Startups and growing product teams are constantly looking for the ways to improve their technology strategy, reduce turnaround time and come up with better and more efficient solutions. In this regard, outsourcing with an expert technology consultant is a great and proven way to develop high-quality products.

Here are the top six tips on how you can stay on top with your outsourced team:

1. Clearly communicate your product vision and expectations:

When you share the bigger picture for your product and all the expectations are set upfront, it becomes much easier to achieve them. The outsourced team has to clearly understand what is expected from them and what is the roadmap for the future product.

2. Define the scope and schedule in advance:

Setting the scope and milestones for the project will help to precisely plan deliverables and align the goals with expectations. Planning the rollout is and aligning the product development is critical for product’s success. It’s important to describe desired results as clearly as possible, schedule delivery dates, identify features and key milestones. In agile development, it helps to align with your weekly SCRUM activities against the deliverables for upcoming deadlines.

3. Communicate:

Good communication is a cornerstone of the entire project. In order to stay on top of your timeline and SCRUM it is crucial to have regular standup meets with your remote team. Support it with use of shared documentation, adopt standards for updates and collaboration. The team should understand that the client is easy to approach for queries and decisions, which will, in turn, eliminate possible conflicts in the future.

4. Provide feedback:

Product development is always a two-way street and it’s essential to keep communicating with team members. With agile and iterative development it becomes all the more important to ensure prompt feedback and address all the questions, concerns and ideas of the outsourcing team. This way you can eliminate undue bottlenecks during development.

5. Make effective use of overlapping hours:

The time overlap is a good opportunity to hold virtual meetings with your team. Get updates on what has been done by the offshore team in the past day; and set priorities and establish tasks for the next working day. This helps to eliminate delayed decisions and develops the healthy working environment.

6. Keep track of progress:

Staying constantly updated on the work progress is especially important when your team is half-world away from you. To make the most out of it, use one of the project management models (Scrum, Kanban, Agile, etc.) and tools (Trello, Notion) while working with the outsourcing agency.

The task becomes even easier if you start working with a self-managed agile dedicated team, as this requires the least level of supervision while offering iterative development and collaborative partnership at the same time.