A view on onsite-offshore development...

The onsite-offshore development model is currently the cheaper, faster way to produce software. But at what cost...

Having experienced this over the last 7+ years, here's my take on it.

1. Estimation - There needs to be a very good estimation model in place. Without this, both teams (onsite and offshore) will be fighting a losing battle. The teams will be working against the clock, they WILL cut corners to meet deadlines. Code quality is compromised. More errors are introduced.
All these result in a longer testing and defect fixing cycle. The net result- the project goes over budget, and deadlines are missed.


2. Scope - This goes hand-in-hand with estimation. It is very important to only take on what you can chew. Most often, the onsite management are delusioned that the offshore team have more time and hence try to absorb scope. This too has the same result as a poor estimation.

3. Responsibility - It is extremely important that both teams; onsite and offshore, share the same level of ownership and responsibility towards delivery. If the onsite team have a "the offshore team will take care of that" attitude, then again this model is not going to work. The truth of the matter is that the onsite team have more perspective towards the issue/function. They should take it upon themselves to at least provide a sample solution towards the problem so that the offshore team can complete the job. Failing to do with will result in the offshore team working towards a solution which they "think" is correct.
The norm is that the onsite team will then reject the fix, or mark it as incomplete and this results in more cycles.


4. Skill level - In my experience, it is common to get into a consulting engagement where the client uses a few technologies that are unfamiliar. Being technologists, it is our responsibility to spend a little time ramping up on these technologies such that we are at a decent level to code and troubleshoot. Over time, it is inevitable that we will become experts in that technology. It is however important to allocate that ramp up time at the beginning of the project. True, most of the learning happens on the job. But the ground work, background reading, and the basics have to be right.
Failing to allocate that rampup time upfront will result in not being able to achieve the desired levels of productivity.

5. Communication - I don't know how this ended up so low on the list. But I can't stress enough how important communication is. Having daily sync up calls is very effective. It is important for both teams to be in constant communication so their each party knows exactly whats going on.
When i mean communication I mean,
- Daily calls
- Accompanied by an email outlining the tasks needed to be completed and a status email at the end of the day

6. Tracking - Along with communication and status updates comes tracking. This becomes an important tool to see how well you are achieving your targets and milestones. This information then feeds into your next estimation process so that you can estimate better (at least thats the idea - Learn from your previous experiences.)

Looking back, most of these are aspects of project management :). So far we've got estimation, scope and now tracking. It becomes apparent that for an onsite-offshore project to succeed, the project management has to be very good. Maybe I'm biased, the engineers and the architects are equally important but they generally take care of their business :). The bottom line is, the project management has to be pretty good to run a project smoothly.

Thoughts ??