Abstract
During my professional experience, I have offshored several projects. I had some bad and good experiences. One of the main goals of the offshoring process is to build trust. Herein are 9 points of advice if you want to offshore a development project .
1 .Always take care of your local workers.
Most offshore projects require a certain level of interaction with local workers. As a matter of fact, offshore workers are often replacing in one way of another your local workers. Taking care of local workers should always be of high priority when starting and managing an offshore process. What is especially important is to communicate a right and sensible message to local workers of why and how the offshore process is taking place.
Management from both sides should focus on integrating local and offshore teams. This will be developed later in communication chapter.
In fact, you should not only take care of your local workers but also of any process and organization changes offshoring projects will bring to your company. In one sentence: "prepare your company to offshore a project"
From this 1 st advice comes the question: what to offshore?
2. Focus on core competencies.
You should focus on your core competencies and also let the offshore team focus on its core competencies. It is usually wise not to offshore what is belonging to your core competencies...
3. The right partner is the one you can trust.
Offshoring a project to an offshore company implies that you must trust this company. If you are already working with a company that you trust, continue working with this company.
3.1 It is safer to start working with big companies.
If you are starting to offshore a project and you don't have any offshoring experience, there are 2 reasons for choosing big companies (more than 1000 of developers):
First: They have already successful experiences of working with western companies.
Second: They have a clear vision of where they want to go in terms of business. I have seen a western company working with a small very competent offshore company. The project went so well, that the offshore company decided to shift its priorities and try to sell a copy of the product itself. This should not happen with a big company as if it tries to be a competitor of its client, they will lose their already significant offshoring business with other clients.
Just FYI: this "It is safer to start working with big companies" statement is the one which is the most disagreed upon by offshore service providers. Keep in mind that the most important is to trust your partner. This is not always related to its size.
