The Do's & Don'ts of Managing an Outsourced Flutter Development Team

SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT | 16 Mar 2020

Flutter is a new yet highly promising and reliable Google Powered software development kit. Offering highly effective qualities including faster development, a wide collection of visuals, and good cost-effectiveness, Flutter has already proven it has the potential to replace React Native and become the ruler of the cross-platform app development market. With this in mind, it makes sense to adopt it into your capabilities sooner rather than later, this will help you develop a significant competitive advantage.

BrightMarbles recognized Flutter’s potential. Adopting the technology early, we started training and hiring Flutter experts, getting a step up on the rest of the market. Today we're in a unique position to share this list, what to avoid, and what to emphasize when managing your remote Flutter team.

With all that said, Flutter is still a relatively new technology, and the number of proficient developers is still scarce. As a result, it’s easy to see where an outsourced Flutter development team comes in to help deliver high quality Flutter-based output.  

The Best Practices In Managing Remote Flutter Teams

Managing your remote Flutter development team doesn’t typically differ much from managing any other type of dedicated team using an alternative tech stack, although, there are still a few specifics you need to be aware of. 

From here on, we'll discuss best practices in managing remote Flutter teams, and identify the differences between strong and weak teams.  

Do Your Research When Selecting an Outsourcing Partner

As with all remote teams, it's all about developing a partnership. Choosing the right outsourcing partner, unlike an ordinary supplier, isn't an easy task. Creating a software tool is expensive, time-consuming, and sometimes it makes a massive difference in your business success. That's why it's essential to take your time and investigate potential software development service providers carefully.

Don't just rely on rates, contracts, expertise, billing practices, and whether the company can or cannot meet your milestones and deadlines. These criteria are certainly important, but shouldn't be the only factors you consider. Many decision-makers focus heavily on the hourly rates for engineers or look for the lowest price. That is expected and perfectly understandable as these things are easily quantifiable. However, factors such as company culture, flexibility, treatment, and references need to be considered too. 

Company culture is essential for two reasons, fluctuation and communication. If the company has a high fluctuation rate, you'll be onboarding new developers all the time, and this is an expensive process. So, you want to make sure the partner’s company culture encourages developer retention in-house. The second is communication, you'll need to have someone that you'll be able to communicate with easily. 

When looking for a partner, we find there’s a secret to finding the best - look for companies run by founders. Why? Because all decisions, sales promises, contracts, price rates, discounts, deadlines, milestones, projects, technologies, resources, and similar, will be done by people who are accountable and responsible, who can deliver what they promised and who are emotionally invested in the success of the company they have founded.

Flutter Expertise

Don't partner with a company that's not already involved with Flutter. Make sure your project isn't a training ground for new developers, even if it means a lower fee. 

Do choose a partner that's already experienced with Flutter for a better result. 

Expectations Management

Identify your expectations, goals, and the needed level of expertise/knowledge before you engage any development partners. 

Don't skip this step. It's crucial to be aware of your expectations. You have them for sure, and if not aware of them, you'll still expect from your partner to deliver on them, and this is a sure path to failure. 

Do start by putting everything in writing; define your expectations, priorities, goals. Identifying this key information will help you develop good cooperation with your partner and instill trust. Having everything out in the open helps to avoid conflict, prevents dissatisfaction, and all in all creates a better product. 

Stay up to Date With the Technology

Flutter is a fast-changing platform. Make sure both you and the team are tracking and staying up to date with changes, updates, and preferred ways of development to maximize the platform potential.

Don't create such a workload or stress load for your team, where they won't have a minute of spare time as this will hinder self improvement and prevent them from keeping up with  the latest trends in Flutter development. 

To further help staff development, organize knowledge sharing sessions or a channel on Slack where you'll share and discuss the latest Flutter updates. Lead by example. Show interest. Praise.  

Trust Your Team

You did your research, didn't you? You checked all the references and compared companies on all criteria. You chose the best partner. 

There's no reason not to trust them after all the work you did. Now, here's a significant thing: 

Don't fall into the trap of micromanaging your team. It will take all of your time, energy, and satisfaction, and in the end, it'll hurt their enthusiasm and overall, the product quality.  

Managers tend to micromanage others when they don't trust their team's competency, but also are hyper detail-oriented, and insecure. 

Do let your team have the freedom to show their expertise, and suggest solutions. If you do, the quality of the final product will be much higher. 

Things are changing fast, as more companies are starting their search for Flutter developers and are ready to invest in the Flutter ecosystem. Flutter has proven to be a great framework for building high-performing, cross-platform mobile apps. Companies are increasingly adopting it across their projects to take full advantage. 

If you're only looking at testing the possibilities of the technology with a single engineer or a freelancer, post your requirement on recruiting platforms like Upwork or ValueCoders. We believe you can find a single high quality developer pretty easily. 

If you need a company for outsourcing Flutter development, we suggest you try the "Digital Knights Network". They will help you select the best software development team for your project. It starts with you describing your project; then, it handpicks vendors like us at BrightMarbles, who are particularly suitable to your project's unique requirements.

Editor's Note: This is a guest post by BrightMarbles. BrightMarbles is a quality software engineering house based in Serbia covering the entire software development cycle, starting from the idea, design, development, and maintenance of a software solution.

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