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What risks exist for the client using Agile/Scrum? Budget risks It’s sometimes hard to precisely estimate the cost of the development of a new product at its early stages. Agile assumes constant changing of the product according to the customers’ and market needs. So, one day a client may discover that the expenses have overcome the initial level. What we do to prevent the budget risks The best thing we can do here is to propose LEAN development to manage the cost. The team estimates the work step-by-step, module-by-module to make the numbers as accurate as possible. We can also use Rolling Wave Planning. This method implies making the decisions and giving estimations when all the necessary requirements are absolutely clear. To reach this point, we apply best practices in business analysis and teamwork to help clients find the best solutions and estimate the efforts precisely.    Scope creep risk This risk assumes scope changes during the development that lead to shifting timelines, changing deliverables, and budget increases. What we do to prevent the risk of scope creep To avoid scope creep and to meet the deadlines, we usually suggest splitting the development into several phases, like MVP, 1.0, 1.1, etc. It helps to keep the scope for each version more or less stable, though several adjustments can be made. Not sticking to Agile principles This risk is related to applying Agile while sticking to traditional management principles and approaches. What we do to prevent the risk If clients don’t feel confident about understanding Agile/Scrum principles and values we explain them and can teach how to apply them appropriately. At the same time, we monitor how clients apply the principles and may guide them during this process if needed.   Agile is not suitable for a project Agile is not applicable to all kinds of projects. Some of them need a traditional management approach, close to Waterfall. What we do to prevent the risk So, if a client wants to use agile on projects that are not suitable for it because of many reasons (clear scope, clear requirements, fixed budget, etc) we try to persuade them to use another approach that will bring more profit. The recommendations are based on common sense, business needs, and project details. Less predictability Agile implies constant changes and it is hard sometimes to give long-term predictions. It also deals with shifting deadlines and reputational losses for the vendor.  What we do to prevent this risk of less predictability Again, we split a project into smaller phases, clarify requirements in detail, and then give our forecast on delivery. In its turn, it helps us to give forecasts on budget and resources needed so the clients will know when they will receive a new piece of their system and how much it will cost. All these factors help us to keep clients’ satisfaction level at its highest point because deadlines are met, the scope is done according to previous arrangements, and clients receive the product they need. Following these steps helps us to keep the company reputation at a very high level so we can guarantee that clients will receive top-class services and top gear products. What risks exist for the vendor using Agile/Scrum? Lack of Staff Knowledge Agile/Scrum needs qualified team members to run it smoothly. If the dedicated software development team doesn’t understand what Scrum is about, then they might get into trouble during the project progress. Another consideration is the skills each developer possesses. If someone is underqualified and doesn’t get proper training or support it can also destroy all the benefits of using Agile.  What we do to prevent the risk To avoid this situation we always gather a team of skilled developers who understand Scrum and value its principles. If some of the team members don’t have much experience, they can ask for help from their colleagues. We promote and support knowledge sharing and mentoring practices to teach and coach the developers.Constant retrospective meetings help us to keep to Continuous improvements practice. A sudden stop of work This risk might happen when the product doesn’t fit the market anymore or the initial goals were set wrongly. It leads to a sudden stop of work and, as a result, the company and resource managers have to put extra efforts to avoid idle time. What we do to prevent the risk At the very beginning of a project, we conduct a discovery phase to learn more about the product, its purpose, and its functions. Our business analysts try to bring proper ideas and advice to clients on how to improve the product and bring more value to the end-users and market. They stay in close touch with Product Owners during the whole development process and help them to find the best solution if needed. Technical debt Changes in a project cause changes in code and it can lead to technical debt and quality problems, low system performance, etc. What we do to prevent the risk of technical debt Before the project starts we clarify the non-functional requirements related to performance quality etc. After that, we design system architecture in a way that is applicable to these requirements, like modular architecture or microservices.For managing the quality of the final product, each user story or task has its own acceptance criteria and definition of done. For some complex projects, we use several stages, usually close to production one to make sure that the system performance and quality will fit the non-functional requirements agreed upon.  