Outsourcing PHP development has come to be a key strategy for businesses to create high quality websites and software at a low cost but without overhead of maintaining in house developer team. As PHP continues to be one of the most popular programming languages for web development, it’s not surprising so many companies are choosing to hire remote teams to build their applications.
However, if you do decide to outsource your PHP project to a remote team, you can reap numerous benefits such as the cost savings, access to global talent and faster projects completion, and ability to rapidly scale your team’s availability. While remote PHP development can be challenging, so is managing teams that include other remote developers. So in this blog post, we’re going to walk you through the essential steps you need to take when outsourcing PHP Development to remote teams all over the world to make sure your project succeeds.
- It Is Import to know Define Your Project Requirements Clearly
Before you start searching for remote PHP developers, ensure that you know clearly what you want. Regardless of whether you’re managing an e-commerce platform, custom CMS or complex SaaS application, having a solid project brief will help you to avoid unnecessary troubles during outsourcing.
Key Points to Include in Your Project Requirements:
Project Scope: Determine the task of your PHP application, as well as its features and how it will be looking at the end. For example, this may be integrations with third party services, payment gateways or custom feature.
Technical Specifications: Mention in the list the PHP frameworks that you will use (Laravel, Symfony, Zend) or other technologies (MySQL, Redis, Apache,) which are needed for the project.
Budget: Have an estimate of your budget for the project and keep in mind that you can outsource to reduce your costs but quality should never be compromised.
Timeline: Set clear dates for the project. Share beta testing, feedback loops, and when you launch dates.
Maintenance and Support: Draft a plan that defines whether the remote team is also providing post launch maintenance and support and how long they will continue to do so.
- Choose Research and Right Remote Development Team
What’s more, now that you’ve found your project requirements, next you will need to find a team that can get the job done. Many PHP development platforms and agencies flourish in the world, so it’s important to choose the one that corresponds to your needs.
Where to Find Remote PHP Development Teams:
Freelance Platforms: You can take a look at freelance PHP developers on Upwork, Toptal and Freelancer websites. But these platforms also ensure one can easily manage contracts, payments and even communications.
Development Agencies: PHP development is also managed by many development agencies which specialize in it, and have the processes in place to manage remote teams. You can search for agencies by frameworks like PHP or else experts in some global industry relevant to your project.
Referrals and Recommendations: You can ask other businesses or ask your colleagues in your network and see if they have seen other businesses outsource PHP development and if so, you can speak with them for recommendations. Finding reliable developers is made easier by the referral from a trusted source.
Online Communities: You can also join forums or online communities (say GitHub, Stack Overflow or any LinkedIn group) to find remote PHP developers that have passed experience and a record of completed projects.
Things to Look for When Selecting a Remote PHP Development Team:
Experience and Expertise: Choose a team with a decent number of PHP projects under their portfolio. Be sure to find out if they have experience working with PHP frameworks as well as the exact technologies you intend to be working with.
Client Reviews and Testimonials: Third party platforms have reviews of clients to see whether the team can deliver quality work on time or you can ask for case studies.
Communication Skills: Given that you’re going to be remote from the rest of the team it’s important to have excellent communication with everyone. Make sure you have an in house team that’s familiar with your liked language (which might be English) and ready to move forward via email, chat or video calls.
Cultural Fit: The working dynamic can be altered on the basis of cultural differences. You don’t want your remote team to just misunderstand your business culture and work style.
Development Process: Ask about their Project Management Methodology (something Like Agile, Scrum, Waterfall) and how do they deal with version control, testing and debugging?
- Communication and Collaboration Channels are to be established.
One of the greatest challenges when working with remote teams is communication. Thus, one must set up a reliable communication system to the very beginning.
Recommended Communication Tools:
Slack or Microsoft Teams: Use for real time communication and collaboration (especially when a quick question or update is needed).
Trello, Jira, or Asana: Follow these project management tools to track your tasks, timelines and your milestones. With these platforms you can arrange your project and make sure everything is in the same page.
GitHub or GitLab: To keep a track of version as well as collaboration with other developers. Thanks to these platforms, you no longer struggle with changes in PHP code, because it will become easy to manage and track.
Zoom or Google Meet: For check in’s, sprint planning meetings or any other face to face discussions, use video conferencing tools.
Email: And, therefore, when you want to send important documents or contracts.
Communication Best Practices:
Set Regular Check-ins: Make a routine to have your remote team need weekly or bi weekly meetings to review progress, discuss challenges and to change timelines when needed. It is also a chance for you to share feedback and confirm that the project is moving in the right way.
Time Zone Management: Let time zones not confuse you when you are scheduling meetings. Given you can only work in real time sometimes, it’s a good practice to set working hours that overlap to some degree.
Document Everything: Note down all the communications, all the decisions, all the changes made. Maintain clear records with use of shared documentation tools like Google Docs, Confluence, Notion…
- Lastly, come to an agreement about a Contract and Payment Terms.
After having chosen your remote PHP development team, it’s time to have your contract well defined. What’s done here should be a contract between you and the employer detailing out all of the details of your working arrangement so that it is clear for both sides.
Key Elements of the Contract:
Scope of Work: Tasks, deliverables and responsibilities defined on each party.
Timeline: Agree upon milestones with dead lines, along with a way to test and a plan for final delivery.
Payment Structure: So get the payment terms agreed as soon as you can. You can pay hourly or by fixed price, but clarify the terms. In most outsourcing agreements, you put up a deposit, milestone payments and a payment on completion.
Intellectual Property: Determine the rights owner to the code, design, and other project created assets.
Confidentiality: Make sure that your contract has a non disclosure agreement (NDA) that protects your sensitive business info as well as your intellectual property.
Termination Clause: If you think things won’t go as planned, include terms in the contract for terminating the contract.
- Put your watching eyes on progress and feedback of what learner wants.
When you start a new project, you need to be involved actively all the way through, otherwise you might not get as involved in the development if it drifts, and the project might just go off track.
How to Monitor Progress:
Track Milestones: Track milestones, and make sure the deadlines are fulfilled using your project management tool.
Request Regular Demos: Invite the remote team to show them working prototypes, features in development, in order to make sure that the project sticks to your expectations.
Testing: Be prepared for heavy testing in various development levels. And think of figuring out a different testing environment, which the team can deploy and test their code.
Provide Timely Feedback: Do not delay: Be proactive is giving feedback on that throughout the course of the project. Feedback that helps build helps the development team know what you need, and enables them to make changes as required.
- Post-Launch Support and Launch Support
When you’re ready with a PHP project you need to launch it. However, that does not stop there. You need post launch support to take care of things which crop up later.
Post-Launch Considerations:
Bug Fixes: Make sure that the remote team offer a warranty period that the remote team can fix any bugs or issue that would occur after the launch.
Maintenance: Prepare for support and maintenance going forwards, to keep the PHP site or app always up to date and secure, and to have the potential to grow bigger.
Performance Monitoring: You’ll want to check the performance of the application regularly to make sure it’s running well and is providing what the users expect.
Conclusion
Outsourcing PHP development to remote teams all around the world can be a great way to get access to the talent, lower the cost, and to accelerate the project timetables. So there is no risk of failure, you can simply define your project requirements, choose the correct remote team, create effective communication channels, and then manage your project, and it’s in your hands now to make sure it becomes a success.
When done right, outsourcing PHP development can be a game changer for your business, allowing you to scale faster with access to a world of expertise — no matter the location for your remote team.