Ukraine is celebrated for the second-largest engineering talent pool in Eastern Europe (192,100 IT professionals in 2019). And while some companies struggle to scale their team in-house and onshore, others decide to opt for team augmentation in Ukraine. Does it mean that it offers easier recruitment and a more attractive value-for-money ratio? Let's take a look at the facts:
- Ukraine (2.9) has better financial attractiveness than India (2.82), China (1.88), Poland (2.05), according to the 2019 Kearney Global Services Location Index.
- Ukraine is home to 1600 + IT outsourcing companies. It takes the lead in Eastern Europe, followed by Poland (500+), Bulgaria (500) and Belarus (500).
- Such tech leaders as Microsoft, Mercedez, Siemens, and others have chosen Ukraine for augmenting their engineering teams and benefited from it.
So if you decide to expand your in-house software development capabilities, Ukraine is a viable option and a proven destination for offshore or nearshore staff augmentation.
However, selecting the vendor that provides IT staff augmentation services in Ukraine and meets your specific criteria is not an easy task. One may get lost in a variety of choices as the vendor landscape is vast and diverse. If you want to have a reliable offshore or nearshore staff augmentation partner by your side, avoid these common mistakes along the way.
#1 Not assessing a vendor’s capacity to gather a team
Many companies offer team augmentation services in Ukraine. Yet, a few of them can boast about a powerful employer brand. In fact, this criterion defines the vendor’s possibility to find software developers for the project promptly as well as its capacity to scale up a team. For businesses that want to accelerate the software development process, it is critical to have such issues resolved within the defined time frame.
So before partnering with a provider, find out whether the company cares about its employees, provides opportunities for professional growth, supports the local IT community, and launches social and educational initiatives.
In Ukraine, tech companies compete for the title of the best employer every year. They apply different strategies to improve employee satisfaction and increase retention rates. Some of them offer great working conditions and decent compensation, others provide mentorship programs, regular performance reviews, real-time feedback, and a clear career advancement roadmap. According to the latest employer rating conducted by DOU, N-iX is ranked among the top 5 best employers in the category of 800-1,500 IT specialists.
#2 Overlooking notice periods in the contract
The next important thing companies usually underestimate is notice periods. Vague notice periods or their absence in the contract can affect the project execution and delivery.
Thus, you should agree with a vendor on the reasonable time frames associated with the project kick-off as well as ramping up and ramping down a team of outsourced developers.
#3 Neglecting the value of the knowledge transfer process
Much of the project knowledge exists in the documentation, but the most valuable knowledge still comes from the person’s experience and insider learning. And if it is not shared across distributed software development teams properly, you can suffer lots of organizational waste when the whole process gets reworked from scratch. It is important to find a team augmentation vendor in Ukraine that will be able to establish an effective knowledge transfer process between the client’s teams.
To avoid duplicating other people's work, software developers should regularly exchange some well-established workflows and align coding practices. There should be a culture of knowledge-sharing on a project, both in a formal and a learn-at-lunch mode. This could be done not only via documentation but also via regular Q&A sessions, live training, one-one meetings, tech talks, coffee breaks, etc. Learn more about the best practices of the knowledge transfer process.
#4 Choosing the wrong cooperation model
If you don't choose the right pricing model for your project, your software development budget could suffer significantly. For example, if you need an expert on a temporary basis on a project (a UX designer, a DevOps engineer, or a Solution Architect), it doesn’t make sense to allocate these specialists under the dedicated development team model on full-time. It is more effective to engage these experts part-time and pay only for the work done based on the hourly rate of an IT specialist. It is crucial to opt for the software development partner that can offer different cooperation models to you and help you choose the one that you will benefit the most from.
Depending on the size of the project, team composition, your requirements, budget, etc., you may choose from the fixed price, T&M, or dedicated development team models. As you can see, the fixed price model is the least flexible but works best for small and medium projects with clearly defined requirements. T&M model is applied when a client needs an expert on a temporary basis on a project. A dedicated development team model is highly flexible and fully adaptable to any changes. So when looking for a team augmentation vendor in Ukraine, make sure they can offer you the best cooperation model that suits your business needs.
#5 Paying little attention to the vendor’s reputation
What do you pay attention to when making a list of nearshore staff augmentation vendors? You probably assess the company size, its location, services, and expertise it offers as well as key clients. This is something that you can easily find on the company’s website. But what about the vendor’s reputation? The best way to find out true information about vendors is to ask a reference from their clients, watch video testimonials, and evaluate their profiles on popular B2B rating platforms like Clutch, which feature verified clients’ reviews.
A step-by-step guide on team augmentation in Ukraine
1. Make a long list of companies
The first step to successfully select the vendor is to do preliminary research and explore the IT industry dynamics in the region and the key market players. Local media influencers like DOU, MC Today, Liga Tech, IT ID Lviv, Business Ukraine, AIN, NV Techno, etc. as well as IT market reports made by regional IT clusters can help you dive into the Ukrainian software development industry. Also, you can easily find popular vendor’s listing by Clutch, GoodFirms, TopDevelopers on the Internet and take them as the basis for your further research.
2. Set up clear selection criteria
No one ever partners with a software development provider without reviewing carefully its services, expertise, client portfolio, and references. Little attention, however, companies pay to such criteria as the company’s culture, agility, and employer brand, which in fact are decisive in building a successful partnership. Please take into account these several important criteria when looking for a trusted team augmentation vendor in Ukraine.
3. Make a shortlist of companies
On the basis of the criteria above, you need to weed out those IT vendors that do not qualify. As a result, you will get just several companies on the list, which makes it easier to study them closer.
This may come as a surprise but please note that large-scale companies may not give your project enough value as they hunt for developing industry solutions, whereas small-scale companies may not have enough software development capabilities to support your project. So if you want to augment your team in Ukraine, it’s better to focus on mid-sized companies ( around 1,000 - 1, 500 employees).
4. Design a detailed company profile
At this stage, it is important to reach out to these companies and send them a document with a number of questions related to the company, its people, and operations. This will help you objectively assess the candidates and streamline your decision-making process. The key criteria to assess are communication, training acceptance, CSR, knowledge transfer & exit process, tech infrastructure & office facilities.
5. Negotiate a win-win contract
Signing a contract is the final step on this vendor selection journey. In the world of IT outsourcing, it heavily depends on the type of cooperation model you choose. A poorly assembled contract may affect your business leading to unexpected outsourcing bills, loss of control over the quality, or compromised information security. To avoid such risks, both parties should thoroughly negotiate an IT outsourcing agreement paying special attention to such aspects as payment terms, liability, notice periods, confidentiality, IP rights, non-solicitation terms, the governing law, and a forum for dispute resolution.
Benefits of nearshore staff augmentation with N-iX
If you want to find a reliable company that offers quality IT staff augmentation services in Ukraine, you should do comprehensive research. The overall number of software development staff augmentation companies is growing every year. So choosing a trusted partner becomes a challenging task. Here are a few simple reasons to consider including N-iX on your list of the top team augmentation providers in Ukraine.
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N-iX has the reputation of a trusted IT vendor. We are recognized among the top companies by IAOP, GSA, Inc. 5000, Software 500, Clutch.co, and others.
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We provide IT team augmentation services to well-known companies around the globe. N-iX partners with Lebara, Currencycloud, GoGo, Travelport, Deutsche Post, Fluke Corporation, HotSchedules, Vable, Origin Enterprises, and many others.
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N-iX has delivery centers in Ukraine, Poland, and Bulgaria, which allows us to access a pool of over 570,000 professional developers with diverse expertise across finance, retail, healthcare, education, telecom, and automotive industries.