Why Agile Is Good For Customers Image Source: www.prolinxservices.com The essence of Agile approach for customer can be briefly stated as follows: Development is carried out by short cycles (iterations) in 1-4 weeks; Customer gets a valuable software (or part thereof) at the end of each iteration, which can be used in business. I’ll try to look into the following questions: Why are customers so fond of Agile? Why is Agile good? Why is Agile so popular? First, let's leave technical details, and switch to something more important: evident and hidden clients’ expectations. That’s often determining the choice of operation method, rather than rational discussions and accurate calculations. Thus there are 4 main reasons why customers love Agile: Agile is fast Agile-principle speaks about upbuilding some set of functions within each iteration. But in order to be ready within one small iteration these rapid changes shouldn’t be large. Therefore, Agile-approach allows you to: More quickly implement any customers' wishes Launch a product or its new version quickly on the market as there is no need for detailed documentation and planning in the beginning. Agile is cheap No need to spend money on architectural design. For majority of customers, people from business environment, it’s totally unclear and it’s not necessary to spend their time and money on this. It’s better just to start doing something that "works here and right now". No need to spend money on documentation. The developers have special tools for documenting, recording, classification and systematization of all customers' wishes. If customer has a good Agile team then he can be sure that even if he wakes up in the morning and while he is brushing his teeth and sending any ideas via iPhone for developers team, these ideas will be immediately added into the system as stories / issues / requirements / improvements, and they will never be lost as the developers team will take them into account. No need to overpay for development. Agile methodology usually allows to reduce hours on project compared with Fixed Price method as business analyst doesn't include "Fix price risk airbag" as an element of insurance in the budget, because it’s just not necessary since Agile is paid based on hours spent. And of course customer quickly gets a software with minimum investment (or part thereof), which can be used in business. Agile is easy and comfortable For Customers: Agile works as a set of control lights on dashboard. Do you like to drive? Do you like that dashboard allows you to control all car parameters? We think ‘Yes’. For example in our company using Agile methodology we provide "dashboard" of project for the customers where they can answer the following questions: What issues does team have? Who is the executor of a task? How many tasks do developers have currently? What priorities do tasks have? How many tasks have a certain status and priority? What issues or tasks will be launched next sprint? When will a sprint be launched? What tasks have "in progress" status? What tasks were already finished by developers and what tasks have been verified by QA-specialist etc. If project has a problem, then "light flashes" immediately - the team can see it and fix within hour or to the next release (depending on the priorities). We allow our clients sleep well - as we have everything under control! Are you far away from your developers team? Are you in a different time zone? Don't you have clear requirements for the software? Usually if a customer is in a neighboring building he can come to the meeting, clearly represents the final view of his product and describe it to the project team, then any development methodology will work practically. But when you have a distributed team, difference in 3-12 hours with the customer and the project's field is little-known for you and your developers then you are ready for experiments, failures and successes, then Agile is the only way to work in such a complex and uncertain environment, where the main goal is to take on a market and to be competitive on it. For Developers Team: “JIRA” as Tasks & issues tracking system. This is a wonderful helper that allow us to classify all incoming tickets from the customer in a single structured place. Using tasks & issues tracking system is a guarantee that you will not lose any customer's requirements and develop them. Let your customers feel like at home! Put on his comfortable house slippers! “Confluence” as Team Collaboration Software. It’s one place for keeping of all docs, easy and quick search, collaborating on technical documentation, description of API, a manual with project participants, main decisions, meeting results, project files, test cases, final design, shared links, etc. This system makes that easily accessible. Even if tomorrow someone leaves your team, the customer will be sure that new employee will quickly join the team and easily learn the basic aspects of technical description. Let your customer to feel confidence in the future in this very unstable world! “PHPUnit” as PHP Testing Framework, Source code review and refactoring …. Work speed using Agile may entail some mistakes from release to release. Sometimes it’s very difficult to track these bugs so don't lose sight of it. Unit tests allow to check source code quickly for any changes that could lead