How To Find Right Offshore Software Development Partner?

Offshore software development is a practice of hiring an organization to perform a few business operations in other than customer’s country.

As a matter of fact, there are various companies that are looking for offshore developers or offshore development partner in low-cost countries or particularly in India. They want to set up the relationship with the development partner to ensure a long-term and successful partnership.

Here are some points to know and consider before starting the offshore development process.

Advantages Of Offshore Development Process:

• Companies can save cost up to 80% in some cases
• Offshore software development companies are able to add relevant technical knowledge while concentrating on their core competence
• It is easy to recruit the desired competence in India as compared to western countries, because in India there are many qualified developers with good academic knowledge and training
• For temporary work, offshore companies can use low priced programmers in the development process instead of recruiting new expensive one
• Programming and consulting capacity is also available in urgency and at short notice

Some clients send parts of a project or the whole project directly to India for the offshore software development, while others get consultants from India for long or short term projects to outsource their programming requirement and work onsite with the design team of their company.

Problems that may occur while setting up the offshore software development process:

• Cultural and language barriers
• Time difference
• Problem in technical communication
• Skills mismatch
• Disagreement in quality
• Security issues
• Inflexible organization and bad management

This problem can be avoided by selecting the right partner for the offshore development process. Plus, to work with the proven and proper processes of project management which have been evolved during the assignments of offshore development.

Sometimes companies completely consider the cost saving factor that they overlook the risks factors which can be proven a major trap later.

The Ideal Projects

The task with proprietary knowledge which is not protected by agreements is not ideal and suitable for the offshore software development. High technical and complex task is also not ideal because it takes a large amount of communication to explain everything due to this the cost advantage is consumed by it. There are some projects which are suitable for the offshore software development and the possible areas for this projects are:

• Projects of platform porting like porting from Windows, UNIX, DOS
• Applications conversion
• GUI designs
• Web designing, development, programming
• Database migration, porting and applications
• Components like VCL, Reports, ActiveX, are suitable for the projects
• End user documentation, technical documentation, and manuals
• Remote Unix/Linux Services
• Remote feature enhancements and software maintenance
• Remote database services

To find the offshore development partner in India, it is necessary that the following characteristics must get fulfilled:

• Good communication facilities and equipment. ISDN or leased line connection to the Internet are necessary
• English language skills must be excellent
• References and experiences. Companies must check some references given by the partner and ask for their work experience too
• Offshore development companies must have stable finance, good management, and adequate equipment

Companies have to be sure that their offshore software development partner understands their quality demands and needs and a good relationship also established between them

Building a long-term and strong relationship between the outsourcing and offshore companies is very important. Outsourcing companies should send few people to visit the offshore company to build a personal relationship with consultants or offshore developers that they have to work with.

It is a better way to build the more confident relationship than email communication by understanding the settings and cultural problems of the company.

The best way to establish a strong long term relationship is to start with the small pilot project. Before selecting the offshore software development partner for their work, outsourcing companies can give the small and similar task to different offshore companies and then evaluate their work. In this way, they would be able to select the best one.

Project Management

There must be some established practices to protect the development process where the outsourcing companies got informed by the offshore companies on a regular basis about the progress. They need to follow the communication methodology in which they have to be sure that the emails are not left unanswered or lost and also acknowledged immediately. Email communication is important because most of the conversations between the client and the developers are done via this way.

Conclusion

To achieve success in offshore software development projects, companies have to be alert in the selection process. Companies should choose an offshore development partner who has a record in this type of activities over many years and also helps the companies to choose the suitable project. Companies can also send some pilot projects to many offshore companies and evaluate their results. It must maintain a long term relationship and must not expect everything from the start. Offshore developers are not only beneficial for the one-time project but they are profitable in long run.