Is Your Startup Lean? Not really, if you aren’t Outsourcing

Product Thinking and DevOps are approaches that are changing the world as we know it. They merge in smoothly with the Continuous Improvement Cycle that is at the heart of Lean Methodology. However, if you consider yourself to be a Lean Start-up, ask yourself this question-Are you able to streamline your processes and focus singlehandedly on the product?

When you hire in-house, you hire employees, but when you outsource, you hire skills.  According to Anthony Zolciak, you should factor in software development outsourcing as early as when you are putting together your Minimum Viable Product.

Slack, Skype, GitHub, Opera, Google, and WhatsApp are some of the famous companies that outsource their software development. When they outsourced, they scouted for great tech talent worldwide! In fact, during their product’s early iterations, Skype famously outsourced to some very talented Estonian developers.

By accessing great technological talents worldwide, these companies could focus on their products, test them, have a handle on many variables and understand their place in the market.

Iterate, don’t micromanage 

A start up that is following lean development principle should look at cutting down tasks as much as possible. You cannot be worried about micromanaging teams and tasks, least of all the software development team. Software development teams worldwide follow the Agile development process that keeps things lean and continuously informs you about pain points or the changes that are necessary. You don’t have to worry if a software development team member leaves the job and you have to replace her or him. There is less of redoing a task and this will in turn help you to never deviate your primary focus – the product.

The single reason why outsourcing works 

A clean code and excellent skill sets are crucial when selecting developers. But what next? How do you make things work when sitting miles away?

Enter DevOps. It gives you clarity on where you want to see your product go next.  The clarity only emerges when you take your offshore team along for the ride. DevOps galvanize the power of a focused and self-managed team. With DevOps as a guiding principle, your start-up can make any skilled team work, from anywhere!

The earlier example we cited, of testing outsourcing as early as when you are putting together the MVP – that’s a DevOps philosophy through and through. Your product doesn’t operate in silos. You are thinking ahead constantly.

An integrated outlook is at the heart of DevOps and product thinking, which is what makes them so compelling. Don’t believe us? Just ask Netflix.

Why you should branch out 

Silicon Valley has some of the most exceptional developers in the world but still, it branches out to countries like India, where the talent pool is pretty phenomenal, and they can tap into a new technology stack. Israel, one of the fastest growing tech hubs in the world, is woefully short of software engineering talent, to the point where the government’s Innovation Authority forecast a massive shortage of IT talent to keep the momentum going.

The best thing about an offshore market like India? The ecosystem is sophisticated and mature enough to have already practicing lean methodologies and systems in place. In other words, you are not just outsourcing talent, but you are also accessing the DevOps culture that makes the talent stick and your product sing.