to regression and mistakes in the already tested parts of software, as well as facilitate detection and elimination of such mistakes. Source code review and refactoring. Periodically Team Leader reviews the source code of all team developers as an independent expert, thus the overall quality of source code increases from iteration to iteration. Use unit tests, source code review and refactoring today and keep your customer’s money tomorrow! Agile is safe Do new requirements in Agile project and a speed of work influence the quality of the product? Customer shouldn’t think about it. He doesn’t need to take responsibility for decisions. Today customer wants one thing, tomorrow – he wants another and that's fine. If the customer will change his mind – it’s not a problem. There are always Team Leader, Senior Developers and guys with a huge work experience in Agile project and they understand the importance to build cross-platform, cross-browser, mobile, easy and scalable solution. There are main principles of our team, which allows our customer to: Make a demand on project: the requirements with any complexity and importance Cancel previously specified requirements and replace them with others. Do it at any project stage For example today the customer wants to do only 10 functional pages, which will be reloaded with page updating. Tomorrow the customer will ask to implement everything using AJAX technology, with the interactive user interface that allows you to receive data from server in a background and update pages without need to refresh it. This feature allows you to make the software faster and more convenient.  No problem! This feature development takes about 5-7% of previous budget as frameworks/CMS/Libraries (Joomla! CMS, Symfony 2, CodeIgniter, YiiFramework, Warp, AngularJS, jQuery, Bootstrap, ...) allow to make it quite quickly. And if something is broken? And if something suddenly stops working? And if there is a conference or a meeting tomorrow and I need to present my product ... What do I need to do? Don’t worry ... There is GIT - distributed management system of files versions. Developers working in a team on Agile projects always keep all releases in a special system, which allows to manage products versions using the above-mentioned PHP and JavaScript Frameworks/CMS/Libraries. This system allows monitoring any source code changes, which have been made by team participants and prevents from accidental overwriting…. It’s cool and safe. Isn’t it? Conclusion Agile works only when it fulfils all certain conditions: Cross-functional team of highly skilled professionals Real customers’ involvement and his constant readiness to work with the team. The main idea of Agile is close communication and cooperation with customer. That means that Agile methods are used for documentation shrinkage and getting high-quality software in a short period of time. It allows paying only for the results, which are worth for business. Actually, if to be honest, most of the projects aren't "pure" Agile. Each project is a collection of iterative processes with their requirements, goals and development approaches. So my team is trying to combine the advantages of different methodologies (including Agile) in software development and thus offers our customers a truly flexible approaches in software development with a reasonable price based on the realities of pricing in Eastern Europe. Dear reader, if you have any questions or you would like to start working with my team, please leave your questions and requirements to the software via our contact form with the mark «For Dmitry Garbar». I will be happy to answer any questions, advise you in the selection of technology and develop comfortable software product for you.

I’ve been working in an outsourcing software development business from a vendor side for many years and on some projects, I have to be involved in the process of creating remote dedicated software development teams as an account and overall control manager. Usually, this new staff (mostly software programmers) is going to be a part of existing dedicated teams or we plan such programmers to be the core of new teams. My experience is connected with creating/augmentation small/medium sized teams (from 2 to 25 people) where direct project management and technical leads (employees of clients) are sometimes situated overseas. This peculiarity (remote and overseas manager who approves the last candidate in the team), requires a specific approach for the exact hiring process and this article is aimed at providing some tips and tricks on how to organize it effectively. If our internal personnel resources are not enough to satisfy customer’s needs, we usually hire programmers from our job market. To optimize the recruiting process and improve the result, I have divided it into three key parts: Pre-screening and Preparation, Interviewing, and Hiring. Preparation and screening The primary motivation behind the groundwork is to ensure that your outsourcing vendor comprehends the job vacancy clearly, as well as having the capacity to envisage the most qualified individual for the role (under skills and salary package requirements) - this will aid in finding the ideal candidate. In order to increase the number of quality candidates and decrease the number of irrelevant ones, vendor recruiters should prepare the most detailed, attractive (but, of course, honest) description of the vacancy and working conditions. At