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DEVELOPING SUCCESSFUL OFFSHORE RELATIONSHIPS

The added complexity of distance and lack of face to face interaction makes developing a successful offshore contract a good greater challenge.

Management can undertake key steps to mitigate these negative factors. These are:

Spend time inducting offshore developers

Offshore engagement often involves a protracted period of interaction with onshore sales representatives. Once the framework has been agreed, the responsibility of providing appropriate resources is usually delegated to the service partners’ contact person with little or no involvement of the client IT team.

As a result, the assigned resources lack the background regarding the corporate and therefore the project and should even lack the specified technical competencies. a proper interview process followed by a quick on the corporate and departmental working practices should be administered for all offshore-based developers. This process helps to bring all assigned resources to a basic minimum level of understanding and ensures that they need the specified competencies.

Define clear reporting lines

It is vital to define upfront, clear and straightforward reporting lines. it’s going to rather be advantageous to appoint one point of contact within your organization through which all formal communication takes place. this enables resources to more quickly build up understanding and trust.

Develop a common language

In house development teams generally have a wealth of company-specific knowledge and are conversant in the corporate-specific language. it’s very easy to form assumptions about systems and business culture, which can be completely alien to the offshore service provider.

The service provider’s over-eagerness to demonstrate an understanding of the client’s business, systems, and culture, without necessarily having a full understanding of those aspects, also can further alienate them. Clients should spend time developing company, system, and personnel profiles which may be used to provide a standard language.

Encourage continuity in offshore resource allocation

Offshore development centers are often used as an activate, close up resource center. Whilst this flexibility may be a part of the advantages of getting into an outsourcing agreement, frequent change in resources is often detrimental to overall productivity.

Companies should look to use dedicated resources for his or her project work. This does involve a commitment to the quantum of labor which will be provided to the offshore team, but it provides continuity and allows the resources to develop a working relationship with the onshore analysts.

Set clearly understood standards

Unless you’ve got enough work level to interact with dedicated offshore resources it’s likely that your work is going to be completed by a spread of various resources. Each of those resources will have different levels of experience, and different sorts of development. Consider setting minimum experience levels on resources used.

Most of all take time developing detailed standards in terms of coding, testing, and documentation. If possible, include contractual penalties for failure to stick to those standards. Variable quality in work delivered won’t only erode the value advantages of the offshore development within the first place, but also destroy the arrogance of your in-house staff.

Use common tools for communication with the project team

Offshore development was enabled by availability of the internet. Ironically, email and telephone are still the most tools used for communication with the event teams. Valuable information exchanged in these conversations is usually lost because the resources advance to new projects.

Use of common project tools and repositories for sharing information with the whole project team help to document this information and reduce the cultural bias. Use of tools like Microsoft SharePoint to exchange documents, discuss topics and answer queries, consolidate task lists for the whole project team and help to channel all communications through a standard tool and eliminates cultural bias inherent in speech.

Use detail-oriented onshore analysts

Software development involves close interaction and development of an honest working relationship between the business analysts and developers. The increased distance and cultural barriers in an offshore development process makes it harder for the analysts and developers to develop such a relationship. Detailed specifications and scripts are often necessary to beat this problem. We all have analysts on our teams who are naturally more inclined to detail than some others. Look to use these analysts on offshore development projects and even consider giving them additional incentives for his or her role in successful delivery of offshore projects.

Ensure appropriate level of documentation

The level of documentation required to run developments offshore is generally above in-house projects. Work specifications must be clear and unambiguous. However, the tendency to overload the documentation from the offshore organisation can quickly fret the value advantages of the offshore agreement. Ensure any documentation is important for you which it’ll absolutely bring benefits to the project in hand.

 

Build incentives for the project managers to deliver at reduced cost

Project managers play a pivotal role within the co-ordination of all resources and delivery of project to agreed timescales and costs. they’re normally given incentives supported delivery of project to agreed budget. a private incentive program that rewards project managers for using cheaper resources and reducing overall cost of delivery will give their commitment to making sure that offshore resources are actively managed and utilised.

 

Make the zone differences work to your advantage

There will almost certainly be a zone difference between you and you offshore partner. it’s only too easy to ascertain this as an obstacle. within the worst-case scenario, your offshore partners won’t have enough understanding or are going to be missing some vital a part of a specification which can mean a day’s delay in the event. this may once more erode the arrogance of your in-house staff and add precious days to project timelines.

Despite these challenges, you want to keep communication lines open daily checking on scheduled work, progress and issues. This aspect should be a serious point. Your in-house staff should be freed up from much of the low-level development and increasingly add value in developing the business-specific strategies and specifications. this may present them with opportunities to manoeuvre to high value adding roles.

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