Big projects transform business status and act as a game changer for enterprises. The companies like Matrix Marketers have adopted offshore software development to save one-third of its cost which was used to build the infrastructure of the company to handle such big projects.

However, the quality of execution in developing the software outside varies. In big projects, if you are hiring more than one company to work on the same project, the quality varies and a comparison is drawn between the companies. It was found that large software projects on average run 66 percent over budget and 33 percent over schedule; as many as 17 percent of projects go so badly that they can threaten the very existence of the company.

Looking at the scenario, taking the decision of going for offshore software development becomes quite risky. But the time limits don’t leave you with any other option.

At some point in time, every software development company will probably manage a project that includes offshore developers. The use of offshore developers located in countries like India and many other Asian countries has become increasingly popular due to the low hourly cost involved. On a company level, outsourcing development work in all or in part can greatly increase the profitability of a software project or IT initiative.

To ensure the success of your project while engaging offshore developers as part of your project the Project Manager can follow a few key practices. Some of these are outlined below:

Identify a leader

The Project Manager, you must find a team member in the outsourced team to act as the prime contact for communication. It’s hard enough to work with a group of developers on the other side of the world and 12 hours away without having to oversee the work of the entire staff for the duration of the project. Identify a leader that you can communicate regularly with and make that person responsible for all updates and reports. That will be the individual who is available to be on customer calls and report development status as needed.

Establish a communication schedule

When two teams are working together, communication should be done in a straightforward way. You can likely rely mostly on the Weekly Status Meetings, Weekly Status Reports, the Project Schedule and a few emails to ensure that everyone is on the same page. I also like to have a delivery-team-only meeting prior to the customer call just to ensure that everything on the Status Report is accurate and up-to-date. When dealing with development team members on the other side of the world, more frequent communication is going to be necessary.

Manage scope as if your life depended on it

Project task discussions are always an issue whether it’s across cultures, time zones, pure distance…whatever, there is always a risk that it can present some sort of hurdle. Rarely do you think of it in terms of managing it within your own team?

Miscommunicated or misunderstood requirements can cause scope issues. Poor budget and time constraints oversight offshore activities and create scope issues.

Test regularly

Use an iterative development process and test regularly. That way, any scope issues or requirements misunderstandings can be identified and possibly corrected before the customer is aware.

Monitor the schedule in great detail

This is always a critical responsibility of the Project Manager. However, when you’re working with a development team that is worlds away, it becomes even more important. You can never take the phrase “things are going well” and run with it. You must identify status to very specific details. Make sure that the development tasks are broken out into smaller and very trackable tasks. You may have to dig deep and reiterate your understanding of the status and obtain solid confirmation of status from the offshore team lead throughout the project.

Conclusion

Matrix marketers have adopted offshore development on several projects and mostly, it has been a great success. The production level, dedication, focus and overall work ethic has been very strong. The real world complex problems can be jointly solved using the outsourcing and outsourced teams. We strongly recommend offshore development for managing big software projects.