least the following information should be provided in a clear and obvious way: Information about the vendor, its location; optionally about you as a client. Project details — every project has its own history, perspectives, and advantages. It is important to mention its duration, age, and give some links if possible. Even if it is only supporting the current system (some individuals are content with this kind of work — providing aid and not being interested in more taxing endeavors). Potential candidate’s role and charge at a project – vendors should pay attention to this point. It is crucial to provide true info about the position. It's better to mention if the project assumes any career growth in perspective, business trips or other benefits. Project team – who are they? Great if a newcomer will consider them as a talented team! Benefits and Perks of vendor’s social package. Ideal and must have skills, education, level of English and required years of working experience, etc. Planned budget. If you provide detailed information on each point, you will get a lot of CVs. If you receive a little of CVs, it means that either your recruiting team is not performing well enough or there is required to be fixed in vacancy description (like in the picture below) to attract more candidates: Anyway, with the low or high number of CVs, the next step will be - SCREENING. The major goal of screening is to make sure that your outsourcing vendor doesn’t miss any potentially suitable candidates. Screening a lot of CVs looks like a very simple process, but actually, many people are making mistakes at this most important initial stage. The common mistake is in conclusion for the definition of an “ideal” and “non-perfect” CV of a candidate. "Ideal" CV means the candidate has a lot of required experience, references, text in CV is divided into logical blocks and everything looks perfect. When getting such a CV, you want to hire this person immediately. Please, keep calm, because sometimes it means that either: Candidate used someone who helped him with a fulfilling CV (real programmers care little about formatting text in CV). Or candidate has already visited many companies and is trying to create a better CV to improve his chances at the next interview. Better to double check all skills, experience and career steps mentioned in such CVs. I had an unpleasant experience with candidates with “ideal” CVs, so please pay serious attention to this point. “Non-perfect" CV means the candidate does not provide a lot of details. It is a maximum-page list with a very laconic description of their working career, skills, and experience. Sometimes these CVs do not pass the first recruiter’s filter. Not all talented programmers are good at describing their skills how recruiters like. That’s why you have to pay additional attention to such CVs and if you see the candidate is supposed to be appropriate for your project, do not hesitate to review such CVs more accurately and get more info from this candidate. Believe me, sometimes people with "non-perfect CV" surprise you with their performance. Though some CVs still should be passed on. After your outsourcing vendor has fulfilled Preparation and Screening stages, he definitely has to ask his recruiters to speak with selected candidates over phone/Skype to check: candidate’s communication skills – if required English, as well candidate’s adequateness, personal qualities and motivation candidate’s opinion on the experience of some key technologies used in the project terms of start introductory level of requested salary That is a completing process for two previous steps. All the received info will help your outsourcing vendor to create the initial profile (at least in their mind for each potential candidate and compare how it matches their expectations. According to my practice, if at this stage a candidate complements at least 50% to the "ideal" profile, he (she) can move to the next stage. You can ask "why only 50% of similarity", the answer is simple - the candidate has passed, but the screening process, and you never know how a real person will perform at the following stages and if you find better candidates. The accurate Preparation and Screening processes will definitely increase the chances of getting a lot of quality candidates. Interviewing The principal goal is to make sure that the candidate is fully suitable for your requirements for the project or at least he (she) has the good potentiality to improve required skills in the shortest period. To make the process more effective and less time consuming for our client we use 2 steps of technical interview scenario: First step - all the actions being fulfilled on the outsource Executor side (on our side), such as seeking for people, screening them, preliminary and technical interviewing. Second and final step is done by our client, who receives just A FEW best candidates from tens screened and who can carry out full technical (based on results of the first step) or just general interview (checking some critical things like a degree of matching with the team on client’s side, communication abilities, level of English etc.). Usually, I start the first step after I’ve completed building a candidate’s profile and got all the needed clarifications from recruiters and clients. Time is really important and your vendor shouldn’t wait for CV’s of different candidates. They should work with CVs one by one as they come from recruiters. Before I arrange a technical interview, I call each candidate via Skype or phone to have an “overall discussion”. The main goal of this action is to communicate with a particular candidate, present a company and project to him (her), arouse additional interest and check his (her) adequateness, personal qualities etc. In any case, it is really a friendly gesture when someone from team management (but not recruiters) takes an initiative to talk directly with a candidate informally and candidates appreciate it certainly. Note: ‘It takes some time, but it’s just 15-20 minutes via Skype or phone and the eventual result has a huge effect - it intrigues the candidate much more than from conversations with recruiters and awaits the following steps.’ Next step is the technical interview. Mostly, I prefer to do that in live mode - we invite a candidate to our office, meet and greet him/her with our technical interviewers (they could work together in the future) and examine him/her technically. This approach works perfectly but has an issue negative moment – it takes a lot of time since tens of candidates can be interviewed before we will find one rock star. Note: ‘In order to save time of valuable tech specialists it might be a good idea to arrange a preliminary technical interview (10-15 min) via Skype/phone when we determine if this candidate is worthy of being invited to the office and spend 1 - 2 hours of tech-related talk. If this concern is explained properly, candidates will fully agree with it, because this procedure saves their time also and technical interviewer’s time is really expensive nowadays.’ Keep in mind we hire programmers into your team (as a part of your dedicated team) and a friendly gesture from your outsourcing vendor is to inform you on time about updates on the results achieved. I email to my client presenting only 3 CVs of candidates interviewed and selected by our tech team + brief comments on each candidate. If there are over 3 CVs I prepare an Excel list with pros and cons of the candidates. This informative and clear email will make the choice of who your team interviews, eventually. This meeting will be conducted using Skype, Google Hangout or any other service for voice conferences. Note: ‘It will be a good idea if your overseas technical team will be informed by your vendor what questions (in one page list) the vendor has already asked the candidate and what were the answers (pass or no pass). That will really help you not to check additionally.’ Hiring The main goal here is to make sure that all of the previous efforts lead to the positive final result and you will not lose your “ideal” candidates, otherwise it will take time/effort to find new ones. In case you see that one or a few candidates are suitable for the project, you can ask your vendor to prepare a personal Job Offer. The most important thing is describing calendar terms of Job Offer acceptance (usually it is about 2-3 business days). This moment will discipline candidates on fast responding to Job Offer acceptance or decline. You can ask why the terms of accepting or disclaiming are so short? I insist that in case the candidate you’ve chosen has passed so many steps and he/she is still available, it will be easy for him/her to make the final decision. Also, making a Job offer is significant. It can be a final personal meeting in a relaxing and friendly atmosphere in the vendor’s office where a person who is in charge of this exact position will present the Offer accompanying it with some inspiring message. We send the Offer via email, but you or your vendor should inform your candidate via phone and explain to him/her that he/she was chosen as the best candidate and so on and so forth. Sometimes you like a candidate but you feel that for some reasons he/she will not accept your offer (for example a project is not so suitable for him/her, or proposed salary package is not fully suitable to the candidate’s expectations). Here, you can make a Job offer to several candidates simultaneously and just wait to see who will accept it first - in this case, you need to clarify to the candidates that the offer was made to several people and the best candidate will be selected from those who agree. I can mention that you/your vendor can combine the approaches described according to your wishes. The most important thing here is to have a fast and effective process to hire proper and qualified programmers. And hope your vendor won’t forget to inform the candidates who will not have passed your selection steps. Who knows, probably a couple of weeks/months later, you will interview them for a different project and they will fully suit it. As last words, I wish you all the best when working with outsourcing vendors as like in any business. It is a partnership of 2 companies where both depend on one another in order to achieve their business results goals.

