Outsourcing Web Development in a Recession
Outsourcing defined
Outsourcing is giving a piece of work to an outside team of your organization to complete. In the software and web development world, many of us have heard of outsource channels like India, who promise highly educated programmers at very low costs.
Cost savings
The cost saving is often real at first glance. The quality of programmer that costs you $100 per hour in North America can be had in India for $20 per hour or less - a mere fraction. Extrapolate the savings to a project of over 1000 man hours - that means $100k local vs $20k off-shore. That's huge.
Problems
There have been many problems with outsourcing to off-shore teams in the past, the major ones being communication issues, and lack of control. Very often projects which would have taken 100 hours to complete locally suddenly take 300 hours off-shore. This takes a significant bite out of the savings in outsourcing to begin with, and if this means you need to chain on another project manager to deal with the off-shore teams, then your savings are pretty much gone. You may as well just save yourself the headache and develop in-house right from the start.
Solutions
There is a very significant and obvious problem shared with just about all failed off-shore projects: They all failed to plan correctly. The solution to effective outsourcing is proper and detailed specifications. Once you have a spec that leaves absolutely nothing to the imagination, developers have no choice but to deliver what you asked for.
Even crude pictures drawn with pencil and paper can help to control project scope, but the more detailed the spec, the tighter the controls. Take the gamble out of outsourcing to off-shore teams by giving those teams detailed specs.
-Andreas
Posted: 2009-04-13 12:04:17
Comments
Well put.
I tried to manage an off-shore project once (in India) and due to the constant communication issues, was forced to buy a drawing tablet.
A picture really says a thousand words.
By Donald Mcgill on 2009-04-13 15:56:03
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