Nobody can deny the outsourcing work has been developed increasingly in Technology Information industry in recent decades due to the unexpected advantages it has brought. These are swiftness, expertise, risk –sharing, cost- saving of operation and recruitment... and plenty of others. The question is why a lot of entrepreneurs has praise the merits of outsourcing development work overseas, while others have sworn off because of horrible experience. That leads to the fact that it is not obvious that all organizations will get the bright success smoothly when outsourcing their projects. Really, there are some pitfalls of software outsourcing development overseas must be highly considered as much as its advantages if you are in the process of choosing a decent offshore vendor.
Low Quality
The huge issue is how to define properly the expertise in advance as well as control constantly the quality of the offshore vendor you tent to cooperate to outsource your project. How can you even judge the developers through their list of portfolios? In fact, in the regular practice for most of oversea devs, they listed out many grand projects while only small or tiny its parts were involved by them.
So what is the solution?
Rather than make sure the candidate can code really, match with what you are expecting, a technical interview is definitely essential. Now there are various tests designed suitably to different kind of projects or works to see that actual his/her qualifications.
You can also have a local person who has general knowledge of the industry but has none of reason to bias toward this offshore vendor consult and do some legwork as well as carry out the test of project to define if they are good fit.
Code Collaboration
Not same as other industries, Software Outsourcing Development is the most adequate to grow up continuously over the world, regardless of the limitation of location. However, this pertains always to the obstacle of different time zone. It is really tough to get 100% percent of quality of work of developers when they have to wake up at midnight for a conference or an urgent meeting.
So what is the solution?
A way to get around is you can assign a member of your team to offshore vendor’s country as project manager who will understand well the working time frame of both sides to make sure the effective communication. That sounds great when this can also prevent problems caused by distinction of culture or working style. Really, this project manager will provide a buffer between clients and developers.
Unmatched requirements
Most of the times, what presented to customer is the product of the ending development. Also, sometimes the customers are not good at describing what they need or even don’t know exactly what they are expecting. Therefore, unmatched requirements of the customer are a common issue when outsourcing a project to offshore vendors, which caused basically by unclear communication between customer, outsourcing company, and offshore vendor.
So what is the solution?
Always keep the constant management so as to never get out of the control of project. The leader and offshore vendor need to understand well each and everyday requirements of customers. That means the constant effective communication from all sides.
Of course, there are other factors need to be considered also, such as, risk of exposing confidential data, hidden cost, etc. Thus, the more pitfalls you can take caution and prepare its solutions appropriately in advance, the better your outsourced project succeeds.
by ThaoNTX