Maximizing the economic value of an software development asset critically depends on understanding how best to use the available forms of legal regulations to protect intellectual rights. If vendor cannot be trusted to protect trade secrets, then the risks of an outsourcing software development may outweigh its potential benefits.  Hence, it is critical to review the intellectual property policy of the potential outsourcing supplier. According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, offshoring software development means that company A turns over responsibility, in whole or in part, of an in-house software development to company B whose location is outside of company A’s national jurisdiction.  Each type of intellectual property asset may be involved in such relationships: Patents for ideas, systems, methods, and functions embodied in a software product; Trade secrets (the code with embedded ideas and concepts); Copyright and related rights to protect the source code and certain unique elements of the user interface. The intellectual property protection policy of an outsourcing software development company must be reflected in these crucial documents: General Agreement; Non-Disclosure Agreement; Employee Confidentiality Contract. General Agreement: How Good Outsourcing Company Should Protect Clients’ Intellectual Property Rights When Doing Work For Hire We understand the importance of intellectual property to our Clients’ business development. The ownership of intellectual property assets created by our software developers, as a part of the work done for hire, as well as patents, copyrights and all the data related to the Clients and their projects, belongs to our Clients. This may be reflected in our software development Agreement in the following manner: The SERVICE PROVIDER transfers to the CUSTOMER property rights on the developed software under an exclusive license. The exclusive right means the right to use the software at its sole discretion in any form and in any way. Exclusive rights are transferred for the whole period of copyrights and act in any territory of the world. Exclusive rights are transferred on a grant basis. The transfer of exclusive rights from the SERVICE PROVIDER to the CUSTOMER is reflected in the Confirmation of services rendered. Date of transfer of exclusive rights is the date of signing the Confirmation of the services rendered by the Parties. The source code of the software is transferred to the CUSTOMER in electronic form to the email address specified in this Agreement or to the server of the CUSTOMER. Moreover, our Clients’ lawyers feel free to make changes in the Agreement and NDA which are signed prior to the start of any development work.  Non-Disclosure Agreement: How Good Outsourcing Software Development Company Treats Confidential Information During And After The Project ‘To assure that Belitsoft treats intellectual property of its Clients with the ultimate care, we sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with all our Clients at the start of a business relationship.’ Its contents may vary, but would typically contain the following statements: “Confidential Information" includes all information, technical data, or know-how, including, but not limited to, that which relates to a disclosing party's research, products, hardware, software, designs, inventions, ideas, processes, drawings, business plans, product implementations, financial information, marketing techniques, business operation and systems, pricing policies, information concerning current and possible new employees, customers, and/or vendors disclosed by one party to another in writing, orally, by inspection, or otherwise. The receiving party and its Representatives shall not disclose any Confidential Information to third parties, in any manner, and shall protect the Confidential Information for five (5) years following the date of its disclosure. Nothing in this Agreement is intended to grant or imply any rights, by license or otherwise, to either party under any patent, copyright, trade secret, or other intellectual property right, nor shall this Agreement grant or imply to either party any rights in or to the other party's Confidential Information. The receiving party shall take all measures reasonably necessary to protect the Confidential Information received from the disclosing party, at least as great as the measures it takes to protect its own confidential information. These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. Disputes arising in connection with these Terms and Conditions shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts. Employee Confidentiality Contract: Not Only Contract Party But Each Member Of Software Development Company’s Team Should Be Responsible To assure that all Belitsoft developers are fully aware of the critical importance of protecting Clients’ rights, all Belitsoft developers sign Employee Confidentiality Contract along with their Employee Contract upon joining the company. These contracts would normally state that developers must comply with Belitsoft intellectual property protection policy. In addition, each developer can sign a personal NDA with the Client directly on demand. The Bottom Line “My idea is brilliant, but what is there to stop them from seeing my concept as a lucrative idea, but saying to me 'hey, sorry, but we're not interested' and moving forward with the idea themselves?!' Meanwhile, they have my product in their hands and can tweak it a bit and 'make it their own'. I'll be left with nothing…” Belitsoft is a business with 17 years of experience on the global market. Dozens of startups and enterprises come to us with innovative ideas every month. We value our reputation highly and would not sacrifice it for the sake of short-term gain. You can see testimonials of our big and small clients along with other independent reviews they keep giving us. These include healthcare companies and startups who trusted us to work with their highly secure solutions.