How to choose an IT company in Poland

Chances are that if you come here you already distinguished Poland as the destination where you will outsource your software development to. Now you may wonder how to find the right IT company for your needs. As always, we’re here to help. Read the text below and follow the described steps to ensure that the cooperation you’re considering will fill all the gaps you have and turn your goals into results!

Profile and experience

First and foremost – the company’s profile and experience. Nowadays the IT world is highly specialized and it’s almost impossible to be excellent in all its areas. That’s why you should always seek an IT company that has experience with the technologies that your project requires and have the knowledge of your business domain. Clearly, your outsourced developers can learn about the domain and its intricacies while working on the project but why risk and lose time? Make sure that you know what you need and verify the preselected Polish IT company background so it will be able to easily understand your needs and work effectively. How to do it?

Former projects and unbiased customer reviews

The best way to see what the IT company already did is diving deep into their case studies and more importantly verified clients’ reviews from portals such as Clutch. The first category can be usually found inside the vendor website and if that’s not enough to dissolve your doubts always feel free to ask for more during meetings with their representatives. But what’s more valuable are the unbiased reviews from clients who already cooperated with the IT company. Portals like the mentioned Clutch present verified opinions, ensuring that what you found there is true. All the reviews describe real cooperation that either ended with a certain result or get to further phases and it was enough to provide the word of mouth. Since the reviews cover various aspects, these allow you to check how the vendor acts once the work starts. You can find out if their communication and technical skills are as good as advertised and get some kind of preview of what you might expect once the work kickstarts. Additionally, apart from reviews available online you can choose the old fashioned way and ask for contact with one of your potential vendors’ former or actual clients. This way you would be able to ask questions that are in your head and a trustworthy IT company shouldn’t have any problems with this kind of background check.

Size

If you’re looking for a long-term, seamless cooperation you should take vendor size into account. If you predict that scaling up the team is on the horizon and it’s only a matter of time, it will be a better choice to go with a larger IT company that has the ability to address your needs within this matter. But if you require only a small but flexible team because your project has a lot of uncertainties and not as much manpower it will be a better choice to go with a smaller company that would have a shorter decision-making process. And if you’re torn apart between these scenarios, we recommend looking for a golden mean and choosing a company that fits into popular buzzword paraphrased and is “big enough to deliver, small enough to be flexible”.

Location

Although if you’re reading this article you probably choose Poland with all its strengths as a perfect destination to outsource software are development too you still have to choose a particular location within this country. If you’re planning regular onsite visits you should look for a city that’s well connected with your office locations, so the time necessary to get there by plane would be acceptable and journeys are hassle-free. Additionally, look at the talent base in certain location. If you would need to ramp up or during the project life span require for additional skill would emerge it will impact the ability to fill the gaps. Obviously, we recommend Krakow which might be described as polish Silicon Valley but instead of elaborating here, click this link and learn all about it.

Cooperation model

Different projects call for different cooperation models. Since we already described these throughout, for the sake of this article let’s run only a quick recap. If your needs are related to a short and easy to define project, then selecting fixed price seems like a fitting choice. If your project is complex and hard to precisely determine, then go with time and materials that fit agile practices. Finally, if the job is mostly about maintenance and similar work – go with the managed services model. Why are we bringing this up? Just like in the example with the business domain and particular technologies experience, it is best to find a vendor that knows how to operate in certain coop model. This way you’ll ensure that the IT company employees would be able to find themselves in the agreed conditions.

Meeting with representatives

Establishing cooperation usually requires several meetings with potential vendor representatives, both if done remotely or with onsite meetings. That creates a perfect opportunity not only to obtain tailored offer including for example project timeline but allows to see the company attitude towards the cooperation as well. Since these meetings often include not only Business Develompment Managers but also people responsible for project management, development and so on, you would have a chance to meet the people you will work once the deal is sealed. Notice if they are prepared for the meetings and ready to answer your question (if not instantly, which is perfectly fine, they should prepare the replay and come back to you). Also pay attention to the communication skills. Assuming that you have technical people in your internal team, you can also set a technical meeting to check the delivery managers’ capabilities and get 100% certainty that these are right people for the job.

Project management

If you’re looking for an extension to your internal team, your external partner must work according to the same or at least similar principals. But maybe you need to update or transform your processes toward Agile? In this scenario the vendor you’ll select must have enough experience in particular methodology to be capable of implementing it within your organization. Whatever seems true in your case always verify how the IT company manages its people and if it has the case studies to prove the proficiency in a particular methodology. Since Scrum-based methodologies are the most popular ones, that shouldn’t be narrowing your potential pool of candidates hard, but if choose the more distinct agile method as for example extreme programming is best to find a company that already possess the knowledge about it so you won’t waste time implementing new ways of working.

Price

Last but not least – the price. This is a part that always heats up the discussion and is often considered as the most important part when choosing the IT company to go with. However, to get the most value out of outsourcing software development selecting the cheapest option is almost always the wrong move to make. Software development is an expensive process. Although you can save a lot of money by transferring it abroad, if you want to get all of its benefits and as result generate impressive ROI, that usually costs more in the first place. Consider what the company brings to the table and what you pay for – this way even if you would have to pay more for the manhour, the investment will return in the longer run.

If you have any doubts – ask.

To take the full advantage of outsourcing you need to make evidence-based decision and choose the company that would be able to provide what you’re missing. Covering these basic aspects will put you on the safe side and allow to really benefit from outsourcing software development. However, this “checklist” is a fundamental generic one and there are always project-specific aspects that require particular notice. If you want to discuss your needs use the contact form below and let us know. We’re ready to help you establish the requirements you should have for the external Polish IT Company and if we won’t be a match, we’ll direct you to the company more experienced in particular areas.