What is your background, and now your role at Ignite?
First of all, I’m a father of three amazing children. Four children, if we’ll count Ignite, and the company has been growing steadily for the last 12 years. I used to be a software engineer, but today I mostly talk with lawyers, accountants, and other people like that.
Does the fact that you’re from the Israeli tech sphere play an important part in your business?
Yes, of course, it gives us an advantage: I understand their needs, since I used to be in their shoes as an executive in an Israeli software product company. So my team and I understand the kind of stresses they have, their limitations – and I speak their language, not only Hebrew.
What about the differences between the cultures, I mean between the client and provider of software development services?
Speaking of Ukraine and Western countries, I think there’s more in common than different. An IT person is an IT person everywhere. Plus, in Ukraine, I see the same ambition to succeed. You can come to this conclusion just by looking at the IT market in Ukraine – its huge fragmentation: over 1,000 companies operate here today, most of them small.
What about the difference between Ukraine and Israel?
Ukraine has an excellent reputation today in Israel for its software developers, since we assimilated a lot of IT immigrants in the 90s, so maybe 30-40 percent of the IT market in Israel came from the former Soviet Union. Israelis are familiar with the culture, but still, sometimes we miss details like dress code – it’s more strict in Ukraine. The devil is also in the way we speak, what do we speak about, in the unwritten code of behavior. There’s no such code in Israel – it’s a country where even politicians don’t wear suits. That may sound like one big mess, but Israelis don’t value protocols or sticking to processes.
Sounds like an Agile manifesto!
Yes, but, speaking of Agile, its classic setup becomes inefficient once you establish a distributed team, located in different countries, for example. So a change in a methodology is the first important thing to keep in mind when going outsourcing. Usually, we advise adopting a so-called “distributed Agile” and train our customers how to do it. Plus, every customer gets a personal account manager, who keeps a finger on the pulse of the project to address any problem, if any should come up, immediately.
Ok, let’s imagine I want to outsource part of my product’s development to a Ukrainian team. It makes me your client, potentially, right? How do things go from this point onwards?
First, you’ll need to come over, schedule initial meetings with several providers, and then shortlist the ones that seem reliable. Then, put them to the test. Usually, customers send us job requirements and ask to propose several matching candidates for their team.
When you’ll see what kind of candidates providers propose, it’ll be easy to decide which company can do the job.
My third piece of advice would be to look closely how things go in the first six months of your project. Usually, all the major decisions are made during this time, as well as the major mistakes. And last but not least, help your offshore team gain knowledge about the product that they need to develop, invest time and money in creating effective collaboration.
So, if I order a team, and everything seems fine, when can I expect it to be ready?
I think it’s safe to say that in three months you’ll have an established team of three. That kind of a pilot team works great when in future you’re looking to grow your offshore operations to about 30 people. If it’s a hundred, then it makes sense to pilot with a team of 10, and it may us take somewhat longer to build it up, and we’ll recommend hiring a project manager from our side.
For some projects, a pilot development project is an option. For example, if the customer wants a system that’s doing XYZ, let’s run a pilot to develop a system that’s doing X. We decide how much time that X takes to develop with every customer case-by-case.
But if there’s a PM on the client’s side, is there a need for hiring one at Ignite?
For more than five or six people, yes, it’s best to hire a PM from your outsourcing provider. An on-site PM has an almost immediate ability to detect and eliminate HR, or any other, risks and keep things on track. Anyway, during the first critical six months, we accompany new projects at the most attentive level, even if the customer didn’t hire a PM from our side.
Any other risks that companies usually stumble upon in software outsourcing?
I assure you, we know how to avoid all roadblocks. But we stress the importance of direct communication with the development team for each of our clients from the very beginning: they need to hire new employees as if they were their own. We encourage customers to come over, to share the product vision, even bring small branded giveaways as gifts. It’s good to spend time socially with the guys, get to know the development team personally. We do provide HR support, of course, but a part of that is building this relationship between the customer and offsite team, because, at the end of the day, that’s what makes it all a success.
