and remote development teams. Without frequent and concise communication, clients and vendors can quickly become out of sync. Experienced vendors will ensure that their employees can openly discuss challenges and problems together in English, and to international standards. One-on-one interviews at the hiring stage are a great way to guarantee good communication and culture fit for new candidates and should always be made available.
3. Trust & Confidentiality
With reporting of an increase in cyber-attacks of over 600% due to the Covid-19 pandemic, it’s understandable that companies are fearful of theft and other malicious activities against their offshore data. These situations can be mitigated by only trusting in remote development teams that have attained and maintained a certain level of security standards and practices.
Source: PurpleSec.us Cyber Security
Security is an investment – not an expense
One of the most valuable assets for any company will always be its intellectual property. With so much talk today of IP theft between countries and corporations, it can be easy to assume that working with a new partner will put you at undue risk. It’s important to ensure that your potential vendor meets information security standards such as ISO 27001. The development teams also have to conduct regular security training. Asking your vendor to share their certifications, protocols, and processes with you will guarantee a professional level of respect is given to the protection of your product and data.
Contracts and NDAs are a must
NDAs and contracts ensure peace of mind for both yourself and your vendor. A mutual NDA helps to protect your company’s innovations, assets, trade secrets, and strategies. Reputable software development companies should have no problem outlining the type of legal documentation they can deploy to act as a security buffer for all involved parties.
Our teams specialize in
• Software Product Engineering: We combine agile methodologies, advanced technology, collaborative tools, and multidisciplinary teams to develop web, mobile, and enterprise apps for our clients worldwide.
• Build-Operate-Transfer Model (BOT): We scale custom software and product development centres in Vietnam on behalf of our clients. We set up the infrastructure, provide the engineering resources, integrate your company culture, and most importantly, share our experience in the local market!
The Teams
Our cross-functional development teams are comprised of hand-picked members who have all passed our rigorous onboarding, testing, and coaching. We apply SCRUM and KANBAN to ensure continuous business value to our clients and their customers. With a focus on team culture, our practices allow for the extension of your own company culture in Vietnam with a local flair.
Our location and offices
With over 6300m2 of high-tech office space located in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City, we can provide competitive rates without sacrificing quality. All our locations and staff members are ISO 27001 certified. Moreover, our office spaces are protected by 24/7 security, backup power systems and modern fire protection.
Our APAC team
20+ years in the business has made building expert engineering squads second nature for us. That’s why we are committed to bringing those skills and dedication to you. For more information about Positive Thinking Company and our expert software development teams please contact us through the form below:
