Co-located in the Netherlands and Nepal, Proshore was founded in 2009. Its mission is to create sustainable and highly skilled jobs for people in Nepal by offering managed development teams as a service to Software as a Service (SaaS) companies. 

But how did it grow from a two-person start-up to an international team with over 70 employees? 

This is the story of Proshore.   

Selling Wine Online

Co-founder Haico’s first online business grew out of a student project in the form of a shop selling wine and gift boxes. With the rest of his team dismissive of the idea of selling online, Haico ran with the project himself, leveraging the potential of online paid advertising at a time when it was still a relatively new concept. 

Business boomed. With many companies traditionally sending wine gifts at the end of the year, by 2006 Haico was working exceptionally long hours, and ready for his next challenge – a Customer Relationship Management platform. So he sold his wine business and went looking for an international development team to help build his software.

International Entrepreneurs

Haico’s search led him to Nepal, where he had made contact with a company that seemed like they might be able to help. Unfortunately, it was clear from early on that they lacked the process and quality needed to bring the project up to standard. However, Haico was impressed by one of their technical project managers called Roshan.

The owner was also just about to relocate to India, but undeterred, Haico pitched a joint venture, with the requirement that someone like Roshan was in place. For the business owner, it was a non-starter. But Roshan and Haico stayed in touch. They soon agreed that they wanted to entrepreneur the idea together. 

With a bit of capital to invest from the sale of his wine business and Roshan onboard, Haico decided to set up an office in Nepal, finding office space and listing vacancies for a new venture. After working for two years as a business advisor at a larger company in the Netherlands, Haico had the simple objective of becoming an international entrepreneur.

Selling Designs To Life

Back in 2009, there were a lot of graphic designers and marketers looking to create websites, but without the technical knowledge to do so. So, Haico and Roshan realized there was an opportunity to serve as a technical partner by offering their programming capabilities. 

However, after working on a number of projects, the pair soon realized that as a technical partner, they were not able to influence the design or offer advice, even when they saw huge potential for improvement. So they started to develop web applications alongside consulting, where they offered some design, development, and support. This second business model yielded more growth for their company, so they started to optimize their processes in Nepal. They were then able to attract bigger clients, such as the grocery chain Ekoplaza.

The Start Of Teams As A Service

With the consulting side of the business really starting to expand, Haico looked to find hire project managers in the Netherlands. They even set up an office on a technology campus. However, it became increasingly difficult to scale their model there, compared with Nepal. 

They also started to feel that their efforts in the Netherlands were distracting them from the potential scalability of the Nepal operation. So Proshore decided to pivot to a new model, offering software development teams as a service.  

“So now, we're delivering a team, and this team is being integrated directly with the customer’s team. This is a much more scalable model, and it's also a durable model because we try to partner with companies who are growing, and have clear ambitions.”

Haico Duisters, Proshore, Co-Founder

With a renewed focus on supporting startups, scale-ups, and companies looking to grow their software, Proshore began to capitalize on a gap in the market for technical teams who could work alongside in-house teams for a given purpose. Their services also grew to include other technical roles, such as quality analysts, and scrum masters. 

Bridging Eindhoven And Kathmandu

Looking ahead, Proshore has ambitions to scale its Nepalese organization. That’s where they want to build and develop. It’s where they have their HR. Meanwhile, back in the Netherlands, their sales and consulting team works to secure clients and manage the integrations.

Discover how integration with Proshore can help your SaaS scale sustainably by booking a call with us today. 

With offices in both Eindhoven and Kathmandu, Proshore is a company born out of international entrepreneurship. And while we’re helping software companies to sustainably scale using our unique ‘development teams as a service’ model, with over 70 employees and counting, we’re also growing ourselves. 

One thing we often get asked is how we manage to bridge the gap between the Netherlands and Nepal. New customers are also curious to know how our ‘teams as a service’ works in practice. So let’s take a closer look at how we operate and the processes we use to help our customers sustainably grow their software solutions. 

Communication And Culture

There are two important elements to the continued success of Proshore as a company: communication and culture. These two things may be intangible and difficult to measure, but they’re also an important part of our sustainable growth and long-term development as an organization. 

“From the start, it’s been important for us to meet regularly to align our goals and ambitions. I think that’s the key thing” - Haico Duisters, Proshore, Co-Founder 

More Than Just A Resource

But what sets Proshore apart from other software development companies is that we’re not just delivering a resource. A resource can be found anywhere and everywhere. When companies choose to partner with us, they’re not just getting an add-on to their existing teams.  

Instead, we go above and beyond by providing carefully-managed, integrated teams as a service. The beauty of this system is that it can be scaled to fit our customer’s needs. So a partnership might begin with two developers, but it has the potential to grow to include other roles, such as quality analysts. 

Before we begin working with a new customer, we assess their needs through a technical assessment from our CTO. We also evaluate what they’ll need to achieve their goals, so we can provide a team to deliver what’s actually required. 

Once this has been agreed, we deploy a scrum master to set up the process and steer meetings with the product owner on the customer’s side. This helps to ensure our expectations are aligned with a common understanding of how the two teams can integrate by effectively merging into one. 

We’ve found that regular and effective communication between the scrum master and the customer can help to address and alleviate potential areas of conflict. The scrum master also ensures that we maintain an iterative approach to development.  

“You want to have an integrated approach to resolving the customer challenges around the software development.” - Haico Duisters, Proshore, Co-Founder 

Connected And Onboarded

With partnerships predominantly located in Europe, Haico and Jeroen are able to maintain an effective relationship at customer-level, ensuring a smooth integration that’s aligned with both our customer’s expectations and our own quality standards. 

The customer-facing team in Eindhoven and the operations team in Kathmandu are connected by the scrum master based in Nepal. Onboarding also has a significant part to play in keeping up an effective communication between the teams. And for co-founder Roshan, it all comes down to the process:

“I think it's all about the scrum because in the scrum, you clearly set the expectations and the goal of the sprint. Then you communicate that to the client, so there’s no surprise. It’s expectation mapping. And I think that's what’s working.”

- Roshan, Proshore, Co-founder

Staying connected is an important part of the Proshore mindset. Unlike traditional models of outsourcing, where a few developers are distributed to meet customer needs, Proshore offers a team solution and a team experience. We feel it’s important to really understand customer needs, their motivations, and their capabilities. And then we try to elevate those things in line with their ambitions. 

Teamwork enables us to be more effective than say a single developer brought in to add a capacity. It also provides our customers with complete transparency. Our Agile approach enables us to develop software iteratively – fast feedback, fast failings, and a constant feedback loop.

Everyone in the team has access to what’s working and what isn’t working,  what the expectations are, and what needs to be done. This level of transparency facilitates constant communication.

Being Part Of The Conversation

Everyone on our development team is encouraged to have a voice, and take a lead in our refinement sessions. We really like everyone on the team to have the chance to speak up and be part of the conversation about the work that we’re doing. And the same goes for our customers. We like to foster a communicative culture where there’s an open and positive dialogue that helps to drive our development forward. 

And the great thing about Proshore is that those conversations happen across continents, between Europe and Asia. It’s really important to us that we create high-tech, high-paying jobs in Nepal, so that we can give back to the country and encourage highly-skilled individuals, to stay in the country rather than move abroad. 

Many global software companies are now coming around to the idea that working across continents can work, with the right people in place. Interested in scaling your software development with the help of Proshore? Book a call with us to find out more.

AI Development

AI Agents Guide: Build smarter solutions without complexity

Learn how to leverage effective AI agents and their architectures and how Proshore’s offshore expertise accelerates growth through enterprise-grade solutions.

Book a call Talk to our CTO, Babish, to talk AI and see if our future-ready offshore teams are a fit for you.

• Resources

In 2024, AI agents were the buzzword across industries, not just tech. Today, they are slowly becoming a business necessity. But for tech firms racing to build MVPs or scale operations, complexity remains the enemy. At Proshore, we too have started helping our clients implement AI agents, and one truth stands out: success lies in simplicity.

This guide strips away the jargon to explain:

• What AI agents actually are (and aren’t).
• When startups should use them (and when to avoid overengineering).
• How to build agents that deliver value fast, using patterns that work.

Plus, learn how Proshore’s offshore development teams in Nepal help startups launch smarter AI-integrated products without blowing budgets.

What Are AI Agents? (No, They’re Not ChatGPT)

AI agents are autonomous systems that perceive, reason, act, and learn with minimal human intervention. Unlike basic automation or LLM-powered chatbots, AI agents can:

• Perceive their environment (via data, APIs, or user inputs).
• Reason using LLMs or machine learning.
• Act through tools like code execution or API calls.
• Learn from feedback loops.

Here are the key distinctions between:

Traditional Automation

Follows fixed rules.

Handles repetitive tasks.

Requires manual updates.

AI Agents

Adapts to new data.

Solves open-ended problems.

Learns autonomously.

Example: A Proshore-built e-commerce agent that analyzes real-time sales data → predicts demand spikes → adjusts pricing without human input.

When to Use Agents (and When to Avoid Them)

AI agents, despite being cutting-edge, are not always necessary. Any new tech comes with its own set of problems, so sometimes proven methods could be better (for now).

Use Agents When

✅ Tasks require adaptability, like customer support resolving unique complaints.

✅ Decisions rely on real-time data. E.g., fraud detection.

✅ You need human-like reasoning at scale. E.g., personalized marketing.

Avoid Agents When

❌ Tasks are repetitive and predictable – traditional automation suffices.

❌ Latency is critical – agents add processing steps.

❌ Budgets are tight – start with single LLM calls + retrieval.

Rule of thumb

If a human needs less than 5 minutes to decide, use automation. If the situation requires reasoning, use agents.

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Building Blocks: Keep It Lean, Keep It Functional

Forget complex frameworks. Effective agents need just three components:

1

Augmented LLM Core

Base Model: Claude 3.5 Sonnet, GPT-4, or open-source alternatives.

Add:

• Tools (APIs, databases).
• Memory (short-term context retention).
• Retrieval (company-specific data).

Pro Tip: Use pre-built modules to skip 80% of setup time.

2

Workflows Over Frameworks

Pattern Best For Proshore Example Prompt Chaining Multi-step tasks like write → edit Marketing copy generation to localization Routing Classifying inputs Sorting customer queries into sales/support pipelines Orchestrator Complex problem-solving Coding agents that edit multiple files 3

Transparent Tool Design

Agents fail when tools are poorly documented. Follow our ACI (Agent-Computer Interface) rules:

Clarity: Describe tools like teaching a junior developer.

Poka-Yoke: Design error-proof parameters, e.g. require absolute file paths.

Test Relentlessly: Run 50+ scenarios before deployment.

Why Proshore? Offshore AI Expertise Without Compromise

Agents aren’t about replacing humans—they’re about augmenting your team’s capabilities. With Proshore as your offshore partner, you gain the technical depth to deploy AI strategically, ensuring every agent solves real business problems.

For tech firms and scaleups, Proshore delivers:

• Cost Efficiency: 50-60% savings vs. in-house European/North-American/Australian teams.
• Breadth of Experience: Over 15 years in offshore software development + multiple AI deployments across eCommerce, healthcare, fintech and SaaS.
• Speed: Launch MVP agents within time-to-market using our pre-built modules.

Remote development challenges

From micro to self-managed remote software developers

Learn how one of our clients, CMNTY, was able to scale without intensive micromanaging through our self-managed remote software development model.

Book a call

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our ready-to-code dev teams are a fit for you.

How does remote software development really work? Suppose your business is thinking about investing in software development beyond your existing in-house capacity. In that case, reliability, expertise, and team integration are key areas to prioritize – especially if the team you’re hiring is based in another part of the world.

What assurances do you have that they can meet your development needs? Will they require micromanaging?

Thankfully, Proshore’s proven solution of ‘ready-to-code dev teams’ is a lot more agile, competitive, and scalable than traditional models of ‘outsourcing’. So how does it work?

Let's take a closer look at how we partnered with CMNTY, a Netherlands-based Research SaaS, who were looking for an affordable solution to scale their software development – without costly talent acquisition and expensive onboarding.

1️⃣ Seamless onboarding and integration

CMNTY, like many businesses, leveraged our scalable solution to add a qualitative data product to their quantitative services. Proshore provided a ready-made development team that seamlessly integrated with theirs. Starting with one developer, CMNTY scaled up as needed.

Unlike some clients, CMNTY's CTO, a former developer deeply familiar with the product's ten-year development journey, understood the challenges. This extensive codebase, used for market research data collection, initially presented a hurdle for Proshore.

However, with an existing team member facilitating onboarding (around a month), Proshore quickly grasped CMNTY's workflow and deliverables.

How Proshore fitted into CMTY's development needs and helped them scale sustainably along with their data collection platform – from a single developer to a solid development team. Read case study

2️⃣ Boosting teamwork and technical expertise

Another advantage of working with a ready-made remote team from Proshore – a team who already know each other well – is that their team leader knows their strengths, and is, therefore, able to deploy developers effectively.

Additionally, we also offer the services of a scrum master who manages the agile process of daily, stand-ups, sprint reviews, and so on. This means that the team leader can focus on getting the technical details right.

Proshore's remote teams always have a separate team leader and scrum master to ensure that we quickly become self-managing once onboarded.

Additional tips

As with CMNTY, it is a real advantage to have a product owner who is a former developer. It helps cut down onboarding time and increase velocity, allowing the team to deliver more and meet targets each sprint.

When onboarding it also helps to allocate time for technical refinement, i.e. going through the existing code to understand what’s there, and making crucial updates where needed. By going through this additional process, the team can understand the depth of the task ahead of the next sprint.

3️⃣ Working across time zones

With Proshore's remote teams being based out of Nepal and CMNTY being based in the Netherlands, coordinating across time zones should have been a big challenge. But our teams have 15 years of experience in agile working and it's part of what we do best.

Agile working is an important facet of remote working and the methodology has always been part of how we operate.

Depending on Daylight Saving Time, the Netherlands and Nepal are either three or four hours apart. So, there is an overlap in working hours where necessary meetings are planned.

1

Longer meetings are focused on refinement, where the team leader mainly asks questions that can facilitate clarity across the sprints.

2

Once clarity is achieved, the team need only sync between themselves, via daily standups, to ensure sprint targets are being met.

3

Escalations that arise are tackled swiftly. However, they rarely occur with teams experienced in agile working.

Key takeaways from our CMNTY partnership

Something our team really enjoys is being made to feel part of the CMNTY company. It’s a recurring theme in many of our collaborations, and a sign of successful integrations.

So what have we learned from this experience?

1

In the early stages of a collaboration, it’s important not to over-commit and show flexibility in terms of priorities, and what needs to be delivered.

2

When there’s ten years of existing code, there’s a lot to learn from the architecture and that can be applied to other developments.

3

Having retrospective meetings helps you review what worked and what didn’t. And having a process helps us stay on the right track.

4

The process is essential, but so is flexibility in order to be adaptable to changes and deal with issues when they arise.

5

Working collaboratively facilitates shared learning. Both teams learn from each other, sharing ideas and architectures.

1

In the early stages of a collaboration, it’s important not to over-commit and show flexibility in terms of priorities, and what needs to be delivered.

2

When there’s ten years of existing code, there’s a lot to learn from the architecture and that can be applied to other developments.

3

Having retrospective meetings helps you review what worked and what didn’t. And having a process helps us stay on the right track.

4

The process is essential, but so is flexibility in order to be adaptable to changes and deal with issues when they arise.

5

Working collaboratively facilitates shared learning. Both teams learn from each other, sharing ideas and architectures.

Final thoughts

Whether it’s a single developer or a complete team, Proshore’s self-managing development teams enable our clients to scale without intensive micromanagement.

As a cost-effective, long-term service partner, businesses bring us alongside to accelerate their growth and utilize the technical talent and experience of our teams in Nepal.

Wondering if our remote software developers can help your business grow? Book a call to explore if we are a fit.

Remote development challenges

Overcome project ownership challenges with managed teams

Bringing in ‘dedicated teams’ can create new project ownership challenges for product owners – Proshore's self-managed teams can be the solution.

Book a call

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our ready-to-code dev teams are a fit for you.

Whatever sort of software you’re developing, when you look to a solution like an 'offshore development team' to scale and expedite your coding, you might be forgiven for asking: who’s in charge here?

After all, although they might be seamlessly integrated into your existing set-up, you’ve hired a ‘managed team’. But what does that mean exactly, and how does it impact project ownership?

What is a ‘managed team'?

A managed team is a group of external software developers, and other related roles, who are brought alongside to add expertise and scalability in the completion of a project, or a particular part of a project. The tech company leverages the skill sets and resources of the ‘remote development team’ to fulfill their goals.

These collaborations usually take one of three forms. Either, the managed team is the main developer and the client is a Product Owner, or they are brought in to enhance any existing in-house development capabilities.

In the second scenario, this could also involve working with other teams brought in by a client to achieve a particular goal. Both teams work independently on different areas of the same project using their own separate processes.

Thirdly, the teams might integrate, typically with an even number of developers from both sides completing the same backlog of work to be done.

How do the three main types of partnership work?

Sole development partner

In the first type of partnership, the managed is the sole developer and has exclusive responsibility for building the software application. This means a lot of decision-making and technical discussions are made by the managed team itself.

The client will have the brief and the managed team follows the roadmap they’re given using their own iterative process. In this scenario, the client’s Chief Technology Officer (CTO) will often assume the role of Product Owner (PO).

Team augmentation

In the second type of partnership, there is already a development team in place, and the managed team collaborates with them, drilling down and identifying chunks of work to be done.

In terms of ownership, this way of working can be more tricky because there is already an established development team when the managed team comes in at a later stage to add capacity.

Typically, the new team will work separately on different aspects of the project using potentially different approaches to development.

Integrated capacity

The third type of partnership is more integrated, with both sets of developers fully alongside each other as a merged team.

In this scenario, it’s important to establish who’s managing the project from the get-go.

No matter what the setup, it’s always a good idea to focus on the best way to move forward with clients using an Agile approach, working in short sprints of work to be done. In this way, onboarding is quicker, and it’s easier to integrate more effectively to deliver incremental blocks of completed work.  

Best way to structure development teams

At Proshore, with larger products, we’re usually able to agree on a particular area to work on, for example when there’s a separate back end and front end. This creates clear and discrete workflows for each team. It also ensures there’s no overlap on the work to be done. Typically, in this scenario, we would have separate sprint goals and work more or less independently of each other.

Alternatively, we can work as a single team with both sets of developers addressing the same backlog of work to be done. We collaborate and do the refinement together, so from an outside perspective, we’re essentially one and the same team. Whoever we work with and whichever way we set up, above all else, the Agile way of working enables us to add value where it’s most needed.

We try to provide managed teams wherever possible because we have a scrum master, and sometimes we may even take the lead and manage the client’s teams as well.

From our side, it's always that Agile way of working that helps us to collaborate together, and that’s where we feel that we can create value for Product Owners.

Babish Shrestha, Proshore

Director of Technology

Ultimately, when we’re collaborating, the best setup is the one that is right for the client’s business and their needs. From experience, the most successful results usually come from collaborations where the teams are evenly matched in terms of skills and ways of working because they can integrate more seamlessly.  More often than not, the right way of working comes down to a combination of the Product Owner’s preferences, the team setup, the maturity of the team, and each team’s roadmap. Managing two teams can be difficult, especially for those with less experience. Not only that, simply having more people to manage can be a challenge in itself.

Sometimes we find that the Product Owner is not experienced in Agile, so our focus is on communication and reporting, through collaborative refinement, review, and retrospective, which helps to define the team structure.

Final thoughts on project ownership

Wherever possible, we try to work collaboratively with a client, ideally, with an even number of developers from our team and theirs, all focussed on the same sprint goals. This takes careful management, so developers on both sides are fully aligned in terms of working practices and experience. Setting up as separate teams is easier in the beginning, but it can be trickier for the client to tie everything together further down the line.

There is no magic formula for getting project ownership right. The right approach to project ownership varies from client to client, project to project. No matter what the configuration, with our managed teams, we always try to take a consistent approach by using Agile methodology and by matching our experience and expertise to the customer’s needs.

When a partner uses an Agile approach, it’s much easier for us to onboard and integrate our teams. But if a Product Owner is not experienced in this way of working, we still try to embed Agile practices like regular communication. As an offshore development company, we need to be adaptable to suit the client’s approach to project ownership.

Here are 11 tips for managing remote teams if you choose to do it yourself. With Proshore, we take care of that for you.

           Next read        

                                                 6 minutes                    

Extra Capacity: 6 Ways To Work Well With Remote Teams

                     Looking to bring in offshore devs? Get our expert outlook on how to work well with your remote team – and how to get the best out of them.                          

                                                 Haico Duisters                          Managing Director                                                                  

                                                 5 minutes                    

Overcome project ownership challenges with managed teams

                     Bringing in ‘dedicated teams’ can create new project ownership challenges for product owners – Proshore's self-managed teams can be the solution.                          

                                                 Babish Shrestha                          Director of Technology                                                                  

                                                 3 minutes                    

From micro to self-managed Remote Software Developers

                     Learn how one of our clients, CMNTY, was able to scale without intensive micromanaging through our self-managed remote software development model.                          

                                                 Jeroen van der Horst                          Account director          Interested in all our stories?
Read everything about it.        Blog overview

When you’re running a successful software development startup, the time will come when you need to scale your team. You might have started as a one or two-person outfit, but now you need to build up your business.

As your startup gains traction – new features, bug fixes, product updates, and funding deadlines demand a growing development force. But how do you scale effectively? Read on to explore different scaling options and address potential challenges to guide you through this crucial step of maintaining momentum and achieving targets.

Options for scaling up your development team

There are several ways to approach scaling your software development team. The best choice depends on your specific needs, budget, and growth goals. Here are some popular options:

1. Internal Hiring

Building your dev team in-house allows for tight control over culture and processes. However, this approach can be time-consuming, competitive, and costly, especially when recruiting top talent.

2. Offshore Outsourcing

Leveraging offshore dev teams offer access to a wider talent pool and potentially lower costs. However, communication challenges, time zone differences, and cultural nuances can arise.

3.Dedicated Dev Teams

This option provides access to pre-vetted, experienced developers who can integrate seamlessly with your existing team. It offers a faster and more cost-effective solution than traditional in-house hiring.

4.Staff Augmentation

Adding specific skillsets to your existing team through staff augmentation can be a good option for short-term projects or to fill temporary gaps.

Challenges and Solutions: Scaling smoothly

We often work with startups who have a validated idea or a minimum viable product (MVP) that they’ve put together with minimal resources. Their resources were enough to establish the product – but now it’s time to build an entire organization – not an easy job.

Jeroen van der Horst

Accounts Director, Proshore

Scaling your development team will introduce new challenges. Here are some common hurdles and solutions to navigate them effectively:

FAQs

Why scale up a development team?

There are several reasons why scaling your development team might be necessary:

• Increased Product Demand: As your user base grows, the need for maintaining and improving your software product increases. A larger development team can handle this workload more efficiently.
• New Feature Development: Introducing new features requires additional development resources. Scaling your team allows for simultaneous work on existing tasks and future-oriented projects.
• Improved Development Speed: A larger team can potentially reduce development time and accelerate product iterations.

When should you scale your development team?

There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but some indicators suggest it’s time to scale:

• Your development backlog is growing: This signifies an inability to keep up with product demands with your current team size.
• Time-to-market is too slow: Scaling can help you deliver new features and updates quicker.
• Employee morale is declining: If your team is overworked and stressed, it’s a sign you need additional resources.

Finding a reliable partner for scaling software

Instead of building software from the ground up, you can utilize ready-to-code dev teams to reliably accelerate development and meet your development deadlines.

Jeroen van der Horst

Accounts Director, Proshore

For technically-minded business owners involved in product development from the outset, delegating control can be uncomfortable. You have a clear vision for the product’s evolution, high standards, and ambitious goals  – but the last thing you want to do is end up micromanaging a development team.

On the other hand, less technical founders might struggle to trust others to deliver high-quality code on time, especially with looming deadlines, customer expectations, and a growing backlog. Freelancers might be a temporary solution, but will they commit long-term?

This is where ready-to-code dev teams come in. We eliminate these worries.

1. Reduced Recruitment Hassle

Our existing pool of over 4500+ pre-vetted developers saves you time and money on recruitment.

2. Confidence in your code

With a team tailored to your needs, you gain access to expert help, accelerating development and tackling your backlog efficiently. These remote, full-stack, English-speaking teams are self-managed, freeing you to focus on your core business.

3. Seamless Integration

Because developers are selected based on specific skills and cultural fit, onboarding is swift. Agile methodology ensures constant communication, keeping everyone aligned.

At Proshore, we don’t just offer offshore software development, we’re a reliable partner who can provide you with an extended team fully invested in your business success. Book a call and let us help you find a development team that understands your challenges.

‍

Remote development challenges

Onboard or Outsource? Recruit and retain the best tech talent

Should you recruit offshore software developers in-house, or outsource them through an offshore development company? Gain an HR perspective.

Book a call

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our ready-to-code dev teams are a fit for you.

With a global shortage of top tech talent, like in Western Europe and the US, finding skilled developers on home soil can be almost impossible. Additionally, for startups and small software companies, luring passive candidates away from lucrative positions in big companies is simply not an option.

So in countries with a higher cost of living, the expense and scarcity of tech talent means companies have to look elsewhere for the expertise they need.

The natural choice is to bring in remote offshore software developers. But should you recruit them in-house (onboard), or outsource development to an offshore company?

In this blog post, we’ll help you decide through the lens of the HR department.

1️⃣ A remote-first industry

Software development is a sector where the trend for remote working has proven popular with workers and profitable with businesses – since 2020. Whilst in other sectors, business leaders have been seen busy devising strategies to encourage the workforce back to the office, software development remains a viable remote-first industry.

There is a two-sided advantage to tapping into this remote workforce. Companies in countries with a higher cost of living can access a global market to find the right talent at a fraction of the cost. Simultaneously, developers in countries with a lower cost of living, like Nepal, gain access to better pay rates by working remotely for a company in another country.

The challenge faced by software companies outsourcing offshore development is ensuring they get the right talent at the best price.

Proshore Nepal had also gone fully remote during the pandemic and adopted a flexible hybrid 'work from home' policy after the lockdowns. Given our agile way of working, the hybrid policy was easily implemented without any dropoff in productivity. Additionally, it has helped our devs achieve a better work-life balance, keeping them energized for every sprint!

2️⃣ Onboard in-house or outsource offshore?

Any hiring decision should be made based on your company’s unique needs. Sourcing, recruiting, onboarding, and training any new employee takes time and money. Whilst opening your doors to a global market broadens and deepens the available talent pool, it can also be a financial and administrative burden.  

If you hire remote developers in-house, you incur the same long-term costs as any other employee. This is further complicated by how to correctly onboard them to your company, and account for their pay and deductions in a way that’s compliant with employment regulations, and tax laws. If they’re based abroad, this can be time-consuming and challenging. Getting it wrong also carries financial and reputational risks.

By outsourcing to an offshore software development company, like Proshore, you pay a fixed fee and everything related to recruitment, onboarding, and training is handled for you.

With Proshore, all the HR processes from recruiting, hiring, onboarding, training, retaining, and replacing are taken care of so that business/product owners can focus on company growth.

3️⃣ Onboard in-house or outsource offshore?

Another viable option is to hire a freelance developer located in another part of the world. But the chances are you need a team. If not immediately, at some point in the future your operations will expand and your development needs will increase. With a solo freelancer, where do you go next? Hire more freelancers? Putting together a remote team made up of individual freelancers gets complicated quickly.

Whether you’re hiring in-house or contracting development out to remote developers, there are risks attached to both. Freelancers can be fickle. What if a better offer comes along? They might leave, and you’re left to pick up the pieces. Hiring in-house is also risky. What if it turns out you made the wrong hire? You might be stuck with an expensive mistake and a less-than-ideal development team.

Bringing in a skilled and experienced development team from a reputable offshore software development company can mitigate these risks and more.

At Proshore, our ready-to-code dev teams can be scaled up and down, and have high retention – essentially bringing a piece of mind often not associated with outsourcing offshore. We monitor and plan ahead of time so that even if we do face changes they are managed efficiently.

A hub of tech talent in Nepal🇳🇵

Based in the Netherlands and Nepal, Proshore is perfectly positioned to connect software companies in the West with top tech talent in Nepal. We’re proud to be part of a promising IT outsourcing hub, fuelled by a steady stream of well-educated IT professionals. Because we offer highly-skilled jobs with competitive rates of pay, working with Proshore is an attractive proposition for the best and brightest tech talent in Nepal.

With Proshore, not only do software companies get the expertise they need when developers join our team they also enjoy training opportunities and upskilling to put them on the path to becoming full-stack developers. But we don’t just employ new developers for their technical expertise alone.

At Proshore, we pride ourselves on having a positive, inclusive, and collaborative culture. Our developers need to be team players who have a positive mindset, and an ability to see the big picture.

We value willingness to learn and develop just as important as having the prerequisite technical skills. So when recruiting, we provide feedback to every candidate after the first stage. So if they’re not successful the first time around, they have points for development to work on for the next time.

It’s no secret that using offshore devs and remote teams is a cost-effective way for software companies to add extra capacity and accelerate production. Not only does it help reduce overheads, it also opens up a global IT talent pool.

The beauty of adding capacity with a remote team is that you have none of the costs associated with attracting, recruiting, and retaining in-house talent. At the same time, you get ready-to-code developers with exactly the right skills and expertise needed to make your software a success.

But, you probably already knew that. Bringing in offshore developers is a given. What you really need to know is how to work well with your remote team – and how to get the best out of them.

With 15 years of experience, our Managing Director, Haico Duisters, opens up about 6 ways to get the best out of remote development teams;

Asynchronous Development

An Agile Delivery Model

Managed Remote Teams

Skills aligned with challenges

Robust recruitment methods

An agreed upfront fee

1️⃣ Asynchronous Development

Remote teams existed pre-pandemic, but the situation undoubtedly helped to accelerate the adoption of sustainable, long-term remote working.

Across multiple industries, hybrid working is now common, with employees splitting their time between home and the office. Proven remote working practices have shown that effective communication and productivity are no longer the concerns they once were.

Agile software development is a great fit for remote working access time zones. That’s because by carefully aligning sprint cycles, development can take place 24/7 – something to think about if you’re looking to reduce the time to market.

2️⃣ An Agile Delivery Model

When you bring in a remote development team, you’re not just getting a resource – they come with prior experience and a tried and tested working process. Agile delivery models give you exactly that – more flexible and adaptive development opportunities.

Different teams take care of different parts of the SaaS or software product. For example, some companies already have their own developers in place. When an offshore development team is brought in, it can then handle a specific area of development. This means integration and alignment is much easier to achieve – as long as your business goals are clearly shared and understood.

For other businesses – typically start-up SaaS – remote developers can also create capacity by joining existing teams. Using a buddy system is a great way to get remote workers up to speed on company culture, relevant business information, and make them feel part of a current engineering team.

3️⃣ Managed Remote Teams

Every company has different needs, but there’s much to be said for bringing in a hand-picked remote team, over multiple, individual outsourced developers.

For starters, it can help make working well with your remote developers much more straightforward. With individuals, you have to take control of each individual’s performance – as you would with employees. Managed teams manage themselves, under your direction.

With Proshore, our remote teams come with a dedicated Scrum Master who takes the responsibility for alignment with your Product Owner, and helps to optimize the team’s performance.

Put simply, an agile delivery model includes planning, refinement, and delivery, and eliminates micromanagement. There’s also no need for the HR functionality typically needed to onboard your own employees.

The other advantage of our ready-to-code development teams is that they can scale with your needs. This model allows you to add extra capacity without you having to source, recruit, and onboard additional talent. It’s taken care of on your behalf, at a significant saving in both time and cost.

4️⃣ Skills aligned with challenges

It goes without saying that when you bring in a team of offshore developers, they need to have the right skills for your development needs. Hiring a team puts the responsibility on your chosen offshore development company to select the most suitably qualified team members.

Matching the right skills is one thing. It’s also important that they understand what the real challenges are behind your need to add extra capacity. This can also provide vital clues as to the right solution for your challenges. The best solution is not just about having the correct coding skills and experience, it’s also about understanding the business case. If the remote team understands the business case, it gives their work meaning, and enables them to see how it fits into the bigger picture – and you’ll get a better product.

Of course, it is possible to build software without the right expertise. Companies sometimes look to low-code solutions for faster iteration. For generic applications, like a company Intranet, that’s a viable route. But for successful software and SaaS, it’s not always a viable option to pick and choose from ready-made components to create something new. When you need something unique and bespoke, that’s when remote development teams can help.

5️⃣ Robust recruitment methods

Hiring a team of remote developers means you can step aside from hiring duties, but that doesn’t mean compromising on quality or settling for second best. One thing you should check is the hiring statistics of your offshore software development company. How quickly can they source and onboard new teams? How broad and deep is their talent pool?

At Proshore we can connect your business with thousands of highly-skilled IT professionals living in Nepal. In 2023, we doubled the number of applicants to open positions, and we’ve also reduced our average time to hire from over 90 days to less than 20 days. That’s because we have a wealth of available talent on our database, above 4000, and a steady talent pipeline of new recruits from our mentorship program.

6️⃣ An agreed upfront fee

Let’s face it, when you’re hiring in-house, sourcing, recruiting, and retaining the best tech talent is expensive and time-consuming. With remote development teams, this cost can be dramatically reduced, whilst at the same time giving you extra capacity and improving your output.

Before you sign an agreement, make sure the costs are clear. This gives you peace of mind and cost certainty going forward. Find out how much you could save by using our handy cost calculator.

Final thoughts on adding extra capacity

Modern software companies are free from the limitations of working out of a single location. They can pick and choose from the best IT talent spread all over the world. But being spread out doesn’t mean being spread thin. Rather than viewing time zones as a limitation, working with a remote global workforce facilitates 24/7 operations, and accelerates development time.

With a managed team of remote developers from Proshore – whether you need one person or an entire Agile team – you can add extra capacity at speed. There’s no need to incur the costs of hiring in-house, and no need for the complexities of traditional HR functionality – everything you need is available for a pre-agreed and cost-effective fee.

A growing talent pool of over 4,000 developers – screened, assessed, and ready to code.

Commitment to the delivery of your product and the delivery process.

Experienced Agile teams who work closely with your Product Owner.

Add extra capacity and speed up the time to market your software product with ready-to-code devs. Book a call with Proshore to get started.

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“IT students can do valuable internships at our company. During three months we give them real projects, and make them ready for their next challenge. I really believe that they can build our country.”

Roshan Bhattarai is co-founder and CTO of IT company Proshore in Kathmandu. He sees big opportunities for IT companies in Nepal, if only they give big opportunities to IT students. Like he does at Proshore: “We offer IT students a nice working environment and give them a task and a timeline, they can choose their own time to work. In the office, we provide free breakfast and lunch from our own kitchen and they can play table tennis and games. But the focus is really on learning to grow.”

How can IT students build the country?

“Nepal can become a big IT hub, if only things were better organized. There is no national IT policy and there are a lot of practical problems, for instance you cannot use the national credit card to log in. The export of software could also be interesting for our country: There is enough manpower, but education and business should be working together better. If you are a foreigner and want to invest in an IT company in Nepal, you have to invest a lot of money.”

“It is important for Nepal to create jobs, we are leaning too much on India. We import three to four times more than we export! I think that the biggest opportunity is in creating IT jobs so IT students don’t have to go abroad to earn money. At the moment, a lot of young Nepalese are working in other countries, which is a pity. The government should turn this around.”

How has Proshore contributed to the Nepalese IT sector?

“In IT, you need to have a good strategy and talent. We started with five people, now we have more than 60. We have grown from building websites to developing apps, for mobile but also desktops. At the moment we try to enter open source communities and think of ideas to develop further.”

“Right now Nepal needs to focus, there are no big IT companies. The people who are studying here shouldn’t look at higher grades, they should focus on developing skills. The internet is here, so you can start making money. But in Nepal, parents pay for education so students become lazy. They should recognize that if they develop a skill, they can support themselves. In this way, they can close the gap between education and business.”

“I went to college recently myself and I am now thinking a lot about how Nepalese IT can be improved, the gap between college and practice is huge. We try to work with schools to make them ready for business, but of course we can also spot talent there.”

“Students do not have a degree to work at Proshore, we look at skills. Degrees are less and less important. We value students for what they have to offer.”

Why is Proshore based in Nepal? Why do our developers stay there, instead of us bringing Nepalese talent back to the Netherlands? After all, there are plenty of jobs for the taking in our country. These are both sensible questions that I am happy to answer in this article.

How did Proshore end up in Nepal?

Let's start at the beginning. In 2008, my business partner Haico happened to find himself in Nepal. Inspired by his interest in international entrepreneurship, he wanted to outsource some of the software development activities to a foreign country. Haico and his Nepalese contact Roshan therefore formed a cooperative alliance with a local partner. Unfortunately, that partnership didn't last very long. Nevertheless, Haico and Roshan kept in touch afterwards and in 2009, the two decided to set up an international business together; one with offices in the Netherlands and in Nepal. You guessed it: Proshore was born. We started out fairly small with just five FTEs. Today, our team is made up of more than sixty people - and counting, since we continue to grow rapidly!

Why are we not bringing Nepalese talent back to the Netherlands?

The question remains why we choose to stay in Nepal. As you undoubtedly now, a full-on war on talent is raging in the Western world. Technical talent in particular is incredibly scarce and therefore precious. At the moment, that is not the case in Nepal and other Asian countries. Contrary to many other recruitment parties, we nevertheless made a conscious decision not to bring Nepalese developers to the Netherlands permanently. I want to take a moment to explain why that is.

Nepal is dependent and susceptible to outside influence

The country's infrastructure leaves a lot to be desired. The political situation has been unstable for years. Although investments are being made in the country's economy, hardly any of that money comes from the national government. Instead, most of the money comes from the two rapidly growing economies that Nepal is caught between: India and China (since the earthquake in 2015). As a result, the country is extremely dependent in an economic sense. Since the country cannot properly support itself, it is highly susceptible to outside influence. At the moment, Nepal's import outweighs its export by a factor of thirteen. Although the country certainly has the potential to create its own industry, not enough is currently being done to facilitate that. Here’s an example: Nepal has the tallest mountains in the world and the most water. In theory, those natural resources could help the country become the largest international provider of green energy. At the moment, however, Nepal regularly imports more than fifty percent of the power it needs from India.

Talented youths seek their fortunes elsewhere

Another major problem that Nepal faces is unemployment, which sits at about forty percent. That should come as no great surprise. The country does not have a strong economy of its own and jobs are therefore hard to come by. That is especially true for highly educated people. As a result, around 1,600 people leave Nepal every day in search of a job elsewhere. Countries such as Australia, Japan and the United States are popular destinations for Nepalese professionals. The working population in these countries is ageing and they face a shortage of new employees. In addition to recruiting employees in Nepal, they also actively offer student visas to talented students. With job guarantees and other lofty promises, they hope to entice the Nepalese youths to stick around once they have finished their studies. In other words: the talented youths whose job it should be to build up Nepal are all leaving the country. If we were to go over there to recruit talented professionals and bring them back to the Netherlands, the situation would only exacerbate.

Creating an export product and top talent

That is not what we want. On the contrary; we would much rather invest in the country itself. First of all, we do so by creating an export product: Nepalese software that is being sold in the Netherlands. Secondly, we help to create top talent. When we form development teams for our clients, we always make sure to include a couple of training positions. As part of every team, we train several new people to become software developers. Many of them are fresh out of university. If not for the job we offer them, they would not have had many career opportunities in their own country and might therefore have sought their fortunes elsewhere. In other words, we do not search for the one percent of top talent for our clients. We would much rather create these talents ourselves. If you ask me, that is a far more sustainable approach and one that will surely help the country in the long run. We are truly grateful to Nepal Although we ended up there by happenstance, Nepal has won our hearts these past few years. We are truly grateful to her. I hope - as do my colleagues in the Netherlands and Nepal - that many other companies will follow our example.

As a PHP developer, 'Blackfire' might be a name you have come across before or maybe not even heard of. For our resident PHP expert, Angel Maharjan, it was a similar case until a few months back. Even though he had 9 years of experience in PHP, Angel found Blackfire to be a revelation in his workflow.

Being such an exciting topic, it was only natural that Blackfire was scheduled into our ‘Knowledge Sharing Session’ (KSS) open to both Proshorians and IT enthusiasts outside Proshore. Read on for a grasp of what Angel shared during his one-hour workshop.

Code using too many resources?

PHP developers, regardless of their experience, must have come across situations like the ones presented above. The dreaded ‘error’ in terms of your application’s execution time and memory. This generally means that you,

• go back to your code,
• hunt down the parts utilizing the most resources, in terms of execution time and memory, and
• rectify the code to correct the error, which could take multiple tries.

All PHP developers will all agree that It is a tedious task to manually track which part of your code is using resources through, let's say, microtime() or memory_get_usage() kit. The process takes up a lot of time and effort on the developer’s part lengthening the project or task delivery.

This is where Blackfire comes in. It provides a solution wherein PHP developers do not have to manually track execution time or memory usage errors in their code.

Blackfire to the rescue

Blackfire.io describes itself as a ‘Code performance observability solution’ offering the following features for your code performance,

• Monitoring management automation
• Profiling
• Testing

While Blackfire offers both paid and free features, a lot of functions are already included in the free version. Angel focused more on Blackfire’s free features in his session. He specifically talked about the profiling features of Blackfire, which provides detailed assessments of the function requests that slow down a developer’s code.

Using Blackfire’s profiler, through the browser extension or terminal, you can profile specific function requests of your app. Once Blackfire starts profiling the specific app functions, it sends multiple requests to create a bigger sample, hence, providing a more accurate analysis.

Once profiling is done, you can check the specific profiling test on your Blackfire account, analyzed in different views according to execution time and memory usage. The paid version of Blackfire includes views such as input/output time, CPU time, and more.

Profiling the problematic areas in your code

The execution time view profiles all the function calls and their execution time in inclusive and exclusive time, whereas, the memory usage view profiles all the function calls and their memory usage in both inclusive and exclusive memory.

By creating blocks of your function calls and differentiating them through nodes, colors, and borders, Blackfire profiles each function of the request and helps identify which functions are using the most resources.

Darker the color of the block, thicker the border, or thicker the arrow helps the developer pinpoint which parts of your code are using the most reserves according to execution time or memory usage. This visual chart automatically helps developers understand which part of their code needs to be changed to optimize their application performance.

Once you make the necessary changes to your code, after identifying them from Blackfire's profiler or terminal, you can again profile the request to check if the functions have been optimized. You can check between current and previous profiling tests on your Blackfire account. Since each profiling test is uploaded to the Blackfire server, it is easy for developers to browse and share results even when you don’t have access to your code.

Installing Blackfire is as easy as using the platform

After making a free account with Blackfire, you generally have to download three things,

• A language extension.
• ‘Blackfire agent’ that needs to be installed on the operating system.
• ‘Profiling client’ that can be installed from the browser extension or terminal.

With these in place, you can start monitoring your PHP application’s performance right away!

We hope that the KSS summary above gives you an idea of what Blackfire is and how you, as a PHP developer or even Python or GO Developer, can use the free features to monitor your application’s performance.

During his one-hour workshop, Angel used an open-source project from GitHub to demonstrate Blackfire’s profiling features and installation in action. You too can get access to the workshop recording and see Blackfire in action.

Session recording How to use Blackfire.io to monitor the performance of your PHP application Get access

Digital companies spend a lot of time, money, and effort on creating a website. Being the focal point for prospective customers to get information and buy products or services, a website plays a vital role in company awareness, sales, and growth. But sometimes even with a well-designed website, performance may not live up to estimations.

But why? Digital companies do their homework before launching their website, so, shouldn’t it perform as expected? This was a problem that our sister concern, Digital Product Labs (DPL), also faced with their Shopify solution - Etsy Integration & Sync.

Read on for the major pointers from Digital Marketer, Darpan Chapagain. In the recent hour-long KSS workshop, he explained how using Hotjar leveled up DPL product’s website.

Low-performing websites

There may be 1001 reasons why your website is not performing well. However, if you have allocated adequate resources to building and maintaining your website, then it is easier to narrow down your website’s low performance.

Now, look at the points below. Do you face similar problems on your website?

• No clarity of user activity/behavior.
• You see there are bugs and issues but can’t seem to find them.
• Hard time finding ideas to add new features.

Most of the problems revolve around an unmissable factor – users. If your website is not made for users, then your users will be less likely to convert. You may have followed all concepts of user-friendly design but at the end of the day, users decide if your website meets their expectations and needs.

This is where Hotjar can help.

User-validated design

Hotjar allows digital marketers, UI/UX designers, or any product or strategic owner to analyze why your users are behaving the way they do on your website. They have four major features that allow you to improve your website validated by your users!

1. Heatmaps
2. Feedback
3. Recordings
4. Surveys

Like how it helped Darpan and his colleagues at DPL, Hotjar can help you too. The expansive tool allows any strategic and project owners to,

• Understand why a client/customer may have stopped using a company product/service.
• Avoid reaching deadlock on app improvement.
• Know client reactions to a new feature release.

Hotjar provides the development team with invaluable insights into website usage, eliminating the guessing game as to why a website is performing poorly. The analysis of user behavior allows for the possibility of creating a website that is actually friendly for your target audience, i.e. user-validated design.

After seeing the tangible results brought forth by using Hotjar, it was certain that the DPL team would continue using the tool. Currently, they use the ‘heatmaps and behavior analytics tools’ for,

1. Daily user activity analysis
2. Daily user uninstallation analysis to identify bugs and issues
3. Analysis of user activity to identify possible new features
4. To see user activity towards newly released features.

Setting up Hotjar

First and foremost, you need to make sure your website is compatible with Hotjar. While it is compatible with most of the major platforms, platforms that do not support custom third-party Javascript will not be able to install Hotjar. These include names like Dribble, Google Sites, Amazon Seller Pages, and GoDaddy GoCentral among others.

If your website’s platform is compatible with Hotjar, follow the following steps.

During his one-hour workshop, Darpan also showcased Hotjar’s various features to demonstrate how it works and how it can help the workshop's participants.

You too can see Hotjar’s features in action, including the insightful Q&A interaction, on the full knowledge-sharing session's recording.

Workshop recording Level up your website or project with behavior analytics - Hotjar Get access

Proshore Bootcamp addresses many of the shortcomings when compared to a regular coding bootcamp, IT training classes, or even, IT undergraduate. and graduate courses in Nepal.

If we have to single out the glaringly obvious, Proshore Bootcamp provides selected participants with real-world experience working as part of a development team for tech projects. Moreover, as Nepal is a growing tech hub for remote software development, our learn-on-the-project methodology follows international standards.

Simply put, Proshore Bootcamp is a mentorship program like no other that improves on regular coding bootcamps, IT training, and programming courses in Nepal. This is a unique opportunity to kickstart your career in just three months. Grow yourself as a developer, designer, QA, or Project Manager with global demand!

Proshore Bootcamp: 3rd edition recap

The 3rd edition of our software development bootcamp started on July 18, 2022, and ended on November 14, 2022. Usually a 3-month mentorship program, we had a refreshing gap during the Dashain and Tihar break for all mentors and bootcampers.

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Similar to our insights into the 1st and 2nd edition, find the highlights of the 3rd edition as follow,

• We received a whopping 180 applications for the 3rd edition of our mentorship program.
• Initially, we had planned for 20 seats but due to the sheer number of quality applications, we selected 24 bootcampers for the program.
• We received increased enthusiasm for the QA stream and through an enthusiastic mentor lead, implemented it with a focus on ‘automation’.
• We divided the 24 bootcampers into two groups to work on two separate projects.
  1. One group continued the ‘Ticker’ project from the 2nd edition of Proshore Bootcamp. They rebranded to ‘Proshore Time Tracker’ and developed the product to be as ready for the market as possible within the bootcamp duration.
  2. The other group worked on a new project where they would develop a new tool called ‘Proshore Asset Management’ which like its name was a directory to list and manage an organization’s tangible assets.
• There were 41 sessions across 6 sprints conducted throughout the bootcamp.
• 14 out of 25 Bootcampers graduated from the program.
• 2 Bootcampers were offered jobs by us, in QA and PHP, based on our requirements and their capability to execute the role right away.

Let’s now hear from the mentor leads and select bootcampers about their experience of Proshore Bootcamp’s 3rd edition.

Proshore Bootcamp: The mentors' point of view

One of the reasons that Proshore Bootcamp stands out from other coding or software development bootcamps and IT training or programming courses is mentorship. While we had 23 different mentors in the 3rd edition, from the 23 we had 5 as mentor leads for each of our streams.

• Frontend Development stream was led by our PHP Developer, Rikesh Shrestha.
• Backend Development stream was led by Full Stack Web Developer and Community Contributor, Sakar U. Khatiwada.
• QA stream was led by our PHP Developer and QA Automation enthusiast, Ashish Shakya.
• Project Management stream was led by our Scrum Master, Simon Shrestha.
• Soft skills stream was led by our HR Manager, Krishma Shrestha.

To get a point of view of the 3rd mentorship program, we talked with Rikesh, Ashish, and Simon – Frontend, QA, and Project Management mentor leads respectively.

How was your experience as a mentor lead for the 3rd edition of Proshore Bootcamp?

Rikesh: It was my second time as a mentor in Proshore Bootcamp but my first time as a stream lead. We planned the sessions as per the current market needs in Frontend development and I am glad to see 6/7 bootcampers graduate from the stream.

Ashish: This was the first time automation was implemented in the QA stream. Since I was also exploring automation in Cypress at the time, mentoring the same topic to enthusiastic bootcampers allowed me to grow my own technical skills in QA and also my soft skills as a ‘mentor’.

Simon: Used to managing small growing teams in client projects, having to manage 24 new faces with no to less prior work experience, was definitely out of my comfort zone. Additionally, there were challenges like illnesses, holidays, and resignations. By the end of the program, I felt like a mother who had been nurturing children and seeing them grow up!

How did your stream progress from a real-world project perspective?

Rikesh: Keeping ‘learning’ at the core of every task and session, we promoted that it is a necessity throughout one’s career. However, we created a space for teamwork to flourish as it is crucial in a workplace. The bootcampers themselves felt the importance of teamwork as they worked together on the two projects. We also saw the basics of professionalism picked up by the end of the program.

Ashish: With the ‘time tracker’ project continued from the previous bootcamp, the QA stream was learning from the get-go. We implemented automaton and open-ended research to decrease learning dependency on other streams – who were facing complications themselves due to resignations and changes in requirements. However, through trial and error, the QA bootcampers had learned from mistakes and got an insight into OOP patterns even before development handed over work for QA testing.

Simon: To be honest, it was very similar to how we normally work with clients - from understanding the requirements of the project to capacity changes after resignation to coping with angry clients (in this case – the leads). Although, I would say that the main takeaway for Bootcamper was learning how to work in a team despite their individual brilliance.

What could have been executed better?

Rikesh: There was a gap between our assumption that the bootcampers would have or pick up knowledge of real-world working processes. For example, we faced an issue with GIT where Bootcampers were not used to it and had to request additional sessions to understand it. We have since made changes in the session plan to ease Bootcampers into a real-world working environment and its processes.

Ashish: Since a QA’s work starts after development, it is not ideal to introduce the QA stream until considerable development work is done and can be tested. If there was a stable project and working module then more effective learning could have taken place. Since the 4th edition plans to continue and finish the ‘time tracker’ project we can optimally implement the QA stream along with automation.

Simon: We had increased our seats for the 3rd edition to 20, selected 4 more, and planned for 2 simultaneous projects to engage all Bootcampers equally. But, the number of mentor leads remained the same. The balance in capacity was hindered, however, through agile methods we somehow made it work. For the 4th edition, we will be keeping in mind the mentorship capacity so that selected candidates receive optimal growth opportunities.  

What tips would you give to early-stage IT professionals?

Rikesh: You need to have a learning attitude and believe there is always room for growth in FE or any coding field. With a variety of existing, obsolete, and new technologies you should know when to step back, take a break, and take another path instead of going down the wrong one and getting stuck.

Ashish: IT is a field where knowledge is never enough. With new tech coming out every other day, even freshers may have more knowledge than seasoned professionals! So never stop learning. As for QA, with the rise of automation, remember to work smart. Additionally, the QA stream, by its nature, can give you complete knowledge about applications – it can help develop skills to even become a PM or Project Lead.

Simon: A Project Manager or Scrum Master role is something an individual should feel in their bones before starting. If PM is your backup to coding then this is not for you and you may even give up later. You should enjoy interacting with people and have patience, perseverance, and communication skills.

Proshore Bootcamp: In the shoes of the Bootcampers

We previously mentioned that we had selected 24 out of 180 applicants to participate in the 3rd edition of Proshore Bootcamp. 14 out of 24 Bootcampers completed this real-world software development program.

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We talked to 6 bootcampers about their experience of Proshore Bootcamp 3rd edition.

How was your experience as a Bootcamper in the 3rd edition of Proshore Bootcamp?

Surya: Working on bugs in one of the sprints, I and many fellow bootcampers loved the process of debugging. The program taught me more about teamwork and how to work together under high pressure.

Lisa: I really enjoyed all the sessions provided by the various mentors. Working in a team, I also learned about different situations that may arise in a software development project and how to handle them as a PM. At one point, I was even feeling demotivated but the mentors were very helpful and helped me become motivated again.

Ananta: For me, the three months of this bootcamp have been fantastic in terms of learning, teamwork, experiencing challenging situations, and overcoming those challenges. Now that I understand how software firms operate, I can see the positive effects of effective teamwork. Throughout the bootcamp, all of the mentors were quite helpful, and the sessions they offered were extremely educational. I had never worked under agile methodology before and now, I really like it. It was truly helpful to be able to share information with the team members I had the opportunity to work with. From day 1, I found myself growing as a coder, problem-solver, and most importantly, a team member.

Kritika: When I first joined the bootcamp for a QA team, I was completely unknown to the IT field, but the mentors here were really helpful. They were always there to teach me and they always supported me whenever I got stuck in a problem. With friendly teammates and later on, PMs, my overall experience was fruitful and fun. Also, it feels great to have been offered a job at Proshore through the bootcamp itself. 

Saugat: The bootcamp, for me, provided a nice blend of educational sessions along with an environment where we could practice and implements our theoretical learning. Additionally, I found the scrum sessions and team meetings to be very effective and worth it.

What do you feel can be improved in the next edition?

Surya: By the last sprint, many things had improved in us bootcampers as the team. I only wish that I could have concluded fixing the final issue on the server side too – hence time allocation for sessions and actual project work should be better planned and also take into consideration delays and unforeseen circumstances.

Lisa: The sessions provided were helpful but only focused on Scrum and Scrum Master. I feel sessions about Project Management and what they do should be provided as well.

Ananta: It would’ve benefitted Bootcampers to be introduced to web programming, including information on how the internet and web servers function, what an API is and why is it useful, etc. Maybe, before beginning the main project a smaller project could be conducted to ease into the experience of working in a team. I also feel that the first two weeks could have included daily tests of the bootcamper’s knowledge of their respective fields.

Kritika: As a few bootcampers left the program in the middle, it created an imbalance and affected us too. If feedback can be taken upon resignation to pinpoint the reasons and if proper screening during selection can be done then the program can run smoothly and there will be less hindrance to the dedicated bootcampers’ learning. 

Saugat: From time to time, we felt a lack of energy in the team. If there can be a way to track and stimulate the same positive energy, from start to finish, the program would be even more effective.

Next on Proshore Bootcamp

We began the refinement and planning of the 4th edition of Proshore Bootcamp as soon as the 3rd edition ended. Taking the feedback and suggestions from the past bootcamps and our inbox into consideration, we have made progressive changes to the program and session plan this time around – a few of them being,

• Including a dedicated seat for UIUX Design in the Frontend Development stream.
• Taking down the number of seats to 14 so that we can create even more impact by balancing the number of mentors, the program duration, and the number of bootcampers. While decreasing the number of seats decreases the quantity of early-stage professionals we can help at a time, it increases the quality of the outcome. Additionally, we will conduct two bootcamps in 2023.
• Focusing on only one project but having an ambitious goal – we plan to finish the ‘Proshore Time Tracker’ project in this bootcamp!

Learn more

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Remote Development

11 proven tips to manage your offshore team – challenges, tools, and expert advice

Learn effective strategies for managing offshore teams, from communication to quality control. Plus, get our recommended tools and solutions to common challenges in offshore development.

Book a call Talk to our Accounts director, Jeroen, to see if our ready-to-code offshore teams are a fit for you.

• Resources

Earlier this year, we onboarded a client for offshore software development. They shared how management challenges with previous outsourcing partners had delayed their launch by 6 months.

This experience, which is recurring in many of our offshore-familiar clients, shows how effective management of offshore teams can be the difference between project success and failure.

If you're new to outsourcing or looking to optimize your offshore team, here are our 11 proven management tips.

What is offshore software development?

Offshore software development is a business process where a company outsources some or all of its software development to partner companies located in another country.

Reduced cost, access to a global talent pool, easy scaling, and faster time-to-market are some of the major benefits of hiring an offshore team. To learn more about benefits, visit our guide on the benefits of hiring an offshore team.

11 Tips to Manage Your Offshore Teams

Let's first understand why these management tips matter.

Our experience shows that most offshore partnerships fail not due to technical skills but because of ineffective management practices. The wrong approach can lead to missed deadlines, quality issues, and frustrated teams on both sides.

Having helped numerous clients overcome their offshore challenges, we've compiled a list of proven management tips for key areas that directly impact project success.

Communication and Cultural Integration

Culture eats strategy for breakfast – no matter how well thought your strategy is, you will never get outsourcing right without a collaborative culture.

1

Establish clear time overlap windows

Offshore development projects succeed when teams maintain at least 3-4 hours of overlap daily. To make the best of the overlapping hours,

• Schedule key meetings during these hours.
• Use tools like Slack or Microsoft Teams for asynchronous updates.
• Create a shared calendar marking each team member's working hours and availability.

2

Build a culture of open communication

Language barriers often create misunderstandings. Set up daily check-ins and encourage team members to ask questions, no matter how small.

Document all discussions in simple, clear language: We've found that teams using templates for updates and maintaining meeting minutes have fewer misunderstandings.

3

Integrate teams culturally

You need to include your offshore members in company events, even if it's virtual. Creating a separate channel for casual conversation and celebrating team achievements will make the team feel connected.

You can also plan regular visits to your offshore location when possible. This helps build trust, which you can't achieve through virtual meetings alone.

Project Management and Visibility

Establish a system and mechanisms where everyone involved can overview or know the project's progress at any given time. With the right offshore development partner, like Proshore, you can also leverage their existing system.

4

Maintain project visibility

Use project management tools like Jira to track progress in real time. You can ask teams for daily updates with specific metrics - tasks completed, roadblocks faced, and upcoming deliverables.

Also, ensure that dashboards are shared with stakeholders for transparency. This helps identify potential delays before they impact deadlines.

5

Performance tracking

You need clear metrics to evaluate your offshore team's work quality and progress. Track things like sprint velocity, code quality scores, and meeting deadlines.

This helps you make data-driven decisions to improve team performance.

6

Integrate teams culturally

You need to identify potential risks early when working with offshore teams. Things like communication gaps, resource constraints, and technical issues can impact your project.

Always have a backup plan ready - like having extra resources on standby or alternative communication channels.

This ensures your project stays on track even when challenges arise.

Technical Quality Management

Setting a structure and pre-defined standards will go a long way, especially when managing an offshore team that scales alongside your product.

7

Developer onboarding

You must create a structured onboarding process for new offshore team members. Have a clear checklist covering technical setup, project context, and coding practices.

This helps new developers become productive faster and maintains consistent development standards across the team.

8

Prioritize knowledge documentation

You must create a centralized knowledge base covering technical decisions, architecture diagrams, and coding guidelines. This will reduce knowledge gaps and ensure consistent understanding across the team.

And, if there are any important meetings regarding project direction, you can record them and make them accessible to all team members.

9

Set clear quality standards

You must define and document your coding standards from the start. For consistent coding practices, you can try regular peer review sessions to discuss code improvements.

And, for quality QA, you can implement

• Rigorous QA processes
• Regular code reviews
• Automated testing

Legal and Compliance

Safeguard your product and party – prevention is better than cure.

10

Legal requirements

You need clear contracts that outline project scope, timelines, and quality standards.

Get legal experts to help with compliance, especially for data protection and IP rights.

11

Data security

You will definitely need a clear data security protocol when working with your offshore team. For secure project management,

• Set up secure access controls and VPN for remote connections
• Implement encryption standards for all communications
• Create clear guidelines for handling sensitive information.

Need a ready-to-code dev team for your project?

Hire offshore devs from Proshore. Let's discuss your requirements

Book a call

Tool for effective management of offshore teams

When managing offshore teams, you need the right tools to keep everything running smoothly. Here's our recommended toolkit based on different management needs:

1

Daily Communication

• Slack helps with real-time messaging and organizing team conversations into channels.
• Microsoft Teams combines chat, video calls, and document sharing in one place.
• Zoom works great for clear video meetings, especially with larger teams.

2

Project Management

• Jira lets you manage Agile projects and track tasks easily.
• Trello offers a simple way to visualize project workflows.
• Basecamp combines project management with team communication.
• Monday.com helps streamline workflows and team collaboration.

3

Development and DevOps

• GitHub makes code collaboration and version control simple.
• GitLab provides a complete DevOps platform with CI/CD capabilities.
• Jenkins helps automate your building and deployment process.

4

Quality Control

• Code Climate for monitoring code quality automatically.
• Selenium when you need reliable automated testing.
• Cypress for testing your web applications thoroughly.

5

Knowledge Sharing

• Confluence works well for creating detailed project documentation.
• Notion helps organize and share information flexibly.

6

Time Management

• World Time Buddy helps you plan meetings across different time zones.
• Doodle makes scheduling team meetings easier.

7

Security

• LastPass or 1Password for secure password sharing.
• Enterprise security features in Slack and Microsoft Teams.
• VPN tools for secure connections.

8

Screen Sharing

• Loom for recording quick video explanations.
• Snagit when you need to share detailed screenshots.

1

Daily Communication

• Slack helps with real-time messaging and organizing team conversations into channels.
• Microsoft Teams combines chat, video calls, and document sharing in one place.
• Zoom works great for clear video meetings, especially with larger teams.

2

Project Management

• Jira lets you manage Agile projects and track tasks easily.
• Trello offers a simple way to visualize project workflows.
• Basecamp combines project management with team communication.
• Monday.com helps streamline workflows and team collaboration.

3

Development and DevOps

• GitHub makes code collaboration and version control simple.
• GitLab provides a complete DevOps platform with CI/CD capabilities.
• Jenkins helps automate your building and deployment process.

4

Quality Control

• Code Climate for monitoring code quality automatically.
• Selenium when you need reliable automated testing.
• Cypress for testing your web applications thoroughly.

5

Knowledge Sharing

• Confluence works well for creating detailed project documentation.
• Notion helps organize and share information flexibly.

6

Time Management

• World Time Buddy helps you plan meetings across different time zones.
• Doodle makes scheduling team meetings easier.

7

Security

• LastPass or 1Password for secure password sharing.
• Enterprise security features in Slack and Microsoft Teams.
• VPN tools for secure connections.

8

Screen Sharing

• Loom for recording quick video explanations.
• Snagit when you need to share detailed screenshots.

Common challenges with managing offshore teams

Even with proper management practices in place, you might face certain challenges with your offshore team. Here are common issues we've seen clients encounter:

1

Communication barriers

Despite having overlapping hours and communication tools, language differences can still lead to misunderstandings. Cultural nuances and time zone gaps might affect how messages are interpreted and acted upon.

2

Team integration issues

Building trust without face-to-face interaction can be challenging. When teams work from different locations, discussing complex ideas and resolving conflicts takes extra effort. You might also notice different working styles and priorities across locations.

3

Quality control concerns

Maintaining consistent code quality becomes trickier with remote teams. Different development practices and coding standards between your local and offshore teams can impact project quality.

4

Resource management

Managing tasks across time zones requires careful planning. You might face:

• Unexpected delays in deliverables
• Higher turnover rates due to a competitive market
• Disrupted project continuity with team changes
• Challenges in resource allocation

5

Security and compliance

Working with teams in different countries brings additional security considerations:

• Ensuring compliance with different data privacy laws
• Protecting intellectual property rights
• Maintaining secure data access protocols
• Managing legal and contractual requirements

1

Communication barriers

Despite having overlapping hours and communication tools, language differences can still lead to misunderstandings. Cultural nuances and time zone gaps might affect how messages are interpreted and acted upon.

2

Team integration issues

Building trust without face-to-face interaction can be challenging. When teams work from different locations, discussing complex ideas and resolving conflicts takes extra effort. You might also notice different working styles and priorities across locations.

3

Quality control concerns

Maintaining consistent code quality becomes trickier with remote teams. Different development practices and coding standards between your local and offshore teams can impact project quality.

4

Resource management

Managing tasks across time zones requires careful planning. You might face:

• Unexpected delays in deliverables
• Higher turnover rates due to a competitive market
• Disrupted project continuity with team changes
• Challenges in resource allocation

5

Security and compliance

Working with teams in different countries brings additional security considerations:

• Ensuring compliance with different data privacy laws
• Protecting intellectual property rights
• Maintaining secure data access protocols
• Managing legal and contractual requirements

How Proshore helps to manage your offshore teams

Best practices and using the right tools are one way of managing offshore teams. However, to succeed, you need experience, proven systems, and a partner who understands your challenges firsthand.

At Proshore, we provide a complete ready-to-code development framework that takes all your pain of managing offshore development and ensures the project's success.

Our approach comes from years of helping clients overcome common offshore development hurdles while delivering successful projects.

Here's how we put our experience to work for you:

We eliminate time zone and language barriers through

• A dedicated scrum master who takes ownership of agile development and communication.
• Clear communication channels for different needs.
• Detailed documentation of every decision made.
• Structured daily updates to keep you informed.

We offer quality ready-to-code devs from day 1

• Build and scale your team from a pool of 5,000+ vetted developers.
• Automated testing from the start.
• 60-day trial period for you to build your trust while we build your product.

Flexible outsourcing model to match your product stage

• Project-based development for projects with clear requirements and scope.
• Dedicated team model for long-term projects with evolving requirements.
• Staff augmentation when you need to quickly scale your existing team.

More than 90% of internet users access the internet via smartphones, which makes a huge market for both developers and companies. Mobile app development is the process of creating software applications that run on mobile devices. The enduring popularity of smartphones and tablets means there are apps for almost everything, including entertainment, communication, and productivity. 

Mobile app developers use various programming languages, frameworks, and tools to create apps for Android and iOS. The overall development process involves various stages, including ideation, design, development, testing, and deployment. For companies developing an app, it can be tough to find the right tech talent at the right price. That’s why companies are going offshore to find mobile app developers.

Introduction to mobile app development 

Mobile app developers are software developers who specialize in creating applications for mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. They work on leading mobile platforms –  iOS and Android – using programming languages such as Flutter, Dart, Java, Kotlin, Swift, and Objective-C to create apps. 

App developers use a range of related technologies such as APIs, cloud services, and databases to develop mobile applications that meet the needs of their clients. They can either operate independently or as part of a development team, often specializing in a specific area such as user interface design, backend development, or quality assurance.

There are two main options for hiring mobile app developers:

Onshore mobile app development

Onshore mobile app development takes place within the same country as your company. This option enables direct communication and collaboration between you and your development team. It can be beneficial when you prefer face-to-face meetings and close communication with your development team.

Offshore mobile app development

Offshore mobile app development involves developing applications outside your home country, typically in countries with lower labor costs. This option can be more cost-effective and gives you access to a larger talent pool. Due to distance and time zone differences, successful communication, and collaboration need careful planning.

> Read our complete guide on offshore mobile app development

How to hire offshore app developers

Hiring offshore app developers can be a cost-effective way to develop mobile applications. However, it’s important to carefully approach the hiring process to ensure that you find a reliable and skilled development team. Here are the main steps involved in hiring app developers:

Step 1 – Define your project requirements

Before you begin your search, define your project requirements in detail, including the features you want, the mobile platforms you want to target (Flutter, java, etc), and the budget you have available. 

Step 2 – Research offshore app developers

Identify offshore app developers with a good reputation and positive reviews. You can find freelancers and companies through online marketplaces, referrals, or industry events.

Step 3 – Evaluate each app developer’s expertise

Evaluate each developer’s expertise by reviewing their portfolio, case studies, and client references. This will give you an idea of their experience with similar projects and their overall skill level.

When evaluating an app developer, ask yourself questions like,

• “Do they match my app’s nature?” Your company could be working in eCommerce, Healthtech, FinTech, On-demand services, EdTech, or Games – if they have experience in a similar field there are high chances that your new hire will fit right in.
• “Does their past experience match your development requirements?” Keep in mind that while the app developer could have worked in the same field their responsibilities may not match with the ones you require.
• “Do their reference match my company values?”   

Step 4 – Evaluate non-technical expertise

Communication is crucial when working with offshore app developers. Make sure you establish clear communication channels and expectations from the start. This includes regular updates, progress reports, and feedback.

Offshore app developers may come from different cultural backgrounds, which can impact communication and work styles. Make an effort to understand and respect cultural differences to build a strong working relationship.

Step 5 – Onboard your app developers

Once you’ve chosen the right developers, onboard your offshore app developers, hand over your requirements, and ensure you have a clear agreement on the deliverables to be monitored. 

Step 6 – Protect your intellectual property

Ensure your offshore app developers have appropriate safeguards in place to protect your intellectual property. This includes signed non-disclosure agreements and secure data storage practices.

Step 7 — Test and deploy

Once the app is developed, test it thoroughly to ensure it meets your requirements. Then, work with your offshore app developers to deploy the app to the app store and make it available to users.

The cost of hiring app developers offshore

The cost of hiring app developers offshore varies depending on the country and region. The overall cost ranges from $10 - $250 per hour.

• North America has the highest rates overall.
• Eastern Europe and Latin America fall just below America.
• Asia seems to have the most affordable rates.

To give you a clearer overview, here’s a comparison of the average hourly rates for mobile app developers in different regions:

RegionAverage cost per hour (USD)North America$100 – $250Eastern Europe$25 – $80Latin America$20 – $70Asia $10 – $50

Please note: These rates are estimates. The true cost can vary depending on experience level, project complexity, and the specific location within each region.

5 challenges (and tips) for offshore app development 

Hiring offshore app developers is a great way to cut costs whilst gaining access to a larger talent pool. But it’s not without challenges. Here are 5 common challenges and tips for addressing them:

1. Communication barriers: Working with offshore app developers can present communication challenges due to differences in language, time zones, and cultural norms. That’s why it’s important to establish clear communication channels and expectations from the start. This includes regular check-ins, progress reports, and feedback. You may also want to consider hiring a Scrum Master to help facilitate communication.
2. Quality control: Ensuring the quality of work from offshore app developers can be a challenge, especially if you don't have experience managing remote teams. To address this challenge, establish clear quality standards from the start and provide detailed feedback on deliverables. You may also want to consider hiring a Quality Assurance (QA) specialist to review the work and ensure it meets your standards.
3. Intellectual Property (IP): No matter who you work with, protecting your IP can be a concern. To address this challenge, establish clear legal agreements and data protection policies. This includes non-disclosure agreements, IP assignment agreements, and data security policies.
4. Time zone differences: Working with offshore app developers in different time zones requires adjustment and agreement from both sides. To address this challenge, establish a work schedule that accommodates both time zones and allows for overlap in working hours. You may also want to consider using a project management tool such as Trello or Jira that allows for asynchronous communication and collaboration.
5. Cultural differences: Offshore app developers may come from different cultural backgrounds, which can impact communication and work styles. To address this challenge, make an effort to understand and respect cultural differences. This includes learning about cultural norms and values, communicating clearly and respectfully, and being open to different perspectives and ways of working.

Hire app developers from Proshore

Based in Nepal and the Netherlands, Proshore is an ideal offshore app development partner. With a deep pool of tech talent – including highly experienced and fully trained app developers – our dev teams as a service are ready to code and ready to deploy. 

We have a number of app developers available to work, app development technology that Proshore offers, years of working experience in the same field, number of mobile applications developed.

With Proshore you get professional and cost-effective solutions – especially when compared with onshore alternatives. Depending on where you are in the world, mobile app developers from Proshore can save you up to 50% in hiring costs.

FAQs

What skills should you look for in offshore mobile app developers?

When you hire offshore mobile app developers, look for both technical and non-technical skills:

Technical skills

• Includes expertise in programming languages, app development frameworks, and mobile app development tools.
• Identify developers who have experience with similar projects and can provide examples of their work. That’s because offshore app developers need to solve problems creatively and efficiently.

Non-technical skills

• Look for developers who can communicate clearly and effectively in English (or your preferred language).
• Look for evidence that they can work collaboratively with other team members, including designers, project managers, and quality assurance (QA) specialists.

What are the benefits of hiring app developers offshore?

Hiring app developers offshore provides many business benefits. Here are 4 important ones:

1. Cost savings: Offshore developers often have lower hourly rates than developers in North America or Europe, which can result in significant cost savings for your project.

2. A larger talent pool: Going offshore in the search for app developers opens up a world of tech talent. This is especially useful if you have trouble finding skilled developers in your home country.

3. Faster development times: With a larger team of offshore developers working on your project, development can often be completed more quickly. You can also use developers in different time zones to enable around-the-clock development.

Flexibility: Offshore development teams can often work on a flexible schedule to accommodate time zone differences, which can allow for faster turnaround times and increased productivity.

Where can you find offshore app developers?

There are various places where you can hire offshore app developers: 

• Online marketplaces: You can search and hire individual developers from around the world on websites like Upwork, Freelancer, and Toptal.

• Referrals: Ask colleagues or industry contacts for referrals to offshore development companies or developers they have worked with in the past.

• Industry events: At industry events and conferences, you can network with developers and companies from around the world.

Social media: Use social media platforms like LinkedIn or Twitter to connect with offshore app developers and development companies.

Java is a powerful and enduring platform on which some of the world’s best-known web applications and services are built. Its enduring popularity means there is strong global demand for top Java developer talent. So it’s no wonder that companies extend their search offshore when looking to hire Java developers.

Why is Java development so popular?

From the biggest names in eCommerce – such as Amazon and eBay – to popular social networking and video sharing platforms – like LinkedIn and YouTube – Java is a constant presence in the background of our digital lives.

It may be over 25 years old, but Java is still one of the most widely-used programming languages. Java is constantly evolving, and its proven reliability and modular structure make it a popular choice for all kinds of applications. 

One of the major uses of Java is in innovative Enterprise applications. Not only that, but Java is commonly used for desktop applications, games, and other mobile software.

Here are 5 common applications for Java:

1. Enterprise software: The Java Enterprise Edition (Java EE) is increasingly used to develop enterprise applications such as customer relationship management (CRM), enterprise resource planning (ERP), and supply chain management (SCM) systems.

2. Desktop applications: Java developers create desktop applications using frameworks like JavaFX and Swing. These frameworks provide a rich set of components for building desktop applications that work across different platforms.

3. Games: Java can be used to create games. The libGDX library is a popular choice for creating 2D and 3D games using Java. There is also a Java edition of Minecraft – one of the world’s most popular games.

4. Web applications: Java has a number of frameworks and tools – such as Spring, Struts, and Hibernate – that make it easy to build robust and scalable web applications.

5. Mobile app development: As the official programming language for the Android platform, Java is used to build native Android apps. 

Basic guidelines for hiring offshore Java developers

If you’re looking to hire offshore Java developers, it’s important to follow some basic guidelines to ensure you get the best fit for your business. Follow these simple steps:

Step 1 – Set your project requirements

Before you begin looking for offshore Java developers, set out the requirements of your project. This includes the technical skills, experience, and qualifications alongside specific milestones and deadlines.

Step 2 – Identify offshore Java development companies or freelancers

There are Java developers all over the world. You can find them through online job boards, freelancer websites, and offshore development companies. Whichever channel you use to source offshore Java developers, make sure they have a strong track record in delivering high-quality code. Also, check their previous clients’ reviews and ratings.

Step 3 – Review candidate portfolios and resumes 

Once you've found potential offshore Java developers, review their portfolios and resumes to assess their technical skills and experience. Look for candidates with relevant experience in Java development and a strong portfolio behind them.

Step 4 – Conduct interviews

Prepare a shortlist of potential candidates, then conduct interviews to assess their communication skills, soft skills, and cultural fit. This is an important opportunity to ask technical questions that test their expertise and experience with Java development.

Step 5 – Request references

Request references from previous clients or employers to verify the Java developer’s experience and work quality – before you make the hiring decision.

Step 6 – Share clear expectations

After hiring offshore Java developers, it's important that you set clear expectations for the way ahead. Regular communication – especially around deadlines, reviews, and demos –  is key to ensuring that your project stays on track.

Step 7 – Continuously monitor progress 

Continuously monitor the progress of your offshore Java development team. Provide feedback to ensure that progress is in line with your expectations.

Skills to look out for in offshore Java developers

As mentioned above, assessing the technical skills of your offshore Java developers is one of the most important steps in hiring them. However, soft skills are also essential for effective teamwork – especially if that team is spread out remotely across different locations. Here’s a summary of the soft skills and technical skills needed by offshore Java developers.

Soft Skills

• Communication: Proficiency in a shared language is essential. This is usually – but not always – English. Having a common language is crucial for clear communication, which leads to the best results.

• Problem-solving: Java developers need to think creatively to solve complex technical problems. This is a core part of the development process. 

• Attention to detail: A keen eye for detail is needed to avoid errors and setbacks and ensure clean, maintainable, and efficient Java code.

• Time management:  When your offshore Java developers are working remotely and self-managed, effective time management is important for meeting project deadlines.

• Flexibility: When taking an agile approach to software development, priorities can quickly change. That means developers also need to be flexible in their mindset. 

Technical Skills

• Project management: Ensure your Java developers can use project management tools – such as Jira or Trello – to manage sprint goals and deadlines.

• Java web frameworks: Popular Java web frameworks – including Google Web Toolkit, Spring, and Hibernate – are needed for developing robust web applications.

• Source control: Source control management (SCM) systems enable developers to track and manage changes to the code, especially merging code from multiple sources. 

• DevOps tools: DevOps tools – including AWS, Git, Jenkins, and Docker – will help to streamline development, deployment, and testing. 

• Java proficiency: Developers should have a strong understanding of the Java programming language, including its syntax, data structures, libraries, and frameworks.

The technical skills of your offshore Java developers will also depend on the complexity of your project. As a rough guide, here’s what to expect from Junior and Senior Java Developers. 

Junior Java Developers 

• Alongside practical working knowledge of Java, junior developers need a strong understanding of object-oriented concepts and different data types, threads, and classes.
• Being able to write clean code in Java is essential.
• They should also be able to demonstrate sufficient knowledge of JavaScript, Servlet methods, and Java-based web services.

Senior Java Developers 

• Senior Java developers write clean and optimized code.
• They’ll be proficient in Java with a deep understanding of exception handling, class fundamentals, multithreading, and synchronization.
• They’ll be competent at debugging and testing. At this level, developers will demonstrate a clear understanding of complex SQL queries, J2EE, and be able to deal with memory-related errors.

The cost of hiring offshore Java developers

Depending on a number of factors – including living costs, experience, and the project's scope – the cost of hiring offshore Java developers can vary significantly. 

That being said, the cost of hiring offshore Java developers ranges from $25 - $100. Here is a breakdown of the typical cost per hour based on different locations: 

LocationTypical cost per hour US$60 to $80Poland$45 to $60Brazil$40 to $65Nepal$20 to $35

Popular offshore Java development companies

With a world of choice, it can be difficult to know where to begin your search for offshore companies that specialize in Java development. Working with a reputable offshore development company can help ensure that you get high-quality work at a reasonable price. 

Here are 5 well-known companies to help you get started: 

1️⃣ Saigon Technology

With more than 10 years Java development experience, Vietnam-based Saigon Technology has a talent pool of over 300 experienced Java developers. They have clients from around the world in a range of sectors. 

2️⃣ STS Software GMBH

Known for working with some of the world’s biggest and best-known tech brands – including IBM and Oracle – STS Software GMBH have over 300 highly-trained and experienced offshore Java developers. They’re based in Switzerland.

3️⃣ TechTIQ Solutions

Serving both large and small companies, TechTIQ has over 100 clients in a variety of industries. Based in Singapore, they have a presence across Asia, Australia, and India. They have over 5 years experience in offshore Java development. 

4️⃣ BoTree Technologies

Offering a team of highly-skilled and cost-effective Java developers, BoTree Technologies – based in India – has deep expertise in all things Java, including related frameworks, and database management. They specialize in scalable, cross-platform solutions, and have delivered over 200 projects.  

5️⃣ Iflexion 

Renowned for building high-quality applications with stable performance, US-based Iflexion has over 20 years of experience in Java development. The company has completed more than 100 large-scale projects featuring web content management, digital asset management, and media content distribution services.

Proshore as an offshore Java development company

Operating since 2009, Proshore provides offshore software development services to clients ranging across various technologies and frameworks, including Java. 

Our cost-effective and agile approach is suitable for companies based in Europe, the US, and even Australia! From hiring to delivery, you can lower costs and increase productivity with Proshore as a partner.

Read our case study with Powerledger, where we helped launch a blockchain platform that trades renewable energy in the US using Java.

FAQs

Which country has the best offshore Java development company?

As the quality and availability of developers can vary widely depending on location, there is no ‘best’ country for Java developers. However, countries like Ukraine, India, and Nepal are known for having strong Java development talent and competitive rates.

Where can you find offshore Java developers for your business?

There are various places where you can source offshore Java developers. These include freelancing platforms such as Upwork, offshore development companies, online communities, personal referrals, and recommendations.

Remote Development

Offshore QA Teams - A Guide for Managing Software Quality

Understand how to leverage the potential of offshore QA teams. Read the guide and make the most out of your QA team based offshore.

Book a call Talk to our Accounts director, Jeroen, to see if our ready-to-code offshore teams are a fit for you.

• Resources

Quality assurance can't be an afterthought if you truly want to build a team to match the current software development needs. Yet, it has become too costly and challenging to maintain quality at scale. This is where Offshore QA Teams offer a compelling solution.

Big companies worldwide have successfully leveraged offshore testing services to scale their testing capabilities while optimizing costs.

If you also want to build and manage such a team, this guide is for you. In this article, you will understand everything a decision-maker needs to know about offshore qa teams and tips to manage them.

What is an offshore QA team?

An offshore QA team consists of dedicated quality assurance professionals working remotely. These specialists handle comprehensive software testing - from manual and automation testing to performance and security assessments.

The team operates from locations like India, Nepal, or Eastern Europe, where skilled talent is abundant and operating costs are significantly lower.

Benefits of offshore QA teams

Let's clear it out first: building a compelling business case for offshore QA isn't just about cost reduction - it's about creating sustainable competitive advantages.

Here are a few reasons why companies are turning to offshore facilities for their testing:

1

Cost optimization

The most immediate benefit is significant cost savings. You will need to pay about $80,000 – $150,000 for an experienced QA engineer in the US or Western Europe. However, you can get the equivalent talent in offshore locations like Nepal at around 40-60% less.

And this is not about cutting corners, it’s about accessing skilled professionals in regions where operating costs are lower.

2

Strategic resource allocation

Moving your testing offshore frees your budget to invest in the talent required for core business functions like product innovation, market expansion, and customer experience.

3

Round-the-clock testing coverage

Offshore teams offer the advantage of extended testing hours due to time zone differences.

This creates a wider or even a 24/7 testing cycle – significantly reducing your time-to-market.

4

Scalability and flexibility

Based on your product lifecycle, the demand for testing can fluctuate. Thus, offshore QA teams provide the flexibility to scale testing capabilities up or down quickly.

5

ROI beyond cost savings

The true ROI of offshore QA extends beyond direct savings:

• Continuous testing leads to faster timeline delivery
• Reduced defect leakage rates
• Lower bug-fixing costs due to earlier detection
• Improved product quality leading to higher customer satisfaction
• Access to specialized testing skills without additional recruitment costs

1

Cost optimization

The most immediate benefit is significant cost savings. You will need to pay about $80,000 - $150,000 for an experienced QA engineer in the US or Western Europe. However, you can get the equivalent talent in offshore locations like Nepal at around 40-60% less.

And this is not about cutting corners, it's about accessing skilled professionals in regions where operating costs are lower.

2

Strategic resource allocation

Moving your testing offshore frees your budget to invest in the talent required for core business functions like product innovation, market expansion, and customer experience.

3

Round-the-clock testing coverage

Offshore teams offer the advantage of extended testing hours due to time zone differences.

This creates a wider or even a 24/7 testing cycle – significantly reducing your time-to-market.

4

Scalability and flexibility

Based on your product lifecycle, the demand for testing can fluctuate. Thus, offshore QA teams provide the flexibility to scale testing capabilities up or down quickly.

5

ROI beyond cost savings

The true ROI of offshore QA extends beyond direct savings:

• Continuous testing leads to faster timeline delivery
• Reduced defect leakage rates
• Lower bug-fixing costs due to earlier detection
• Improved product quality leading to higher customer satisfaction
• Access to specialized testing skills without additional recruitment costs

Challenges of an offshore QA team

As with other aspects of offshore development, managing an offshore QA team can be challenging.

Below are a few challenges you should know beforehand, along with a few tried and tested strategies to overcome them.

Challenge

1

Communication barriers and time zone differences

Language differences, cultural nuances, and asynchronous communication can multiply misunderstandings – leading to testing delays and quality issues.

Similarly, time zone gaps can stretch feedback loops, making quick issue resolution challenging.

Tip

• Establish a structured communication framework
• Set up overlapping working hours
• Use visual communication tools like screen recordings for bug reports
• Maintain detailed documentation.

Challenge

2

Knowledge transfer

Offshore QA teams can struggle to understand product context, business rules, and user expectations deeply enough to test effectively – resulting in missed edge cases and irrelevant test scenarios.

Tip

Create comprehensive onboarding programs, including

• product walkthroughs,
• user journey documentation, and
• business context training.

Challenge

3

Quality standards and consistency

Different testing backgrounds and methodologies can lead to inconsistent testing approaches.

Tip

Develop and document clear testing standards, including

• test case writing guidelines,
• bug reporting templates, and
• acceptance criteria.

Challenge

4

Team integration

The Offshore QA team can feel isolated from the main development team, leading to reduced collaboration, missed requirements, and delayed bug fixes.

Tip

Include offshore QA in sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives.

Challenge

5

Data security and compliance

Working with offshore teams means sharing sensitive data across international borders. This includes customer information, proprietary code, and business logic.

A single data breach could damage your company’s reputation and result in significant financial penalties.

Tip

• Start by implementing strong data protection measures from day one.
• Create role-based access controls, including NDAs and data protection clauses in contracts.
• More importantly, understand if the service provider takes data security seriously and conducts regular security audits and training.

Challenge

1

Communication barriers and time zone differences

Language differences, cultural nuances, and asynchronous communication can multiply misunderstandings - leading to testing delays and quality issues.

Similarly, time zone gaps can stretch feedback loops, making quick issue resolution challenging.

Tip

• Establish a structured communication framework
• Set up overlapping working hours
• Use visual communication tools like screen recordings for bug reports
• Maintain detailed documentation.

Challenge

2

Knowledge transfer

Offshore QA teams can struggle to understand product context, business rules, and user expectations deeply enough to test effectively - resulting in missed edge cases and irrelevant test scenarios.

Tip

Create comprehensive onboarding programs, including

• product walkthroughs,
• user journey documentation, and
• business context training.

Challenge

3

Quality standards and consistency

Different testing backgrounds and methodologies can lead to inconsistent testing approaches.

Tip

Develop and document clear testing standards, including

• test case writing guidelines,
• bug reporting templates, and
• acceptance criteria.

Challenge

4

Team integration

The Offshore QA team can feel isolated from the main development team, leading to reduced collaboration, missed requirements, and delayed bug fixes.

Tip

Include offshore QA in sprint planning, daily standups, and retrospectives.

Challenge

5

Data security and compliance

Working with offshore teams means sharing sensitive data across international borders. This includes customer information, proprietary code, and business logic.

A single data breach could damage your company's reputation and result in significant financial penalties.

Tip

• Start by implementing strong data protection measures from day one.
• Create role-based access controls, including NDAs and data protection clauses in contracts.
• More importantly, understand if the service provider takes data security seriously and conducts regular security audits and training.

Interested in hiring an entire development team or just QA?

At Proshore, we offer a complete offshore development team, including dedicated QA and project managers, to overcome these issues.

Book a free demo call

Choosing the right QA team model

Selecting the right offshore QA team model is crucial for long-term success. Let's explore the main approaches and understand which one might work best for you.

1

Dedicated team model

Best for long-term projects with evolving requirements.

Think of it as having your own QA department, just located offshore. You get better control and flexibility while maintaining consistent team knowledge about your project.

> Related article: What is a dedicated software development team and where to hire one?

2

Project-based development

Best for specific testing initiatives or product launches.

This offers more flexibility in terms of team composition and duration. You can bring specialized experts for major releases.

3

Staff augmentation

Best when you need to scale your existing team quickly.

You maintain a core dedicated QA team for ongoing testing needs while scaling up with additional resources during peak periods.

> Related article: A complete guide to IT team augmentation

Remember, you should align your choice with your development capacity, release frequency, and quality objectives. Also, regularly assess and adjust your chosen model to ensure it continues to serve your quality assurance goals effectively.

Cost of offshore QA team

Factors like local economic conditions, market maturity, and available talent pool influence the cost of offshore QA teams. Here are some typical hourly rates:

Southeast Asia

Nepal: $15 - $30

India: $20 - $35

Philippines: $20 - $35

Vietnam: $20 - $35

Bangladesh $20 - $35

Eastern Europe

Poland: $30 - $50

Ukraine: $30 - $50

Romania: $25 - $45

Hungary: $35 - $55

Belarus: $25 - $45

Latin America

Brazil: $30 - $50

Argentina: $25 - $40

Peru: $25 - $40

Colombia: $30 - $45

Mexico: $25 - $40

*All figures are approximate and subject to change. For guidance purposes only.

To learn more, visit our article on offshore development rates by country.

Hire Offshore QA teams from Proshore

With 15+ years of experience delivering QA excellence, we combine European standard working with competitive cost from Nepal-based engineering talent. Our unique advantages:

• Dutch-Nepali presence ensuring quality and cost-effectiveness.
• Rigorous talent selection from thousands of applicants and bootcamp pass outs, ensuring top 1% QA talent.
• Flexible working model (dedicated, project-based, and staff augmentation).
• Established agile processes with transparent communication.
• Enterprise-grade security protocol and training.

See how we have helped clients similar to you.

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“At Powerledger, we’re very selective about who we work with. We weren’t just looking for another transaction. We needed a partner who was invested and committed.”

Dr. Vivek Bhandari, Powerledger

— Chief Technical Officer (CTO)

Powerledger: A blockchain-powered marketplace for tracking, trading, and tracing RECs.

How Proshore helped speed up time-to-market for Powerledger's 'TraceX' across the US and continues to fuel the development of the complex digital marketplace for RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates).

Read case study

FinTech Built with Node.js

“A lot of software products can take more time than expected. In order to minimize this risk, we decided to take the offer from Proshore because they could provide the hours we needed, at the right price.”

Taco van Wachem, Surebird

— Founder

Surebird: An InsurTech solution that compares policies daily for customers and facilitates switching to better alternatives.

How Proshore helped Surebird take its algorithm-dependant concept to launch – slashing the MVP's time to market down to 3 months!

Read case study

HR Tech Built with Laravel

“We needed a really reliable development partner. I feel that with Proshore we’ve found it. And if we need to scale up the team, that’s also possible.”

Hardy de Heer, Psyflix

— European Operations Manager

Building a educational video platform for Psyflix, a leader in mental healthcare​

How Proshore's dedicated team for Psyflix continuously yet comprehensively develops and implements the product roadmap to grow the eLearning platform globally.

Read case study

FinTech Built with Blockchain

“At Powerledger, we’re very selective about who we work with. We weren’t just looking for another transaction. We needed a partner who was invested and committed.”

Dr. Vivek Bhandari, Powerledger

— Chief Technical Officer (CTO)

Powerledger: A blockchain-powered marketplace for tracking, trading, and tracing RECs.

How Proshore helped speed up time-to-market for Powerledger's 'TraceX' across the US and continues to fuel the development of the complex digital marketplace for RECs (Renewable Energy Certificates).

Read case study

FinTech Built with Node.js

“A lot of software products can take more time than expected. In order to minimize this risk, we decided to take the offer from Proshore because they could provide the hours we needed, at the right price.”

Taco van Wachem, Surebird

— Founder

Surebird: An InsurTech solution that compares policies daily for customers and facilitates switching to better alternatives.

How Proshore helped Surebird take its algorithm-dependant concept to launch – slashing the MVP's time to market down to 3 months!

Read case study

HR Tech Built with Laravel

“We needed a really reliable development partner. I feel that with Proshore we’ve found it. And if we need to scale up the team, that’s also possible.”

Hardy de Heer, Psyflix

— European Operations Manager

Building a educational video platform for Psyflix, a leader in mental healthcare​

How Proshore's dedicated team for Psyflix continuously yet comprehensively develops and implements the product roadmap to grow the eLearning platform globally.

Read case study

FAQs

Onshore vs offshore QA teams

The main differences between onshore and offshore QA teams are:

Onshore QA teams

• Located in your country.
• Real-time collaboration will be easy.
• Higher costs.
• Cultural alignment and easier communications.
• Access to local talent pool only.
• Compliance with local regulations and security standards may be more straightforward.

Offshore QA teams

• Located in a different country or overseas.
• Time zone differences
• Reduce the cost by 40-60%.
• Requires structured communication.
• Access to a larger global talent pool.
• May involve complex legal and compliance considerations due to different regulations.

Related article: Onshore vs offshore software development.Onshore vs offshore software development.

What are the best destinations for offshore QA teams?

It’s important to consider factors beyond costs while selecting a destination for your testing team.

Here are the top countries that we think are the best for your business:

India: Known for its massive tech talent pool and mature IT industry.

Advantages

• A large number of experienced developers
• English proficiency
• Well-established tech infrastructure

Disadvantages

• Time zone differences with US/Europe
• Quality inconsistency across vendors
• High developer turnover

Nepal: Emerging as a reliable development hub with strong technical talent.

Advantages

• Growing tech ecosystem
• Strong work ethic
• Lower turnover rates
• Cultural compatibility

Disadvantages

• Smaller talent pool compared to India
• Relatively new tech infrastructure
• Time zone differences with US/Europe

Eastern Europe: Preferred for complex technical projects and European collaboration

Advantages

• High technical expertise
• Cultural alignment with Western clients
• Convenient time zone for European clients
• Strong problem-solving skills

Disadvantages

• Political instability in some regions
• Language barriers in some countries

Latin America: Ideal for US-based companies seeking nearshore options

Advantages

• Similar time zones with the US
• Cultural proximity
• Growing tech scene
• Good English proficiency

Disadvantages

• Varying technical expertise
• Scarce talent pool for specialized skills

Want to learn more about choosing the right region? Check out our detailed guide on the best offshore development countries.guide on the best offshore development countries.

The main differences between onshore and offshore QA teams are:

Onshore QA teams

• Located in your country.
• Real-time collaboration will be easy.
• Higher costs.
• Cultural alignment and easier communications.
• Access to local talent pool only.
• Compliance with local regulations and security standards may be more straightforward.

Offshore QA teams

• Located in a different country or overseas.
• Time zone differences
• Reduce the cost by 40-60%.
• Requires structured communication.
• Access to a larger global talent pool.
• May involve complex legal and compliance considerations due to different regulations.

Related article: Onshore vs offshore software development.Onshore vs offshore software development.

It's important to consider factors beyond costs while selecting a destination for your testing team.

Here are the top countries that we think are the best for your business:

India: Known for its massive tech talent pool and mature IT industry.

Advantages

• A large number of experienced developers
• English proficiency
• Well-established tech infrastructure

Disadvantages

• Time zone differences with US/Europe
• Quality inconsistency across vendors
• High developer turnover

Nepal: Emerging as a reliable development hub with strong technical talent.

Advantages

• Growing tech ecosystem
• Strong work ethic
• Lower turnover rates
• Cultural compatibility

Disadvantages

• Smaller talent pool compared to India
• Relatively new tech infrastructure
• Time zone differences with US/Europe

Eastern Europe: Preferred for complex technical projects and European collaboration

Advantages

• High technical expertise
• Cultural alignment with Western clients
• Convenient time zone for European clients
• Strong problem-solving skills

Disadvantages

• Political instability in some regions
• Language barriers in some countries

Latin America: Ideal for US-based companies seeking nearshore options

Advantages

• Similar time zones with the US
• Cultural proximity
• Growing tech scene
• Good English proficiency

Disadvantages

• Varying technical expertise
• Scarce talent pool for specialized skills

Want to learn more about choosing the right region? Check out our detailed guide on the best offshore development countries.guide on the best offshore development countries.

Laravel developers on-demand

Hire skilled offshore Laravel Developers

Unlock the full potential of Laravel development by hiring offshore experts ready to transform your vision into reality.

Book a call

Talk to Jeroen, our Accounts director, to see if our Laravel Developers your requirements.

Introduction to Offshore Laravel Developers

Offshore Laravel Developers are engineers and coders who specialize in Laravel PHP framework and are based in locations outside of the country where the client is based. While it is a form of outsourcing, offshore Laravel development differs from onshore and nearshore software development – each having its own pros and cons.

However, many businesses choose to go offshore instead of outsourcing locally or to nearby tech hubs, as more often than not, “offshoring” allows for cost-effective development solutions. For popular tech like PHP and Laravel, which have strong communities worldwide, the cost advantage has almost no limitations related to technological expertise.

Offshore Laravel developers can provide services ranging from custom Laravel web development and Laravel application development to many more Laravel-related services. They are skilled in utilizing the Laravel PHP framework to create robust, scalable, and feature-rich web applications tailored to meet the specific needs of their clients.

In today’s competitive landscape of web development, hiring offshore Laravel developers has become a strategic move for businesses.

Why hire offshore Laravel Developers?

1️⃣ Cost efficiency and savings

Hiring offshore Laravel developers from regions with lower costs of living allows companies to achieve significant cost savings without compromising on the quality of development work.

Similarly, many offshore development companies also offer scalability options, allowing companies to scale their development teams based on project requirements, ensuring efficient resource utilization.

2️⃣ Access to a global talent pool and specialized skills​

Offshore development provides access to a diverse and global talent pool, enabling companies to tap into specialized skills and expertise that are crucial to the project but may not be readily available locally.

Additionally, the diversity in offshore teams can foster innovation and introduce fresh ideas to problem-solving and the development process, contributing to the overall quality of the project.

3️⃣ Faster time-to-market

Access to experienced Laravel Developers suited to the project requirements enables continuous development cycles and delivery, accelerating project completion. Working with developers or teams in different time zones can also allow for 24/7 round-the-clock development.

4️⃣ Focus on core business functions​

Outsourcing Laravel development enables companies to focus on core business functions, strategic planning, and innovation while leaving technical development to offshore experts.

1️⃣ Cost efficiency and savings

Hiring offshore Laravel developers from regions with lower costs of living allows companies to achieve significant cost savings without compromising on the quality of development work.

Similarly, many offshore development companies also offer scalability options, allowing companies to scale their development teams based on project requirements, ensuring efficient resource utilization.

2️⃣ Access to a global talent pool and specialized skills​

Offshore development provides access to a diverse and global talent pool, enabling companies to tap into specialized skills and expertise that are crucial to the project but may not be readily available locally.

Additionally, the diversity in offshore teams can foster innovation and introduce fresh ideas to problem-solving and the development process, contributing to the overall quality of the project.

3️⃣ Faster time-to-market

Access to experienced Laravel Developers suited to the project requirements enables continuous development cycles and delivery, accelerating project completion. Working with developers or teams in different time zones can also allow for 24/7 round-the-clock development.

4️⃣ Focus on core business functions​

Outsourcing Laravel development enables companies to focus on core business functions, strategic planning, and innovation while leaving technical development to offshore experts.

By hiring offshore Laravel developers, companies can harness these benefits to create efficient, cost-effective, and successful web development projects. The combination of global talent, scalability, and cost efficiency positions offshore development as a strategic choice for companies looking to achieve their development goals.

The advantages of offshore software development are numerous, and Proshore stands out as a reliable partner in this journey.

Laravel Developers from Proshore

9+

Years of experience in Laravel

4000+

Pre-vetted talent pool

20+

Offshore Laravel devs ready to code

Established in 2009, Proshore is synonymous with being a PHP development company even though we have added much more technologies and tools to our tech stack. When Laravel was introduced in 2011, we took less to no time to adopt and train our developers in the “PHP framework for Web Artisans”.  

Today, Proshore offers a number of specialized Laravel development services or even customized services according to project needs – fulfilled by our seasoned Laravel experts.

Hire a seasoned offshore Laravel Developer

Choose an experienced self-managed Laravel Developer that matches the project requirements.

Hire a dedicated offshore Laravel development team

Onboard an agile offshore team well-versed in Laravel to bring the most out of the project at hand.

Proshore’s Laravel Tech Stack

PHP

Vue.js

Tailwind CSS

Why choose offshore Laravel Devs from Proshore?

How are our Laravel Developers different?

Along with nearly a decade of experience in Laravel and delivering projects built with the tech, Proshore sets itself apart through,

1. Experienced Laravel Developers: Many of our seasoned Laravel experts have as much experience as our offshore development company.
2. Agile approach: Along with being an early adopter of Laravel, Proshore is also an early adopter of the agile methodology. Through Scrum, we ensure client projects run smoothly and efficiently. Our Scrum Masters remove the need for micro-management while turning outsourced personnel into extensions of the client’s team.
3. Ready-to-code dev/team: Our developers are trained and pre-vetted to hit the ground running, decreasing onboarding times and allowing us to provide a 60-day trial period.

Realize the benefits of hiring offshore developers

Cost efficiency and savings

All our developers and dedicated teams are based in Nepal. The fast-rising tech hub in Kathmandu, Nepal, provides the necessary infrastructure for our skilled developers to provide their expertise to clients worldwide. The low cost of living and foreign exchange value also means that our offshore rates of Laravel development are one of the lowest in South Asia, especially compared to our Western counterparts.

Access to a global talent pool and specialized skills

With a talent pool of 4k+ developers, Proshore provides access to a diverse and relatively untapped talent pool with specialized skills and expertise as per demand. Additionally, Proshore takes care of all the recruiting, hiring, HR paperwork, and even training – clients only need to convey their requirements!

Faster time-to-market

Be it self-managed Laravel Developers or well-rounded dedicated Laravel development teams – through Scrum, Proshore can onboard projects quickly, ensure continuous development, and provide delivery within time-to-market. Nepal’s timezone (GMT+5:45) is also set up perfectly to provide round-the-clock development to clients in the US, EU, or AUS.

Focus on core business functions

Our scrum masters handle the offshore Laravel developers to make them extensions of the client’s team. From problem-solving and escalation to turnover, everything is taken care of for you. Many of our clients have felt at ease with leaving the development responsibilities to us so that they can focus on business development and growth.

Process of hiring offshore devs from Proshore

You can get started with offshore development from Proshore in 5 easy steps,

Book a discovery call with Jeroen, our Co-Founder

Spend 15 minutes with our Co-Founder and outsourcing expert, sharing about your business and goals.​

Get a customized plan that addresses your challenges

Jeroen and the team analyse your challenges to come up with a customized plan and proposal based on what you need.

Meet your new team

Your plan covers setting up team roles and tasks. Babish, our CTO, assembles the best team available from our talent pool and shares it with you for approval.

2-month trial period

Test your team’s output during a 60-day trial period. Not happy with someone? We work with you to replace them at no extra cost.

Expand or scale down

Add new talent to your team or scale down based on your goals and roadmap. No recruiting, hiring or HR paperwork.

[gravityform id="17"]

Explore real-world success stories where businesses have leveraged Proshore's offshore Laravel developers to achieve remarkable results.

CX software Built with Laravel

“I quickly felt like they were colleagues of ours and we're just one team. The joy those guys had with the work and the challenges we could deliver was good to see. It was also a lot of joy for me to see that we could share this joy at work.”

Martijn Snels, Pluscloud

— Founder & Director CX

Pluscloud: An acclaimed Zendesk Implementation Partner with a suite of CRM solutions for startups to scaleups.

How Proshore's dedicated team for Pluscloud helps realize potential CRM solutions from build to launch to maintaining 10+ micro SaaS applications.

Read case study

HR Tech Built with Laravel

“Proshore just blew us away with their approach. They were really professional, and they came with a detailed presentation of how they were going to run their team and work with us. And they became partners with us. Not just a vendor.”

Ryan Royal

— Interviewstream, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

interviewstream: A leading HR SaaS, simplifying the hiring process for both recruiters and candidates.

How Proshore's dedicated team, with PHP experts, handled the UI improvements and UX enhancements required by interviewstream's product – a feature-rich platform operating since 2002.

Read case study

Market Research Built with Laravel

“We started out with one ‘extra employee’ via Proshore, and a year and a half later we’ve expanded to a team of four… The people and the teams are really dedicated to being part of the company.”

Peter Nijssen

— CMNTY, CTO

CMNTY: Leading qualitative research SaaS that helps deliver strategic and insightful reports from big data.

How Proshore fitted into CMTY's development needs and helped them scale sustainably along with their data collection platform – from a single developer to a solid development team.

Read case study

CX software Built with Laravel

“I quickly felt like they were colleagues of ours and we're just one team. The joy those guys had with the work and the challenges we could deliver was good to see. It was also a lot of joy for me to see that we could share this joy at work.”

Martijn Snels, Pluscloud

— Founder & Director CX

Pluscloud: An acclaimed Zendesk Implementation Partner with a suite of CRM solutions for startups to scaleups.

How Proshore's dedicated team for Pluscloud helps realize potential CRM solutions from build to launch to maintaining 10+ micro SaaS applications.

Read case study

HR Tech Built with Laravel

“Proshore just blew us away with their approach. They were really professional, and they came with a detailed presentation of how they were going to run their team and work with us. And they became partners with us. Not just a vendor.”

Ryan Royal

— Interviewstream, Chief Technology Officer (CTO)

interviewstream: A leading HR SaaS, simplifying the hiring process for both recruiters and candidates.

How Proshore's dedicated team, with PHP experts, handled the UI improvements and UX enhancements required by interviewstream's product – a feature-rich platform operating since 2002.

Read case study

Market Research Built with Laravel

“We started out with one ‘extra employee’ via Proshore, and a year and a half later we’ve expanded to a team of four… The people and the teams are really dedicated to being part of the company.”

Peter Nijssen

— CMNTY, CTO

CMNTY: Leading qualitative research SaaS that helps deliver strategic and insightful reports from big data.

How Proshore fitted into CMTY's development needs and helped them scale sustainably along with their data collection platform – from a single developer to a solid development team.

Read case study

Frequently Asked Questions

What skills should you consider while hiring offshore Laravel developers?

When hiring offshore Laravel developers, it’s crucial to consider a set of skills that ensure the successful execution of your web development projects. Here are key skills to evaluate:

1. Laravel Proficiency and PHP Expertise: Ensure developers have a strong command of Laravel, demonstrating proficiency in its features and PHP syntax.
2. Database Management and Front-End Technologies: Assess skills in database management, particularly MySQL and PostgreSQL, along with knowledge of front-end technologies like HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
3. RESTful API Development and Version Control (Git): Look for experience in designing and developing RESTful APIs and proficiency in using version control systems, especially Git.
4. MVC Architecture Understanding and Testing Skills: Evaluate understanding of the Model-View-Controller (MVC) architectural pattern, and proficiency in testing methodologies, including PHPUnit.
5. Security Best Practices and Effective Communication: Prioritize knowledge of Laravel’s security features, and ensure effective communication skills, as offshore developers need to collaborate seamlessly with the client and the development team.

Evaluating candidates based on these skills ensures that you hire offshore Laravel developers capable of delivering high-quality, scalable, and secure web applications aligned with your business goals.

What is the cost of hiring offshore Laravel Developers?

The cost of hiring offshore Laravel Developers depends on several factors related to their development rates, country/region, and the complexity of your project.

To ensure added benefits like scalability and security, you can employ a Laravel development company like Proshore to take care of the hiring. To give you an insight, Proshore provides pre-trained and managed Laravel developers starting from USD 3000* monthly.

How quickly can you hire Laravel developers from Proshore?

It only takes a 15-minute call to get started with the process of hiring Laravel developers from Proshore. While there are a lot of mutual factors in play when onboarding a project, you can start and test our offshore development options within our 60-day trial period.

How to manage offshore developers?

Effectively managing offshore developers is crucial for the success of your projects. Here are key strategies to ensure seamless collaboration and productivity:

1. Establish Clear Communication: Set up transparent communication channels using project management tools and regular virtual meetings. Clearly define project objectives and provide detailed documentation for a comprehensive understanding.
2. Dedicated Project Manager: Appoint a dedicated project manager to facilitate communication, bridge gaps, and ensure alignment between offshore and in-house teams. This manager serves as a central point of contact for both sides.
3. Agile Methodologies and Time Zone Considerations: Adopt agile methodologies for iterative development, incorporating regular updates and progress tracking. Be mindful of time zone differences and establish overlapping work hours for real-time collaboration.
4. Provide Access and Encourage Team Building: Ensure offshore developers have access to necessary tools and infrastructure. Organize virtual team-building activities to foster a positive work culture and strengthen the bond between teams.
5. Feedback Mechanism and Periodic Onsite Visits: Implement a regular feedback mechanism, including performance reviews and continuous improvement. If feasible, consider occasional onsite visits to enhance relationships and clarify expectations through face-to-face interactions.

With Proshore and our well-versed agile team, you don’t need to take care of the offshore developers you hire – let us handle the recruiting and HR hassles while you focus on growing your business.

Development services on-demand

The pros and cons of IT offshore outsourcing

Let's take a look at IT offshore outsourcing pros and cons to help you make an informed business decision about outsourcing offshore.

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IT offshore outsourcing is a cost-effective option for companies looking to access specialized skills and improve operational efficiency. The alternatives are to hire people in-house or outsource work to an onshore company.

Both of these can be expensive, especially for early-stage startups looking to scale. In this blog, we define offshore outsourcing and explain its pros and cons to help you make an informed business decision.

What is offshore outsourcing in IT?

IT offshore outsourcing is when a company or organization contracts out various technology functions, tasks, or services to external service providers located in different countries or regions. These service providers can be individual freelancers, specialized IT firms, or large outsourcing companies.

Offshore outsourcing has clear benefits – such as cost reduction and access to a broader talent pool – but it also comes with its own challenges – like communication barriers due to language and timezone. Here’s our list of offshore outsourcing pros and cons.

The pros of offshore outsourcing

Choosing the right partner for IT offshore outsourcing can help you minimize the risks, and maximize the benefits. Get it right, and you can enjoy the following benefits:

1

Reduced labor costs

One of the primary benefits of offshore outsourcing is the potential for significant cost savings. Labor costs are often lower in countries with lower living expenses, allowing companies to achieve similar or better results at a fraction of the cost compared to hiring locally.

2

A skilled workforce

Offshore locations often have a large pool of skilled and qualified IT professionals, including software developers, designers, and QA engineers. This provides businesses access to a diverse range of specialized talents that may not be available locally.

3

24/7 operations

Offshore outsourcing can enable round-the-clock operations. With teams working in different time zones, this can lead to faster project completion, reduced time-to-market, and enhanced customer support services.

4

Optimized resource allocation

By outsourcing non-core IT functions offshore, companies can redirect their resources, time, and attention to core business activities, strategic planning, and innovation to help gain a competitive advantage over the rest of their market.

5

Scalability and flexibility

Outsourcing IT operations offshore allows businesses to scale up or down in response to changing market conditions or project requirements without the need for extensive internal hiring or layoffs.

6

Reduced exposure to risk

By dispersing IT operations across different geographic locations, companies can mitigate talent shortages or changes in technology. Diversification helps protect businesses from localized disruptions.

7

Technological advancements

Offshore IT companies usually invest in the latest technologies and infrastructure to stay competitive. So partnering with a reputable provider gives you access to cutting-edge tools and expertise without significant upfront costs.

8

Accelerated timelines

A larger workforce working in different time zones can expedite project delivery, reduce development cycles, and bring products and services to market faster.

9

Global regulatory knowledge

Reputable providers of IT outsourcing are familiar with local and international regulations. This expertise can be invaluable in ensuring compliance with data protection laws and industry-specific regulations.

10

More room for innovation

Offloading routine tasks to offshore IT teams means employees can focus on creative and strategic tasks that drive the innovation that is crucial for long-term business growth.

11

Improved service levels

Offshore providers are motivated to maintain high service levels to secure long-term partnerships. This can lead to improved service quality and customer satisfaction.

The cons of offshore outsourcing

There are risks associated with every form of outsourcing. With IT offshore outsourcing, those risks are often very manageable compared with the benefits, as you can see from this list:

1

Differences in language and culture

One of the primary benefits of offshore outsourcing is the potential for significant cost savings. Labor costs are often lower in countries with lower living expenses, allowing companies to achieve similar or better results at a fraction of the cost compared to hiring locally.

2

Quality concerns

Maintaining consistent quality levels can be a challenge when overseeing outsourced offshore teams. Variations in standards and a lack of direct control might result in subpar deliverables.

3

Coordinating schedules

Operating in different time zones can lead to delays in response times and project management. Synchronizing work schedules and meetings might be tricky, impacting project timelines.

4

Data protection risks

Offshoring IT tasks may involve sharing sensitive data and Intellectual Property with third-party providers. It’s important to take extra precautions to safeguard proprietary information.

5

Reduced oversight

You may have limited visibility over the day-to-day activities of offshore teams. This lack of transparency can make it challenging to monitor progress and address issues promptly.

6

Unforeseen expenses

While IT offshore outsourcing can seem cost-effective, hidden expenses – such as additional project management costs, legal fees, or travel expenses for on-site visits – can arise.

7

Overdependence on one vendor

Over-reliance on an IT offshore outsourcing vendor can pose a risk if the vendor encounters financial troubles, changes business strategies, or experiences disruptions.

8

Legal and regulatory obligations

Varying legal and regulatory landscapes across countries can create complications and compliance issues, especially in industries or regions with strict regulations.

9

Reduced internal knowledge

Outsourcing core IT functions can result in a loss of in-house expertise. Over time, this may limit a company's ability to innovate and respond to changing business needs.

10

Initial transition complexity

The transition phase of outsourcing can be complex, requiring significant time and resources to establish effective working relationships and processes with offshore teams.

Reduce costs and increase tech talent

IT offshore outsourcing is the default choice for companies located in countries with a high cost of living and a lack of local tech talent. Offshoring enables these businesses to reduce their labor costs – a financial benefit that directly boosts profitability.

Offshore outsourcing also gives companies access to a global talent pool, and specialized IT expertise that may be in high demand or simply unavailable in some regions. It also mitigates localized risks and accelerates time-to-market, helping to increase competitiveness and customer satisfaction.

However, it’s important to evaluate and mitigate potential disadvantages to ensure IT offshore outsourcing adds value to your business. Developing a thorough outsourcing strategy, selecting the right offshore partners, and maintaining open communication are crucial steps to achieve successful outsourcing outcomes.

Co-located in the Netherlands and Nepal, Proshore is a trusted provider of IT offshore outsourcing solutions to companies all over the world.  Consult how much you could save – compared with hiring in-house or outsourcing onshore – by getting on a call with our outsourcing expert.

“ Proshore provide an open culture and flexible working environment, where the team doesn’t have to worry about ‘nine to five’. They believe if you love your work then you don’t have to work a single day”

In this interview, Prakash Bhusal (Operations Manager) and Babish Shrestha (Head of Engineering) scoop us more about IT company Proshore and its culture. It is possible to work from home now and then, but Prakash and Babish want to make the office attractive to work:

“Proshore is a fun working environment, we know that if a company is not flexible and puts too much pressure on team members, it is not productive. So we make it fun and work flexible, so people don’t hate Mondays. We want them to prefer collaborating at the office as it builds more cohesiveness between the team”

What do you look for when you hire an IT employee?

We encourage people to challenge themselves, make them competitive. There should always be a match between a company and individuals vision. We work with Agile philosophy so we look that in an individual as well. We are not focused only on output but look at individuals way of identifying the problems and decision making for the solutions. The solution does not always have to be done in a complex way.

To make our team members love their work, we try to help them work smart and not too many hours. At the end of the day, it’s about the value that we are trying to provide to our team members and customers.

When we hire, we especially look at their skill set: what can they offer that our customers need. This does not have to be only technical skill set. Communication skill is equally important

-Prakash Bhusal, Operations Manager at Proshore

How is Proshore different from other IT companies in Nepal?

Compared to other IT companies in Nepal, I think we are moving more into the direction of attractiveness, that people want to work with us. We try to learn from team members, within the borders of our own strategy. This is also important for our customers, the price is less important than quality for them. This helps people grow, other IT companies have flexible working hours, but with restrictions that we don’t have. We don’t believe in overtime and most of the time try to avoid it. We don’t ask people why they are late, as long as they work their project hours.

We have an open office culture, there are no departments and not many closed rooms. We are very focused to create a learning environment for the people. For that, we encourage every member to learn from other people who are working on a different project. In this way, everyone can communicate and collaborate and can discuss with each other.

People who work together on a project, sit with each other. Each individual is their own boss. They are giving a clear set of goals and strive for that.

We know salaries are important so we pay on time 🙂. We have our reviews on time. We don’t provide project bonuses but more of an organization bonuses since we believe its collaborative effort of every team member. We even have marital leave, maternity leave, paternity leave and more and in addition, there is also leave encashment. Intangible benefits are usually no problem, for instance, we don’t expect our team members to work on weekends. Breakfast and lunch are provided so they don’t have to work empty stomach 😊. We are also very flexible in providing casual leave. At the end of the day it is important that our team members are happy. Especially if you notice that a certain day off is important for this person.

“We want people to learn and be challenged, we help them with their career and offer them the latest technology. We don’t force people to use any specific language set but give them room for suggestions before making a decision through collaboration”

- Babish Shrestha, Head of Engineering at Proshore

Do you have extra activities for team-members?

We also organize events for our team, like picnics and annual night stay on our anniversary. A break is very important to be productive in the afternoon. So, during our lunch breaks, we do other stuff together, like watching an episode of Game of Thrones or tea gossip. We all play futsal every Wednesday. But you can also play FIFA or Counter-strike. It all makes a lot of sounds 😅, but only during lunchtime. I even wanted to bring a Snooker table.

We also go rafting together, or hiking or cricket or other indoor games. We never force team members to do work the whole day. Especially at the end of the day, people like to do an office game like table tennis.

Why should IT employees work at Proshore?

When I talk to the IT people about Proshore, I mention that they work with very technical projects for very interesting customers. The cost pressure is much lower, we don’t bid to IT projects as many companies do. The customers of Proshore are the end customers with whom we work ourselves, they tell us about the company problems that we have to solve. So we can really advise them about the best platform. Most IT companies in Nepal fail because they are started by people that go for a low price and low cost.

All of our customers are from the Netherlands, which makes making IT choices easier. The way the Dutch market works can be very different than other cultures. The IT market is however large enough in the Netherlands, so there is enough work for us. We still need new people!

With the modern world, the working culture is gradually changing in all work-space. The companies are slowly rising over restrictions for their smooth flow. People are no longer bound to their work-space. Applying pressure on work is not fruitful for this generation. Inspiration and motivation yield a positive output. With the age of learning and sharing, it’s essential for any work-space to have a learning and collaborative environment.

At last, we think we are still learning. Workplace culture is very important and our every action are focused towards making it better. We know sometimes it works and sometimes does not but you learn and make changes accordingly.

It was a normal day in the office: busy and fun. People were busy on their own project. In the meantime, a notification pops up in the slack channel “Proshore’s 10th anniversary”. It was not surprising though. The amazing thing was how time flew. It was just a few months ago when we celebrated the 9th Anniversary.

“I was sure there is going to be fun. I have recently been a member of Proshore and it will be the right time for me to know each other and build a strong bond with them”, says Atul who has joined us a week before. On the other hand, Sakar was not happy, as he was going to miss this celebration due to his exams. We missed you there.

Prakash dai was busy responding to the forms about the anniversary. The forms included the preferences of the people. “It’s the only time when all the members of Proshore family are together and not divided by some projects. So, we want everyone to participate so that they can relax and have a nice gateway from their day to day work”, says Prakash when asked about the importance of participation. Everyone was planning their outing in a different way.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67qVWOvTqdUWe moved towards outing venue after having lunch in our office. It was 15:00 on the clock when we reached there. When we reached the venue, we had cold juice offered by the resort. It was a sunny day and cold juice turned out to be a good addition to this summer.

Previous Next We went to our respective room to get fresh. We went to the garden restaurant for snacks. “When I first saw snacks, I was not sure how good it was. There was a sandwich and I am not a fan of bread. Although, I took one as I was feeling hungry. It was amazing. The taste of cheese made it tastier than I expected”, said Babish when asked about the snacks.

Previous Next

Before the game, the first thing to do was to celebrate Proshore’s 10 years of success. Thanks to Ashish dai, who brought delicious muffins from mollie.

After this, we were expecting a great time ahead and we had it. It was time for team building game named “Scavenger Hunt”. There were four members for conducting this game: Prakash, Manoj, Shikha, and Babish. We were divided into 5 teams: Team1, Team2, Team3, Team4, Team 5.

Everyone thought the game would be easy, but it was not. Let me explain the game.

There were 5 tasks in this game and the one who has more correct answers would win the game. The questions were not easy to find as we thought initially. The questions were hidden in a QR code, which was stuck in different parts of the resort. There were a total of 13 QR codes pasted. Each group had 2 QR codes assigned to them. The difficult task was to find the correct QR code for the respective team. And when you find them, the questions were tricky.

I remember the first question: “What is long and hard and has cum in it?” It was difficult to think positive for every one of us. Don’t wonder, the correct answer is “Cucumber”. I am quite sure that the question was designed by Manoj. God bless him!

So, it wasn’t easy to find those questions for the teams. The surface was never flat, that’s why we had to climb stairs many times. It was challenging. The main theme of this game was team building. It taught us how a team should work together to achieve a goal. It helped to know each team member.

Later, we all headed towards the swimming pool.

“Run …splash!”. This is the story of every swimming pool.

The interesting thing here is, who didn’t know to swim were more excited. They were excited to click the photos rather than swimming 😂. Bikram was eager to click photos with his new Samsung GALAXY S10. The level of drama was increasing as they were posing underwater 😂. I was holding “go pro” because I don’t know to swim. That’s why I was in poolside clicking the photos. Rajan, Karan, Guru, and Bidur were swimming well. It was 6 in the evening and it was snack time.

Previous Next

Everyone was tired after swimming. In the meantime, snacks would really refresh everyone’s mood. People were sitting with own “gang” in different tables 😄. Talks with your friends with a chilled beer in hand is always an amazing feeling. Addition to that, BBQ is always good with beer. After having enough beer, some people were having a healthy discussion with each other whereas another group was dancing.

Previous Next

After hours of dancing and discussion, it was time for dinner.

After dinner, most of the people went to their respective room. Some people were even discussing with some “tequilas”(called whiskey). The topic of discussion this time was again football. Babish, a Chelsea fan was alone discussing with the other two Liverpool fans(Sameer and Arpan). Other two interesting guys: Rudra and Tek were having another discussion, guess the topic? It was “Messi vs Ronaldo”. Let me tell you, Rudra is a fan of Ronaldo whereas Tek is of Messi’s. As usual, the discussion ended with no conclusion 😂. Babish was playing guitar whereas others were singing along with him. It was already midnight, and we headed towards our own rooms.

Next day was a hangover for most of the guys. Some of the guys (who didn’t drink well last night 😛)visited “Santaneshwor Mahadev” temple which was twenty minutes walk far from the resort. We had a heavy breakfast before swimming. Finally, we packed off and checked out at 12:00 noon.

It was an amazing experience. In my opinion, such an outing helps us know each other very well. People can’t be frank to other people in the workplace due to the role assigned to them. That’s why outing is important to know each other as they are franker here than in the workplace. This is how you build your team strong.

At last, thanks to our organizing members for making this anniversary activities successful.

You can watch the video of our Anniversary on our YouTube channel.

“I enjoy working at Proshore, a company with a good environment. It feels like home, we work as a family and the colleagues are friendly. I have been working here for 6.5 years and saw the company grow”Sakar Khatiwada is Web developer at Proshore, we interviewed him together with Software Developer, Sushant Shah. Sakar has been much longer with the company, whereas Sushant has been with us for 6 months.

What is your most important customer?

Sakar:” I have worked for our customer Meubeltaxi for 3 years, now I only work for them for a week in the month. For Meubeltaxi, I developed the whole IT-system: from requirements to analysis, front-end, and back-end. And all processes: from order to invoicing.”“It was a fun project. I needed some help, but I did most of it alone. The client was also very cooperative; We moved our communication from Skype to Trello; It gave less confusion, and the process was better. In Trello, they could track everything that we were doing.”I also built applications for Pluscloud, which delivers tools and services for customer contact. I had to make small applications, an extra plugin that will add features in the Zendesk dashboard. I also worked for Heineken. I made small applications for their export division.”

How long have you worked at Proshore?

Sakar: “I have been working at Proshore since I got my bachelor’s degree in Information Management. I have also done postgraduates in psychology and am now doing my master’s in business studies. I like to improve myself, but I also like to keep myself busy. I need a healthy stress level 😃”

My workday usually starts with going through the requirements, which is 2–3 days of work from the beginning. I look at what I should deliver that day and start with the work. My specialty is PHP and JavaScript. Sometimes I write in Trello or ask the customer on Skype when collaboration is needed. That is how my day goes. I enjoy it.”Sushant Shah has been working at Proshore since February, he also has specific projects to work on: “I am working on Personal Fitness Nederland(A SaaS for Fitness Schools) and this month I will start a new project. After the design is ready, I can start developing.”

What study did you do before working at Proshore?

Sushant: “I completed my degree in computer science, and after that, I started working for a company as a developer. My specialties are PHP, Javascript, and Python. I studied in India on an international institute, a top university there.”“My working day starts when I come in at 11.00. I have been assigned to Personal Fitness Nederland(PFN), so I start with what the client has sent me. I look at the requirements and make a plan. I then start my work. I try to work efficiently and communicate with my contact person in Personal Fitness Nederland(PFN) and my Dutch colleague Haico regularly. According to what he tells me, I make priorities and technical requirements.”

“Proshore is a good company, it has a very good environment. I have seen a lot of IT companies, but this one is very well managed. Colleagues are great; we meet whenever we are free. In the 3–4 months, I have learned a lot. It was new for me to work for a dutch company and I had to learn how to communicate with a dutch client. But I enjoy working like this now”

Sometimes, you only need a single developer to help create your online product or platform. However, since they must possess very specific knowledge and experience, they can be quite hard to come by. Bastiaan Koetsveld, owner of VoorkomLeegstand, faced just such a challenge.

Vacant property management

“Real estate owners use our services to avoid the risks of (temporary) vacancy,” Bastiaan explains about his company VoorkomLeegstand. “Think of e.g. squatting, vandalism, unnoticed leaks and all the damage they can cause. We help to maintain the liveability of the area. Via our platform, we offer (temporarily) vacant properties as residential or office space or as studios for artists and other creative individuals.”

The heart of the business operations

Circa five years ago, Bastiaan worked together with in-house developers to create a back- end management system. It was designed to bring supply and demand together and support the company's own processes. This platform is now used to support (almost) all of the company's operational processes. “The system forms the heart of our business operations,” Bastiaan explains. “It was in need of an update, however. I wanted to rewrite the system in a new PHP framework: Laravel. That should help to make our platform more robust, flexible and scalable. We want a system that supports both our own and our clients’ operational processes more effectively and to which we can more easily add new features in the future.”

Flexibility and cost considerations

Bastiaan needed a developer who understood what had to be done. “We needed someone who would think along with us and provide input. Someone who could come up with ideas of their own after we painted the big picture,” Bastiaan explains. “We made a deliberate choice not to recruit anyone ourselves. We manage vacant properties; we are not a technical firm, nor do we want to become one. By outsourcing the further development of our platform, we can focus on what we do best.” Bastiaan was also eager to avoid the many obligations and high costs involved in hiring Dutch developers. “I chose to work together with Proshore because it allows me to remain highly flexible,” he explains. “I only have one Nepalese developer working for me at the moment. However, if I want to expedite the process, I know we can easily scale up the operation.”

The costs of the whole ordeal were also an important factor. “I wanted to go live with the first version within six months,” Bastiaan adds. “It looks like we will make that deadline. I am certain we would not have been able to achieve the same results with the same budget if we had used Dutch developers.”

“Only three out of forty developers passed the test” Bastiaan knows from experience how hard it can be to find good Laravel developers - in the Netherlands and abroad. “That kind of specialist knowledge is truly scarce,” he says. “For Blendr - one of the other projects I am involved in - we once recruited international freelancers via Upwork. The developers who offer their services on that platform all promise to possess the skills you need. Unfortunately, that is not always true. More than once, we were left disappointed with the results.”

Bastiaan's business partner therefore decided to create a test, specifically for the Laravel framework. “Before developers get to work for us, we have them take the test first,” he explains. “To date, more than forty developers have taken the test and only three candidates have passed it. One of them was the programmer from Proshore who now works for us! He was not the fastest of the bunch, but he did complete the assignments the best.”

The benefits of an entire team

The collaboration with this specialist is going well. “It is nice and clear,” Bastiaan says. “Every week, we work on a sprint. At the start of the week, we discuss what the developer will be working on. At the end of the week, he gives me a demo and I offer him feedback on the newly added functionalities. That works great for me, because it keeps me closely involved in the process.”

Even though Bastiaan is only working with one developer, he still enjoys the support of an entire team. “For example, I can exchange thoughts with other experts at Proshore about strategic choices, if I feel a need to,” he explains. “Furthermore, everything my developer builds for me is first tested internally by Proshore's permanent test team, even before I ever see it. By that time, most of the bugs have been eliminated, which really saves me a tonne of time.”

Working together remotely

Are there any challenges to working together from such a great distance? “Not really,” Bastiaan says. “That was never really an issue for me to begin with. The Nepalese developers possess the knowledge they need and their English is generally excellent. Working together remotely may take some getting used to, especially if you are not familiar with such tools as Slack and Trello. You'll get the hang of it soon enough, though. Once you have sorted out your communication and the quality of the work is in order, it is certainly worth the time you invested.”

Would you like to know what our development teams in Nepal can do for your organization? Schedule an introductory meeting without any further obligation.

When you’re scaling a software company, it can be a challenge to meet growing customer expectations and deliver shippable code. One moment you’re starting out as an entrepreneur with a small team, and the next moment you’re faced with the need to recruit. And fast.

The truth is, when you’re in a fast-paced competitive market such as developing software as a service (SaaS), investing time and money in making, training, and retaining additional hires – the right hires at that – can be a drain on finance and resources. Ultimately, it impacts the time to market of your next iteration or new product.

Teams as a service offer you everything you’re looking for in an in-house development team, without taking up desk space, weighing down your costs, or draining your time.

Recruitment Challenges For SaaS

As the market for SaaS continues to grow, so do the barriers for outcompeting rivals. Recruitment can be a major hurdle for a number of reasons.

Firstly, there’s the war on talent, so getting the right candidates through the door can be a real challenge. You need to find people with the right skills and experience, and even then you still need to provide training to ensure the quality of their output.

Then there’s retention and career development to consider. It can get complicated very quickly – providing the right opportunities to encourage employees to stay and grow in your organization. At the same time, you have to ensure they’re able to work collaboratively – they might need coaching in soft skills alongside hard skills. That takes time.

Thirdly, when you take on employees, you need to ensure that the opportunities are there for them long term. Sometimes there’s a need to scale down as well as up. Being an employer reduces your flexibility and could end up being costly if you need to downsize your operation.  

It goes without saying that there’s a lot to consider.

Enter Teams As A Service

That’s when a software development team as a service comes in. Rather than making additional costly hires, or looking to an agency to deliver ‘software developers’, choosing a software team as a service gives you access to a much broader talent pool.

This means the search can be narrowed down more precisely to individuals with skills and expertise matched to your specific needs. In essence, you’re contracting out your HR functionality to a specialist in software development recruitment, one which can draw from their talent pool, boot camps, and headhunting to ensure recruits are ready-trained and ready to code!

With freelancers, you get individuals who have the requisite job titles, but who are not necessarily a good fit for your organization. You’re also bringing in individuals as opposed to a team. Of course, that team may only consist of one developer to begin with, but further down the line you may need to scale.

With a team as a service, you get more than just an extra person with the right job title. The groundwork is done for you, so that you get the right people – not just a resource. Deployed by experts in integration, you can trust that the development team will have an Agile mindset, using proven methodologies that will enable seamless integration with your organization, whether they’re your primary technical team or working alongside your  in-house developers.

An effective software development team as a service should plug in to your company and cut recruitment and training costs. And with a solution from Proshore, you’re buying in proven expertise for putting together teams as a service, teams that will understand your challenges and help you overcome them.

Understanding Your Challenges

We want to connect to your challenges – we don’t just want to solve them – not only providing a resource but supporting your business in multiple areas. Our teams as a service offer a good fit for your organization, integration with your in-house team, and full alignment with your product owner.

Babish Shrestha, ProshoreDirector of Technology

Remote teams are trending, creating a growing global market for talent. If you’re bringing outside teams into your organization, getting it right relies on bringing on board tried and tested developers who are not just doing a job, but invested in your success.

The biggest value a team as a service can provide is a strategic understanding of your goals in relation to the work to be done. That’s not an automatic given when you take on a staffing agency to add capacity. With Proshore, we understand our developers and their needs in order to provide exceptional productivity and quality without being micromanaged.  

Scaling Up And Down

Being an employer gives you less scope to scale as every new hire requires a recruitment process, followed by training, and onboarding. Should you need to scale down, it becomes more complicated to reduce employee numbers.

And if you find the right candidate, and they later leave, you then have to run the entire process again. This can be particularly problematic in software development, where losing capacity impacts how much work can be done within a sprint cycle.

Bringing in consultants can be expensive and whilst it might provide obvious short term benefits, it may not add the value you’re looking for in the long term. On the other hand, teams as a service gives you the flexibility to scale up and down as needed, so your capacity is more closely aligned with your development needs. As you only pay for what you require, it can help reduce your development costs. For example, you might begin with one developer and then require the services of a small managed team. Further down the line, if you need to scale back, it can be done without complicated and time-consuming HR work. Proshore works with you, taking a consultative approach as part of the right personnel provision for your development needs.

What Success Looks Like

We can answer the challenges of recruitment and delivery in software development because we understand the obstacles associated with integrating a team in order to add capacity. We bring the best by providing a mature delivery process and collaboration.

Babish Shrestha, ProshoreDirector of Technology

Success is different for every customer. In essence, most enterprises know they need to add capacity, but they might not necessarily be clear on where and why it is most needed. Proshore can help your organization drill down to what really matters and identify the important work to be done. Teams as a service helps your enterprise overcome the scarcity of talent, help you reduce your time to market by providing a self-managed team that’s practised in Agile ways of working, and most importantly ready-to-go from the get go.  

All of these advantages help you cut costs. After all, there’s no need to spend time and money on recruitment, and no need to manage operations when you hire a self-managed team. You also gain a competitive advantage because our teams are experienced and talented and matched to specific needs. Not only that, we know what good integration looks like because it’s what our business is built on.

Interested to learn how teams as a service from Proshore could work for you? Find out how we helped to add developer capacity for customer services solution provider Pluscloud.

As more and more companies seek to reduce operational costs in areas such as managing enterprise applications and software development, the IT outsourcing sector is experiencing a period of sustained and steadily increasing demand.

But there’s a world of difference between IT outsourcing that leverages the benefits of external expertise, and expensive outsourcing which overruns and potentially damages customer relationships, and your business reputation.

So what can you and your business do to mitigate the risks of things going wrong? I, Jeroen van der Horst, share what I've learned from experience as a co-founder at Proshore.

The future is IT outsourcing

There’s no denying it. With the IT outsourcing sector expected to show a compound annual growth rate of nearly 9%, there’s a clear and obvious trend of businesses seeking a competitive advantage through outsourcing software development. 

This is a worldwide phenomenon, with revenue from application outsourcing alone set to reach €94.53bn in 2022. Getting software development outsourcing right can help you overcome technical challenges, and give you a competitive edge. Getting it wrong can lead to a product that doesn’t meet your expectations, or worse, one that’s unfit for purpose.

1️⃣ Planning

"If you're not properly organized, your management efforts are going to be much greater than the results you’re gaining from outsourcing IT."

Taking a ‘hands-off’ approach to software development outsourcing can often come back to bite you in the long-term, with mistakes or misunderstandings needing extensive micromanagement to get development back on track, or even salvage it entirely. For that reason, vision is everything.

Without a clear vision, your outsourced software development team won’t have a clear sight of the project’s direction. So before the project gets underway, ensure you know exactly what you’re outsourcing. Give developers a roadmap  – it’s worth putting in the extra planning time to ensure that you know your requirements for the short-term and the long-term. 

Provide a clear scope to ensure your outsourced team knows exactly what functionality they are responsible for developing. Expect questions and be concerned if there aren’t any – questions are a sign of engagement, and the desire to fully understand your business goals and the project itself.

2️⃣ Alignment​

Choosing the wrong partner, because they’re cheaper or because it saves you time searching for the best fit, can have ill-fated consequences for software development outsourcing.

Remember, you’re not only outsourcing the capacity for software development – you’re also buying-in outside expertise and experience. Spending more time finding the right outsourcing partner to begin with can save you time later on. And selecting the provider most closely aligned with your business needs, culture, and industry will mitigate problems further down the line. 

The cheapest option may cost you more in the long run, so as with any major expenditure, make sure you see social proof in the form of previous clients’ feedback, reviews, and projects – so you can judge for yourself whether they’re a good fit.

3️⃣ Expectations​

Whilst no one really enjoys getting bogged down in contract negotiations, at the same time, not setting out a detailed statement of work alongside a clear service level agreement will result in ambiguities and confusion about who’s responsible for what. 

Your contract should be clear and precise to prevent management and technical issues from arising in the future – and to avoid conversations like: “We thought you were handling that”.

4️⃣ Ownership

Depending on how you plan to deploy your outsourced team, it can sometimes be unclear as to who has ownership – especially if you’re bringing in a managed team. If the team is self-managed, then there might be a lot of internal decision-making without necessarily involving you as the client.

On the other hand, if your outsourced developers are working alongside an in-house team, it’s important to establish who’s managing the project from the very beginning. And if your outsourced team is taking ownership of a particular area of the project, you need to be clear about the lines of communication, and the management structure – so everyone is clear about who has responsibility for what.

5️⃣ Communication

"If you only have one conversation at the start, when you speak again in a few months time you might end up with something completely different. Regular communication is key."

When you’re not all in the same room, conversations get missed. As priorities change, you need to ensure they’re being communicated across your teams, whether they’re in-house or outsourced. A lack of communication really only leads to one outcome – and it’s one that’s best avoided. 

It’s a good idea to establish clear channels of communication before your collaboration begins. Taking an Agile approach to software development, you should schedule daily and weekly meetings, together with regular one-to-ones, to help overcome blockers. Face-to-face meetings can be highly effective, but if you’re working across time zones, you may find alternative forms of communication more suitable. 

Whichever way you choose to organize your communication, you need to sustain it beyond your initial conversation to ensure that important information about the project is getting through, and is understood. Otherwise, you could end up with a different product from the one you planned.

6️⃣ Culture​

If you ignore the ‘soft stuff’, things can get hard pretty quickly, especially if you’re working with a remote team in a different part of the world. 

No matter where your outsourced team is located, for your collaboration to work, you need to ensure you share the same core values. Your outsourcing provider might be an expert in the type of project or industry you’re in, but they won’t be familiar with your company culture – unless you onboard them. 

At the same time, it’s essential to onboard your in-house stay with new ways of working alongside your outsourced team. That might mean changes to the project management process, new software, and even strategies for working around different time zones.

7️⃣ Integration

All too often, outsourced software development teams are seen as an additional piece and not a collective of individuals. They might be working remotely in another part of the planet, but if you want them to help build great software, you’re going to need to build great relationships. 

With advances in technology, the barriers to effective communication have been well and truly broken down. That means you have the opportunity to build trust, respect, and positive relationships, which in turn offer the potential to increase motivation and energize team members. 

By treating your outsourced team as part of your organization, you’re not only creating additional motivation, you’re also investing in the potential for future collaboration.

IT outsourcing: getting it right ​

Businesses, trying to balance operational costs with the need to efficiently scale-up capacity, are increasingly looking outside their organization for software development solutions. Their need to find the right team of software developers might be simple, but in a competitive global market, it’s a challenge that is easier said than done.

"Sometimes companies, have an idea, or they have a project – so they throw it over the fence and hope it will be right. That approach often ends in disappointment."

When it comes to outsourcing software development, you can mitigate the risks by avoiding common pitfalls. And as part of an effective business strategy, IT outsourcing is a risk worth taking for cost-effective, streamlined, and expedited software development that reduces the time taken to get your product to market (and iterate it once it’s there).  

Getting IT outsourcing right can create real value for money and a positive return on your investment. By forging deeper personal connections with your outsourcing partners, you’re also investing in longer-term collaborations, and setting up scope for future projects that might require the expertise and skills of an extended team – with the added advantage that they’ve already familiar with your company culture and ways of working. 

The great thing about training and working in IT – and more specifically Agile software development – is that there are many different career paths to take. From quality analytics and testing to mentoring junior developers, there are a wealth of opportunities to learn new skills and carve out a career.

As with any profession, some people know exactly what they want to do right from the start, whilst other people discover what they enjoy doing by trying out new things. Both Biraj Singh Karki and Viraj Kumar Shrestha are Scrum Masters at Proshore. However, they each took a different journey to arrive at the same destination. So in this edition of our employee stories, we found out more about their individual experiences.

What did you do before Proshore?

Biraj: I currently live in Kathmandu. I completed my BSc in IT at Islington College, which is affiliated with London Metropolitan University. Before joining Proshore, I did two internships: firstly as a web designer at Archiesoft Technology, and secondly, at ZenLabs in Laravel development. I joined Proshore in 2021 as a Quality Analyst.

Viraj: I’ve lived in Kathmandu my whole life, and I completed my Bachelor of Information Management at Prime College. I'm not the kind of person who plans everything out. I have more of a ‘whatever happens, happens’ mindset. At university, I was involved in many clubs, and that’s what made me interested in management.

How did you find out about Proshore?

Biraj: I wrote a post on a Facebook group about internships for a Quality Analyst (QA). In response, one of the team members from Proshore actually connected with me. He sent over my resume to HR, and everything went from there.

Viraj: My career started with an internship at Studio Matrix –  a web design company. I stayed there for 4 years. By the end, I thought I was out of love with programming, but one of my seniors from Prime College was working at Proshore and encouraged me to apply. In my interview, they liked what I said about management, and I got the job.

How did you progress to Scrum Master?

Biraj: I initially started as a QA, testing the codes and features that the developers had written. Then in April 2022, I got an opportunity to lead a team for the product Faire Integration & Sync. That’s when the transition process began. The move was gradual, and now I've completely transitioned from a QA to being Scrum Master for around 5 products.

It was a planned move. In my third year of university, I started researching the pathways to being a Scrum Master or a Project Manager. I found out QA was a good route to becoming a Scrum Master.

Viraj: Within a week or so of joining Proshore, one of our Scrum Masters, Simon Shrestha, asked me what I wanted to do in life. I’d never been asked that before! What I knew from my college days was that I loved interacting with people, getting to know them, and solving their problems.

I enjoy motivating people. At the same time, I'm not someone who goes into technical jargon, I talk in simple terms, so anyone can understand me. So it’s my characteristics that make me a good fit for the role of Scrum Master.

What’s it like to be a Scrum Master at Proshore?

Biraj: One of the major parts of the job is removing impediments for teammates. Whenever there’s a new project, or we acquire a product, we assign team members and facilitate Scrum events, like daily Scrum and planning meetings for what we are going to be doing for the next sprint.

Viraj: For me, it's kind of like being in the background – leading the team, but letting them take all the credit! Before I transitioned from a developer to Scrum Master, the team that I worked in used to be very dependent on me. Now, it’s more about empowering them – giving the power to the team itself, and encouraging them to come up with their own solutions.

What’s the best thing about being a Scrum Master?

Biraj: Before this role, I'd never been much of a people person. So for me to transition and take this role – I had to become a people person. I had to change my mindset. Now I get to lead all kinds of interesting projects.

Viraj: For me, it's about seeing people grow. That’s the best part of being a Scrum Master. 

When I was a developer, junior developers would run most decisions through me. Now in my current role, I have to facilitate the values of Scrum – openness and respect for each other; the courage to provide constructive feedback to one another. That’s what I really like about the role of Scrum master. 

Do you have any tips for aspiring Scrum Masters?

Biraj: I think it’s important to know what you want to do in life. That way, you can pave your path for whatever you want to do later. So if you want to become a Scrum Master, you have to have certain qualities that you need to develop as a developer or in any other role you’re doing in the industry.

Viraj: I think the best tip that I can give is to have patience because it might take some time for you to become a Scrum Master. For me, it has been a year in the making. Also, it’s good to have team support – that’s going to make your transition much easier.

If you could code any piece of software, what would it be and why?

Biraj: There are a few transport apps that people currently use in Nepal. I’d be interested in creating a car rental application – like Lyft – where people rent their vehicles. People can pick up a vehicle from any spot they like and then leave it somewhere else. 

Viraj: I think a piece of software that answers trivial questions you have. Suppose you’re planning an outing, or you need random answers – I think that would make people's life a lot easier, right?

Remote or hybrid working is now the norm for many industries. But it doesn’t suit every company or even every role. The fact is, making remote or hybrid work for both the company and the employee is no easy feat. It takes careful planning and mutual trust.

Software development and HR are two areas where remote and hybrid roles can work to everyone’s advantage. We spoke to four Proshore team members with very different experiences of remote and hybrid working to get their thoughts and insights.   

What’s your experience of remote or hybrid working?

Anjana: I’ve been working at Proshore as a PHP developer for 8 years now. Since Covid-19 and becoming a new mum, I’ve worked from home. It’s been helpful to have a flexible workplace, and it’s been easier for me to give time to my daughter as well. 

Krishma: I’ve worked in HR and operations at Proshore for 2 years. With an administrative role, it’s important to be in the office and always stay in touch. Last April, I had the chance to travel abroad, see family, and spend a month in Europe, whilst working remotely. I used to do half my shift in the early morning, then complete the rest of my hours around my day. It really helped me make the most of my trip, and I didn’t miss out on anything.

Praveen: I’m a frontend developer, currently for mobile applications, and I’ve been in a hybrid role at Proshore for three years now – since lockdown. I also have my own company. As part of my other role, I do a lot of travel around Nepal. Hybrid working gives me the flexibility to work from almost anywhere. 

Binaya: I’m a QA automation engineer for Proshore, implementing automated testing scripts on various projects. Proshore is located in the Netherlands and Nepal, and I work remotely from India. 

What do you most enjoy about working remotely?

Anjana: I just bring my laptop, and I can get my work done from anywhere! It enables me to spend time with my daughter during the daytime and do my work at night. 

Krishma: So the best part of remote working for me is that it doesn't bind you to a desk for 8 hours straight. It also helps with unforeseen circumstances. Let's say, I’ve injured my ankle. Due to remote or hybrid working policies and Proshore's supportive infrastructure, it becomes easy as a status update to rest my ankle at home and work at the same time.

Praveen: I’ve been working remotely for so long that going to the office is like a vacation for me! Working from home or elsewhere remotely, I can be more focused. Because we tend to have one or two sprints planned ahead, I know what’s coming up, and I can plan my schedule around it. 

Binaya: Working remotely means I can make time to continue my own learning around testing scripts. That includes reading other people’s blogs and writing my own. 

What are the challenges? How do you overcome them?

Anjana: My in-laws are always asking me what kind of job I do. I’m often in meetings. They think it’s easy. But I’m also a mother and a wife! My husband also supports me if I ever have a problem with a task because he’s in the IT field as well. 

Krishma: Initially, I thought the difference in timezone would be a problem. In the end, it was the best part because the mornings in Europe overlap with the afternoons in Nepal. So I always worked during those hours, so I could connect with my team and still attend meetings.

Praveen: Wi-Fi and electricity! In some of the places I travel, it can be hard to find these things. Thankfully, my laptop has 18 hours of battery life. Traveling and working is not something you can do every day. Remote working can sometimes be a double-edged sword. The line between my personal life and office life can be blurred. I can see friends or family during the day, but it means working late into the evening. You have to know when to start work and when to stop.

Binaya: Always be open to learning new things. In an office, there is usually one person with the technical knowledge you need to overcome a particular challenge. Working remotely, I often have to rely on my own resources and the internet to overcome issues. 

What advice would you give new remote workers?

Anjana: You need to plan your time according to what your sprint goal is. You have to achieve that! At the same time, you need to figure out how to get a balance between your work and your personal life. 

Krishma: I definitely agree with Anjana. It’s all about balance. Remote working is great because it gives you time and flexibility. But living and working in one space can sometimes make you feel disconnected. So my advice is to enjoy the benefits of remote work, but don't forget that sometimes you need to shut down the laptop and connect with people as well.

Praveen: Don’t work from bed! When you’re used to working from bed, it makes it hard to fall asleep on time. Even if you’re working from home, work at a desk. Create good habits. Also, drink enough water to keep your body and brain hydrated, and make sure you take a break once in a while. Take a walk or talk to someone. Look after your mental and physical health!  

Binaya: Keep in regular contact with your team. It’s quick and easy to communicate using messaging apps like Slack and Telegram.

How does Proshore support remote and hybrid working?

Anjana: Proshore provided us with workstations in our homes – desks, and chairs that make working from home easier. We’ve also been given water bottles, and we receive gifts on special occasions, like Proshore’s anniversary. The company cares about us and makes us feel part of the team. It’s like a family. 

Krishma: Proshore is a very people-focused organization. It gives people the flexibility to work from wherever they want, however, they want – as long as the work is done. There’s confidence that we will carry out our responsibilities. People are trusted no matter where they are in the world or what they’re doing. That trust in people really shows. We might be dispersed all over the country, but Proshore binds us all together.   

Praveen: The top thing that Proshore does really well is flexibility. It’s something that adds so much value to your life, like being paid well, having friends and family that love you, and having work that is really fulfilling. Flexibility is a small word, but it has so much value. 

Binaya: Proshore trusts me to get my work done properly. They’ve also helped me to get set up with the right equipment at home. 

We’re always on the lookout for top tech talent who. in turn, may be looking for remote working opportunities. In fact, it’s our mission to provide highly-skilled jobs in Nepal so that you don't have to leave the country to find one.

Current openings

In its fourth edition, Proshore Bootcamp once again gave aspiring IT professionals in Nepal the chance to gain valuable experience working in software development.

Building on the success of our third bootcamp, it enabled some of our more experienced team members to become mentors, sharing their expert knowledge and experience. This time around, 15 successful applicants got the chance to join our free, 60-day program working across different roles within a development team. This included backend development, frontend development plus UI/UX, QA, and project management. Here’s how they got on.

Proshore Bootcamp #4

The fourth edition of Proshore Bootcamp – a mentorship program designed to prepare participants for the real working environment – took place between March and June 2023. The 60-day program centered around the collaborative development of a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) – a time-tracking tool – later named Ticker Pro.

Earlier in 2023, prospective bootcampers were invited to apply for the program to fill one of 15 available seats in four key areas or ‘streams’ as we call them: frontend, backend, quality assurance (QA), and project management. Proshore mentors took part in the selection process, which included a submitted assessment. From this, the candidates were shortlisted and then interviewed virtually.

The time tracking project actually began in our second bootcamp. This meant our most recent cohort of bootcampers had a basic backend MVP that could be used to track time. As a result, their main challenges were to design the frontend using React, and improve the back end by adding report and chart functionality to the MVP. 

This was the first time that Proshore Scrum Master, Shruti Bhattarai, had mentored on the program. Not only did Shruti mentor the bootcampers in the project management stream, she also took responsibility for managing the entire program as a project. It was a QA-driven bootcamp – something that is hard to achieve even in real-life teams.

The mentors’ perspective

Here’s what Shruti and some of our other Proshore mentors had to say about the fourth bootcamp:

Shruti: “The overall experience was very fulfilling. Some of the campers have already gone on to secure jobs in their respective streams outside and inside Proshore. One of my mentees even landed a job as a project manager!”

Rikesh: “When I started in this industry, I wish I’d had a mentor to guide me and make my learning faster. That's why I became a mentor myself. Sharing my knowledge with others not only helps them, but also allows me to learn and grow. It's a fulfilling experience that motivates me to continue mentoring others.”

Krishma: “Each bootcamp has given a new experience and insights on how people learn, how they communicate and what they value – which is a good insight given my line of work – HR! It helps me understand the talent pool better.”

Sanket: “The most rewarding thing about being a mentor was seeing bootcampers apply the ideas, and packages we taught, using them to complete the project. The demo they put out on their graduation day remains a standout for me. Seeing their output gave me a sense of accomplishment!”

Kritika: “Being a mentor, I was there to share my knowledge and experience with bootcampers, but I also got to learn new things whenever we encountered new problems. For me, these were the most pleasing things about being a mentor.”

The view from bootcamp

Our bootcampers from this edition also had lots of positive things to say about their experience:

Chunan: “The bootcamp has been an opportunity to grow and improve as a person rather than just a learning opportunity. I also appreciate the time and effort of our mentors. They were always there to help us, even during late hours or through weekends.”

Piyush: “My overall experience in the bootcamp was incredibly enriching. The online and offline sessions, hands-on project working, team collaboration, resolving issues, and great learning environment helped me to not only become a good programmer but also a confident individual with better soft skills.”

Sanjeev: “This bootcamp helped me get better at frontend development and also increased my collaboration skills. My future goals and aspirations are to explore the Javascript world, which might involve getting better at React or learning backend technologies like Nest.”

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Are you ready for Bootcamp #5? 

Are you looking to gain experience in the software development industry in Nepal? Thinking about applying to the next Proshore Bootcamp? Discover more about the Proshore Bootcamp in our blog post on the first edition.

In our next installment of the Proshore Bootcamp, we’re looking forward to creating more opportunities that contribute to the promising future of Nepal as a tech hub. The fifth Proshore Bootcamp gets underway sometime around the 4th quarter of 2023. 

If you’re interested and don't want to miss out, get notified via email. In the meantime, you can follow us on socials to keep updated with exciting career opportunities.

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Faster and more efficient QA testing enables new, high-quality products and features to reach the market sooner. For that reason, there are many tools and technologies on the market that support the automation of Quality Assurance (QA). 

From a technical perspective, the challenge is how to optimize QA testing processes to ensure they are robust, streamlined, and more efficient. Here at Proshore, we use Cypress as part of our Continuous Improvement / Continuous Delivery (CI/CD) model. Here are 11 best practices for Cypress automation based on our knowledge and experience.

1. Centralize page URLs
2. Store login credentials in a constant file
3. Improve selector management
4. Always implement a POM logger
5. Ensure uniformity in naming conventions
6. Streamline testing with test splitting
7. Optimize input management
8. Create more efficient queries
9. Don’t wait – take a timeout
10. Empower API interception with clock and tick
11. Standardize and improve code quality

1️⃣ Centralize page URLs

In Cypress automation for UI testing, verifying URLs is crucial to confirm the expected redirection of scripts. To manage numerous URLs efficiently, it’s a good idea to consolidate them into a single file in a centralized repository.

Storing all URLs in this way simplifies updates and minimizes the risk of errors. Taking this structured approach also helps ensure effective management and maintenance of automation URLs. Following this practice also provides consistent automation results.

2️⃣ Store login credentials in a constant file 

Rather than hard-coding logins within the test specifications, it makes sense to keep them within a constant file. Users can be role-based, normal, or admin. Centralizing login credentials simplifies management and updates, reducing maintenance efforts.

Storing credentials in a constant file enhances the reliability and stability of automation tests. It also ensures consistent usage across all tests. That’s because a constant file with login credentials can be easily reused, minimizing code duplication and errors. There’s no need to write (and update) multiple users across different places – everything is held in one place. 

3️⃣ Improve selector management 

All too often, Cypress test picks are written ‘cy.get(‘selector’)’ followed by the type action required. This isn’t a practical or efficient approach when the same selectors have to be used in multiple places. 

Instead of rewriting for common elements like pop-up modal or search filter multiple times, it’s much more efficient to create one common class, keeping all the selectors in the same place. Now, selectors can be reused in multiple different places, making it much easier to debug and fix.

4️⃣ Always implement a POM logger

Sometimes, when a class containing certain selectors and actions is recalled, it’s unclear as to which method or class has been called. When debugging test cases, if a failure is found, every line of code will need to be checked.    

Creating a page class means functionality can be easily reused in other pages. Cypress supports Page Object Model (POM) and by using a POM Logger it’s possible to capture and record information during test automation.

A POM Logger captures page navigation, element interactions, validations, and exceptions.

The logged information can be directed to various output destinations for analysis and troubleshooting.

5️⃣ Ensure uniformity in naming conventions 

Naming conventions in Cypress are an agreed set of rules for naming variables, functions, and files. Following consistent naming conventions makes it much easier to maintain and understand the code, facilitating a smoother and more efficient development process.

For example, you could use PascalCase or camelCase to name the files. Variable names could use camelCase and function names could use PascalCase. Ensuring this uniformity of writing test codes improves readability for the entire team. 

At the same time, test cases should have descriptive and meaningful names beginning with ‘should allow <personas>...’ followed by a clear action such as ‘create a sign-up’. This also makes the purpose of the code clearer to non-technical stakeholders. 

6️⃣ Streamline testing with test splitting

Whilst it’s possible to create long test scripts with hundreds of lines of code, in practice it’s much easier to maintain, update, and debug smaller tests. Splitting code into blocks of 10 to 20 lines has a number of advantages. 

Breaking down long tests into smaller units allows for faster feedback and early issue detection during the development cycle. It also provides a clear view of the tested functionality, facilitating issue identification and isolation. At the same time, running smaller tests in parallel reduces the overall test suite execution time. 

Smaller tests offer reusability, as they can be utilized in multiple test cases, reducing code duplication. Using smaller tests also improves the organization of the test suite, making it much easier to locate and execute specific tests. 

7️⃣ Optimize input management

Automation requires a lot of input data to check that the correct actions are being performed. With a constant file, all user inputs can be stored in a single location to make it easier to manage and maintain the data. 

By storing user inputs in this way, it’s possible to ensure that the same data is used across different test cases, improving consistency, and reducing the risk of errors. If a user input needs to be updated, the change only needs to be made once, and it’s updated everywhere.

8️⃣ Create more efficient queries 

The actions performed by cy.get and cy.contains are very similar. However, the cy.contains method uses partial text matching to select elements. This can lead to unreliable selectors.

On top of that, it can slow down test performance as it searches through all the elements on the page to find a match.

The cy.contains method also has limited functionality compared with the cy.get method, making it less flexible and versatile. That’s because the cy.get facilitates more precise selector targeting using CSS classes, IDs, or other attributes, making it a better choice for complex testing scenarios.

9️⃣ Don’t wait – take a timeout 

Sometimes during the execution, there may be a need to hold back while a certain event completes. Cypress gives you the option to cy.wait, but this can lead to failures and problems with excess memory usage.  

To avoid this problem, and gain precise control over the waiting time, the best practice is to use cy.timeout. This ensures that your tests aren’t held up longer than necessary. This can help to speed up the test suite. It also makes the test code more readable, so it’s far easier to understand what's happening. 

By reducing the load on the system, it’s possible to improve the overall performance of your tests, making them faster and more reliable. The great thing about timeouts is that they’re really easy to implement in your test code, so you can start seeing the benefits right away. 

1️⃣0️⃣ Empower API interception with clock and tick

API Interception is the process of capturing and modifying API requests before they reach the actual API endpoint. This is done to test the application's behavior in response to different API request scenarios.

In Cypress, the cy.intercept function is used to capture API requests and modify their response before they reach the actual API endpoint. For precise timing of API requests, cy.clock can manipulate the system clock. It can also isolate the latest response and avoid overlapping request issues. Meanwhile, the cy.tick function enhances control over API request timing by advancing the clock by specified milliseconds. 

To avoid ‘race conditions’, and ensure accurate test execution with expected results, the best practice is to combine cy.wait with cy.clock.

1️⃣1️⃣ Standardize and improve code quality 

Ensuring consistent code quality across multiple developers is no easy feat – especially when you have a large development team. That’s where tools such as Eslint, Husky, and Prettier come in handy. 

Eslint is a linting tool for JavaScript that imposes a consistent code style and prevents common mistakes. On the other hand, Husky helps automate tasks (such as linting) before code is committed. It helps create a clean and stable codebase with fewer bugs.

QA Automation From Proshore

Here at Proshore, we provide cost-effective, highly-skilled, and ready-to-code development teams to software companies around the world. Not only do we help bring their software to life, but we also play an active role in quality assurance, with our highly-trained QA and QA automation engineers. In fact, our CI/CD has robust QA practices – and Cypress – built in as standard, to ensure we deliver high-quality web applications. 

Hire QA Engineers

Interested in becoming a QA Automation Engineer with Proshore? View our current career opportunities.

The benefits of deploying microservices over traditional monolith architecture are well known – they’re much easier to scale, and more resilient if one service fails. This begs the question: is there still a place for monolith architecture? 

The short answer is ‘yes’. As we mentioned in our previous post on migrating clients from monolith to microservices – for some companies, microservices are not always the best fit for their needs. In fact, a ready-to-code development team from Proshore recently helped a client, Psyflix, migrate a set of microservices to a single server to optimize their streaming platform.

Here are 5 reasons why companies might choose monolith architecture over microservices. 

1️⃣ Keep development costs down

With microservices, you need a full-stack team to manage them effectively – something unfeasible for many startups. Without a dedicated team, microservices can easily spiral out of control, whereas monolith architecture can be easily handled by a single developer. 

Building out microservices in a system like Kubernetes is expensive, and an unnecessary outlay when a product doesn’t yet have high volumes of users. With one or two thousand users, a single server is a viable option. A single codebase is also much easier to develop without the need to bring in a range of coding expertise. That makes monolith architecture ideal for early-stage startups with limited resources. 

2️⃣ Faster development and testing

Running different microservices at the same time automatically makes them more complex to manage and maintain. Without proper management, having multiple teams responsible for different microservices, development and debugging can slow down. 

As monolith architecture uses a single executable file, it’s much quicker to test and deploy. That makes end-to-end testing much faster, and because it’s a single codebase, development, and debugging are also much more straightforward. 

3️⃣ Minimize disruption to services

With microservices, if there are issues with one part of the system, then other features can usually still run unaffected. One drawback of monolith architecture is that if something goes wrong – a single error might impact other parts of the system. However, there is a robust workaround.

Developers working in monolith architecture can overcome disruptions to a service by deploying a technique known as Server Side Generation (SSG). This hybrid approach is a combination of Server Side Rendering (SSR) and Client Side Rendering (CSR). 

What it effectively does is generate static HTML pages that incorporate client-side JavaScript, so a page can be updated as and when needed. This means that, for example, if a user has begun watching a video and there’s an issue elsewhere – their viewing stream continues uninterrupted.

4️⃣ Scalability is still a possibility 

Microservices are great for scaling businesses that need the ability to scale specific components up or down based on user demand. But to a certain extent, this is also possible with monolith architecture. 

For example, you might initially combine 4 or 5 core microservices onto a single server in a monolith architecture. Additional microservices could be added and connected to it and scaled as needed by adding more containers. 

5️⃣ Optimize resources to meet demand

What a software product offers users, the features used most frequently, and the frequency of use all impact what’s needed to ensure a smooth and seamless user experience.

If you’re dealing with a few thousand users who use a limited number of features – such as watching videos or downloading materials – for short periods of time, monolith architecture might be the best match for your needs. This will also save you unnecessary costs associated with building and maintaining multiple microservices.  

Further down the line, when you’re running into millions of users around the world, splitting your product into microservices makes more sense, as famously demonstrated by the streaming giant Netflix. The beauty of monolith architecture is that both user capacity and cost are good indicators of when the time is right for microservices. 

Making the case for monolith

It’s tempting for startups to jump straight into microservices without fully appreciating the potential advantages – including cost-savings – of monolith architecture. Development, deployment, and debugging can all be much more straightforward and easy to manage in monolith. On top of that, fewer APIs are needed to connect particular functionality.

For companies with a rapidly growing user base – from tens to hundreds of thousands of users in a short space of time, monolith probably isn’t the right choice. But for early-stage startups with limited resources and uncertainty about their rate of expansion, monolith gives them a solid starting point.  

The good news for companies starting on the wrong path, the migration back from microservices to monolith architecture is not as painful as you might think. In our experience, there’s around a day of downtime. 

With a ready-to-code development team from Proshore, you can also rest assured that when it’s the right time to make the move to microservices – we have the skills and experience to ensure a smooth transition. 

In fact, we make it easy to switch back to microservices should you need to scale up in the future. For more on this, see our posts on making the move from monolith to microservices and how to scale microservices without using Kubernetes.

From monolith to microservices: What we’ve learned from helping clients make that journey

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How to scale microservices without using Kubernetes

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Discover how Proshore’s dedicated teams can support your migration to and from monolith and microservices – book a call.

Cloud computing – the delivery of computer services and resources over the Internet –  gives companies a number of strategic advantages. But before diving in, it’s worth having a clear overview of the pitfalls and best practices, so you can get the best return on investment. 

Factors to consider are your business maturity, business goals, and existing IT infrastructure. Each of these will influence whether it’s the right time to move to the cloud. Here’s our guide to the best practices for cloud computing.

Why choose cloud computing?

There are many reasons why companies move to the cloud. One reason is that they can tap into a suite of ready-made services that help speed up development time. Cloud computing platforms such as Microsoft Azure also provide reliable recovery and backup, and robust security measures, ensuring business continuity and data security. 

For scaling companies, the on-demand delivery of computing resources provides a simple and accessible way to scale when they need it, without a hefty outlay of in-house IT professionals, on-premise servers, and equipment. But the cloud also comes with its own pitfalls.

Some companies decide to move to the cloud without properly considering why. To make it the right move for your business, you need to identify the benefits first. Simply making the switch won’t automatically solve all your IT challenges.     

Pitfalls to avoid with cloud computing 

There are three main pitfalls with cloud computing. The first is cost. Done right, cloud computing is cost-effective – you only pay for what you use. But it’s easy to overlook other costs such as deployment, operating expenses, and the cost of in-house IT professionals.

Second, whilst cloud computing offers savings against on-premise servers – and their ongoing maintenance – it also requires specific IT skills. Not every software developer is a cloud engineer. A skilled coder can be unfamiliar with cloud solutions. If cloud maintenance presents a steep learning curve to your development team, things like debugging can become a real challenge.

Third, like on-premise, cloud computing if left unmanaged can quickly become complicated and chaotic. In particular, enterprises may end up using multiple cloud providers or a combination of on-premise and cloud services. It doesn’t take long for solutions to be complex and over-engineered. This is especially true when companies choose a cloud service provider that’s misaligned with their needs and get locked into the wrong solution.

7 best practices for the cloud

Now you know some of the reasons why companies move to the cloud – and the main pitfalls to avoid – here are some best practices to follow:

1️⃣ Establish a clear cloud strategy

The best way to make cloud computing work for your business is to have a clear strategy. A lot depends on the services you need to use and your existing in-house expertise. The cloud isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.

For instance, you might have a service that needs to be deployed – or will run more efficiently – in the cloud. Similarly, you might already have the internal resources to successfully run your IT on-premise. 

Your IT strategy needs to consider the product fit, organizational fit, and how your existing resources match up with a cloud solution. 

2️⃣ Choose the right cloud provider

The big techs – Microsoft, Google, and AWS – all offer cloud services. It’s the cost of those solutions and the in-house knowledge needed to manage them that varies. 

The type of managed services you need also comes into play. Having a library of rebuilt components is a great time-saver, but you’ll also need a layer of customization and configuration to make out-of-the-box functionality work for you. 

Making the right choice means weighing up the costs alongside your own in-house technical expertise. For example, if you have strong in-house knowledge in Google, then that will probably be the best option for you.

3️⃣ Implement advanced security

You’re going to get similar levels of security and reliability from any of the big cloud providers. Key considerations include where your data is stored – as different countries have different regulations – protecting your API, and restricting access.

Data is the new gold. Keeping your company and customer data safe is a top priority, as well as compliance with regulations such as the GDPR. If you’re handling sensitive or protected data, you need the right knowledge to implement advanced-level security measures. 

4️⃣ Select a cost-effective back-up

With both on-premise and the cloud, you pay for your storage space. The key difference is the costs you incur and how you account for them. On-premise is a capital expense that also incurs operational expenses. You’re dealing with physical devices that require ongoing maintenance by technical experts.

Your cloud storage costs are relative to how much space you need, which can quickly grow if you’re holding multiple backups in the cloud. That’s why planning your backup options is important. 

One of the key advantages of the cloud is that it provides high levels of availability. What that means is that your cloud services are always on. If a data center or server goes down, another server will take over – creating a seamless experience for end-users. 

5️⃣ Optimize your resources and scalability

The cloud provides much more flexibility when it comes to the scalability of your resources. You can dynamically adjust the number of servers in use in response to traffic and geographic location, bringing servers offline during less busy periods and increasing capacity at peak times. 

Say you have product services and payment processing, for example. You might need to scale one of these services and not the other in order to meet demand. With cloud computing, that’s really straightforward, and it can be done both manually and automatically.

6️⃣ Monitor services and performance

One of the biggest challenges of the cloud is understanding how it works. Thankfully, cloud services are much easier to monitor due to built-in analytics tools. Dashboards can be as simple or as complex as you need them to be. 

By putting this kind of oversight and control in the hands of your cloud engineers, it’s much easier to optimize your services and minimize interruptions or problems affecting your service. It’s also a powerful way to visualize performance and supports conversation with nontechnical people at C-level.

7️⃣ Build in-house expertise and skills

As we’ve already mentioned, cloud engineers need an additional layer of skills and knowledge on top of what’s needed for regular software development. All developers working within the cloud need a cloud computing mindset. It’s not possible to work on a specific feature without this knowledge. 

For that reason, your developers need to have a training mentality to develop the right skill set, otherwise, you can encounter problems further down the line. Alternatively, you can bring offshore development teams who already have the required knowledge.

Cloud computing engineers from Proshore

At Proshore, we understand that cloud computing isn’t right for every business. That’s why we help customers of all sizes – from startups to enterprises – add development capacity by matching the right technical expertise to their needs. 

Whether you need experienced cloud computing engineers, on-premise expertise, or an entire development team as a service, we cherry-pick the right tech talent from our ever-growing talent pool in Nepal.

Need highly-skilled and ready-to-code developers for cloud computing? At Proshore, we have the expertise you need. Book a call today.