Outsourcing Software Development has become an integral part of any forward thinking company that understands the importance in being part of a globalized and correlated economy and will seek to expand its global capabilities. Outsourcing software development adds value in terms of time, cost and quality and gives considerable structure to project execution and benefits to all the stakeholders. Good mapping of all organizational processes will be the starting point. Your response to this review should be: “I need to outsource to remain competitive“.

Nevertheless, companies that are thinking about outsourcing their department only for reducing labor costs are blinding themselves to the vast advantages and opportunities that this road can lead their business into. It’s important to keep in mind that off shoring projects these days is no longer just a mean to reduce costs, but has become a tool for adding value to their business by enabling them to concentrate on their core competence.

In an outsourcing engagement, the onsite-offshore hybrid model is the most popular software development model offered by service vendors to their clients. In this model, the outsourcing work is distributed between the onsite centre (usually the client location) and service provider’s offshore development centre. Usually, 20-30% of the work is done at the onsite centre that includes requirement gathering, planning and initial designing, co-ordination, issue resolution, deployment and support. The actual development and testing of the software is done at the offshore centre, based on the requirements provided to them.

This model offers an array of benefits. The outsourcing company is able to release resources for high value-added and priority work and can concentrate on their core business knowledge while delegating technical tasks, maintenance, research or routine tasks to the offshore software development company. Above all, off shoring is about sourcing the talent needed to sustain the innovation engine of a company by adding significant technical knowledge.

To understand the potential benefits, the costs involved, the legal implications, issues and the main reasons that lead a company to outsource, IT Outsourcing must be applied primarily as a strategic initiative for businesses.

When establishing a software outsourcing development process, the following principals should be taken into consideration:

• The process should have a centric approach through clear, continuous and focused communication, enabling businesses to adherence the basic coordinates of Project Management (initiation, planning, execution, control and closing).
• Enablers and tools to implement processes and project management on a remote basis should be made available.
• Implement risk management practices and measurable metrics for the life cycle of a project.

How to find an offshore software partner
Make sure the offshore software partner you are looking for fulfills at least some of the following characteristics:

• Good communication equipment and facilities. Leased line or ISDN connections to the Internet are essential.
• Experience and references. Check with a few of the references and ask for their experience and advice on how you should work successfully with the company.
• Visit the company and establish a good relationship with the offshore software partner. Make sure they understand your needs and quality demands.
• Also, check that the offshore software development company has adequate equipment, stable finances and good management.

Outsourcing in India
Indian IT outsourcing is in great focus by multinationals over the world, in view of the fact that the country is one of the fastest emerging markets and is among the leading countries in IT and engineering professionals. Manufacturing is by far the biggest user of the offshore outsourcing arena and has done so with great success for many years. Industries such as automobiles, aircraft and shoes are major outsourcing users.

When to outsource and when not to
Not all projects are ideal for IT Outsourcing. Any tasks involving proprietary knowledge, which can not be safeguarded with agreements, are not suitable for IT Outsourcing. Very technical and complex tasks as well as small projects may be unsuitable, since the time to prepare the specification might be more than the cost advantage.

But apart from these exceptions, most projects or subprojects are suitable for Offshore Software Development in India. Some of the possible areas could be:

• Platform porting projects (like porting from DOS – Windows, Windows 3.11 – Windows 95/NT, UNIX -> NT.
• Application conversions
• GUI design
• Database applications, migration and porting
• Web enabling legacy systems and client server applications
• Web development, designing, programming etc. e Commerce – projects
• Components like ActiveX, VCL, Objects, Reports, and Modules. Object Oriented Programming is very suitable for offshore software development projects.
• Technical Documentation, end user documentation and manuals
• Software QA and Testing
• Remote Linux / Unix administration
• Remote database administration
• Remote software maintenance and feature enhancements.

The result and the actual cost saving by outsourcing will come over time, in medium and long term, as long as all the steps mentioned above are well applied to the core business and strategies. The ability to focus on the IT area with strategic initiatives for the business should be the greatest benefit to be sought.

Tags: ActiveX, Application conversions, GUI design, IT Outsourcing, offshore software partner, Offshoring, outsourcing engagement, Outsourcing in India, Platform porting projects, Remote database administration, Remote Linux, Remote software maintenance, Software QA and Testing, Technical Documentation, VCL, web design company

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 29th, 2009 at 3:01 am and is filed under Business, Outsourcing and Offshoring. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.