Nearshore Software Development Outsourcing

First, assess the feasibility of nearshore development for your needs. What are your project priorities: fast launch, low upfront investments, minimized risks? What about the tech stack and quality expectations? Do you have any specific requirements for the collaboration form? Would you require onsite visits? The answers to these questions will help you evaluate nearshoring vs. onshore and offshore options and pick the right development location. For your convenience, ScienceSoft’s consultants have composed a comparison of popular outsourcing destinations in LATAM.

Sources: Accelerance (2022, 2023), YouTeam, proprietary market research by ScienceSoft.

At this stage, you need to decide which part of your development initiative (a particular task, several tasks, the entire project) you want to outsource. Depending on the outsourcing scope, you may choose between the following delivery models:

• Staff augmentation

The nearshore vendor provides remote development talents with the required competencies to work as part of your team. Project management, quality control, and risk management are fully on your side.

• Partial outsourcing (Dedicated teams)

The vendor dedicates a team to co-source the project with your in-house or third-party talents. The team shares your responsibilities and risks. You preserve a large degree of control over the overall flow.

• Full outsourcing

The vendor provides a full-scale team to handle the entire development process and takes 100% responsibility for the teamwork organization, project management, deliverables, and risks.

Explore the detailed outsourcing model comparison table prepared by ScienceSoft’s consultants to learn the specifics of each outsourcing approach.

Now that you have settled on a nearshoring destination, ScienceSoft recommends paying attention to the following aspects during vendor shortlisting:

• Overall years in business and experience in building the software you need.
• Experience in working with your industry and the tech stack relevant to your solution.
• Support for your preferred sourcing model and availability of the required development roles.
• Language and cross-cultural collaboration skills.
• The vendor’s portfolio and testimonials to confirm its background and reliability.
• Available quality and security certifications and technology partnerships.
• Compliance with standards and regulations you need to follow, e.g., HIPAA, PCI DSS, NYDFS, SOC 1 and SOC 2, etc. (critical in case your software is supposed to deal with sensitive data).

After you’ve picked several fitting companies, reach out to vendors for more details:

• Send a request for information (RFI) to learn about the vendor’s approach to nearshore collaboration, data security, quality assurance, and risk management.
• Send a request for proposal (RFP) to study possible service options, cooperation models, staff CVs and rates, and the development time and cost.

Alongside the service and dispute resolution terms, the contract should include a tailored set of KPIs to measure cooperation efficiency and facilitate project control.

At ScienceSoft, we sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) and an intellectual property (IP) rights protection agreement in addition to the core contract to legally protect your business information and digital assets. We are ready to sign an NDA before the introductory call to ensure the full confidentiality of your sensitive data.

Depending on your development project progress and the preferred nearshore sourcing model, this step may include:

• Providing the vendor with access to your project infrastructure, software documentation, code repositories, and business and IT process descriptions.
• Determining the responsibility split between your stakeholders and the vendor’s talents.
• Deciding on the communication modes, schedule, and channels.
• Setting requirements for the reporting forms and frequency to maintain the desired level of control over the development process.