Time is a non-renewable source for leaders who are running businesses. As a rule, the more executive level we talk, the less time we have. Working mostly in the UK Market, I see the strong tendency to save time using different tricks. Instead of having a meeting, companies prefer to start by searching for software development companies and collecting the most basic information about potential partners.
Comparing services and prices they offer, filtering out those vendors that don’t match the expectations and budgets. This process can be arranged differently, depending on the procedures, we may participate in two-three rounds to win the right to have this first call with C-Level Executives. One of the most common practices is fulfilling offshore development questionnaire lists.
Today’s post uncovers the Top 8 most common questions we receive and answer before the initial call will be scheduled.
1. What kind of outsourcing do you provide? (E.g. provide developers to work inside our internal team?)
Well in short, a lot. If you’re looking for a service we are betting that we can provide it. Check out the list below for a breakdown of the services we offer.
- Team augmentation services (providing resources who is working as a part of your team)
- Dedicated teams (whole teams dedicated 100% for given client)
- Custom software development – managing the complete project software life cycle (from Requirements gathering till Deployment & Maintenance)
- Project Management (including Agile techniques- like Scrum Masters)
- Solution Architects (performing audits of existing solutions with recommendations; digital transformations of existing architectures; architecture migrations; performance optimizations)
- Software Development (Front End)
- Software Development (Back End)
- Database Development / Administration
- QA & Testing (manual and automated)
- Load and Performance testing
- Security Evaluation
- Documentation Writing
- DevOps Services
- Cloud Services (migration to the cloud, cloud optimization)
2. What range of experience and/or qualifications do you have?
Although Inspeerity is 4 years old (as of 2022), our management board have a combined total of 60 years’ experience in running and managing Software Houses. Moreover, our team members possess different certificates. Examples include; internal auditor for ISO 9001 certification, we have 10+ certified Scrum Masters, certified AWS/Azure Developers, Certified Java/Oracle Developers and Architects. In addition to all that, as a company we are in the process of ISO 27001 certification.
Despite the short time we’ve been operating we have delivered services to over 60 clients, delivered on 120 plus projects. As a team we boast over 700 years’ worth of experience. With each person, on average, having 8 years’ experience. Want to see some examples of our track record? Click here to view some of our proudest accomplishments.
We can also say that the majority of our team are Middle level developers and above. Expert/Architect level 12 %, Senior level 42 %, Middle level 38 %, Junior level 8 %
Inspeerity is part of the DevelopX Group, a leading digital service provider based in Hamburg. DevelopX has over 10 years of digital consultancy expertise, creating more than 23 successful startups, and delivering over 250 software projects worldwide. Access to a wider pool of resources with Nearshore Portugal & DevelopX means faster team building and project delivery.
3. Where are you based and what is your proficiency in speaking, reading and writing in English?
Inspeerity is a software development company based in Poland. We have three offices, with the main office found in Bialystok, Warsaw and the third one in Wroclaw. But our staff aren’t just limited to these 3 cities, we have a full hybrid work model so we can employ programmers from a larger talent pool. For now we have 120+ people with 100+ engineers. Our employees work full-time from Poland under EU regulations. Also, we have 1 person based in Lithuania. Our team members come from all corners of the world and not just from the EU. Although a diverse bunch, all team members have minimum B2 level of proficiency in English, however most can boast a C1 level in both written and spoken English.
4. What level of commitment do we need to have?
We are able to take your brilliant idea through conception and development and scaling it up over time. As a rule, short-term commitment isn’t our focus and we are always looking for long-term partnerships. However, we’d be glad to deliver short-term projects if there is a prospect of developing our partnership.
Our main goal is to deliver more than just coding services. We seek to become a partner in our client’s business and not just an external resource. As a partner we want to use our experience for your success. This is only possible when we have gained your trust – which we understand takes time.
5. Do you have a pool of developers to call upon or would you recruit for us? And What is the lead time to get additional resource?
We apply Agile principals to all our projects, if you’re unsure if Agile is a good fit for you we have an article here that can help. But in short, It depends on the tech stack that you are looking for and the projects we are currently working on. As all our developers are full-time workers on payrolls they don’t stay on the bench for long. But sometimes it might happen that the project is nearing completion and there is no new assignment. However, of course it may happen that we won’t have a specific skill required by our clients. In that case we have a dedicated HR team. Usually in such cases we need around 4 weeks to find the right candidate with both the technical and personal skills to match our team. Of course we wouldn’t go through all that effort and not keep the new hire on, all candidates hired by Inspeerity are moved to new projects once yours has run its course.
In general terms though, getting new resources for your project depends on required technology, the scope of work and the team size. Usually it takes between 2 and 6 weeks. But luckily thanks to the HR team we have a significant pipeline of candidates in the most popular technologies.
6. If we are not happy with the performance or output of the additional resource what recourse do we have?
We believe that our biggest asset is the people that we employee. That’s why we pay attention to recruiting and team building. We carefully select candidates in a multi-step recruitment process. Our hiring team check not only technical skills (which is the easiest part for our tech leads) but also attitude, approach to work, language and communication skills. We are looking for talented individuals with potential. Programmers who are greedy for learning. We know that tech skills can be taught but changing personality is much harder. In case of team augmentation services we organize interview calls for selected candidates where our partner can meet the candidate and check to see if they are a good fit for the company. We like to go the extra mile to match our staff to yours.
In cases where the project is already underway and our partner isn’t happy with the performance we do our best to understand what went wrong and if we are able to manage this issue (helping with acquiring technical skills or developing soft skills). If there is no space to improve the situation in such a way – we’ll provide a replacement for them. In such cases we usually agree on the time frame in the agreement beforehand.
7. Do your team members adjust their working hours to match that of their clients?
Because we enjoy being flexible, our team have flexible working hours as standard. Situated in Europe, our main time zone is CET. However we are flexible to adjust working hours when it is really needed (to participate in daily meetings, planning sessions, refinements etc.). For our team members there is no problem to work earlier or late evenings from time to time. However, if there is a need for a permanent change in working hours this will be considered separately.
8. Do you provide additional resources for other software related roles? (e.g. testing, Product management, Etc.)
Yes, we have a separate QA department with both manual and test automation engineers. Depending on the goal of our customer we are able to extend our team with the required specialist as we do not focus only on one specific language or framework – our idea is to have teams of experts in many areas to be able to select the best tools for solving our client’s problems.
So there we are, the Top 8 questions. If anything wasn’t covered here or if you like to learn more feel free to get in touch for a chat.
