What is the secret to success in offshoring?Wat is de sleutel tot succes bij offshoring?Vad är nyckeln till framgång i offshoring?Was ist das Erfolgsgeheimnis von Offshoring?

As with anything in the world, there is no holy grail to make something work. In offshoring, there are many factors that influence the success of your projects. But I believe that there are 2 things that determine the success to a very large degree.

1. The people

Last week, I spoke to an American customer, a startup from Nashville that worked with an Indian team for several months. He told me that they have a joke in the office that the names of the people they work with don’t change, but the people do.

Zoals bij alles is er bij offshoring geen heilige graal voor success. Er zijn bij offshoring veel factoren die invloed hebben op de mate van succes van uw project. Maar ik denk dat er twee dingen zijn die van groot belang zijn.
1. De mensen
Vorige week sprak ik een Amerikaanse klant, een starter uit Nashville die enkele maanden met een Indiaas team had gewerkt. Hij vertelde me dat ze op kantoor grappen dat de namen van de mensen waar ze mee werken niet veranderen, maar de mensen wel.
Ik ben nu een tijd actief in de offshoring industrie en weet dat deze grap soms waarheid is. Veel  offshore software ontwikkeling bedrijven laten hun klanten niet direct contact onderhouden met de programmeurs. Ze ‘verstoppen’ ze achter verschillende lagen van projectmanagers en ontwikkelaars.

Precis som med mycket annat i världen, så finns det ingen helig graal som frår det att fungera. Inom offshoring är det många faktorer som påverkar framgången i dina projekt. Men jag tror att det finns två faktorer som kan vara avgörande för framgång i stor mån.

1.Människorna.

Förra veckan så pratade jag med en amerikansk kund, en etablering i Nashville som jobbade med ett team i Indien i ett flertal månader. Han berättade att de skämtade på kontoret om att namnen på människorna de arbetade med inte ändrades men människorna gjorde det.

Es ist wie mit allen Dingen auf der Welt, es gibt nicht nur ein Erfolgsgeheimnis um irgendeine Arbeit zu erledigen. Beim Offshoring gibt es viele Faktoren, die den Erfolg ihrer Produkte beeinflussen. Aber ich glaube, dass es zwei Dinge gibt, die in einem sehr hohen Maße über den Erfolg entscheiden.

1. Die Personen

Letzte Woche sprach ich mit einem amerikanischen Kunden, ein Jungunternehmen aus Nashville, das mehrere Monate mit einem indischen Team arbeitete. Er teilte mir mit, dass sie im Büro den Scherz machten, dass sich die Namen der Leute, mit denen sie arbeiteten nicht änderten, obwohl die Leute ausgetauscht wurden.  

I have been around in the offshoring industry for a while and know that this joke is sometimes reality. Many offshore software development companies do not allow their customers to interact directly with the programmers. They ‘hide’ them behind layers of project managers and lead developers.

The most crucial element in making a company successful are the people that work in the company. If you hire a team offshore or nearshore, I believe you want to know who works in your team. You actually want to select the people, to decide who works on your team. And you want to interact with them, because it’s the individual team members who do the work, not the project managers.

2. The communication process

Everything comes down to communication. When I started Bridge in 2005, I worked with software companies both offshore and nearshore. The words that I heard most often were ‘yes just send me a project request and we will do the project’. And that’s how most of the offshore work gets done: send requirements, make an estimate, agree on price and deadline and just get going. If you are lucky, you have the right supplier that has a smooth process in place. But in many cases, communication problems will result in problems in finishing the project. So what to do?

To structure the communication, my advice would be to focus at least on the following 4 points:

A. Software development process

Think about ‘how you are going to work’ and the communication process that supports the software development process. Especially Scrum has many features like sprint planning, daily stand-ups, estimating tasks, that facilitate communication across borders.

B. Agree on a weekly and daily meeting rhythm

You miss frequent interaction which you normally have in the office. Therefore it is important to establish fixed timings to discuss progress. It’s advisable to have a daily meeting in which you ask a. what did you do? b. what will you do? c. where are you stuck?. And in the weekly meeting, do an overall evaluation about the project, the tasks and the communication.

C. Use the right software tools

There are many tools available in the market that supports cooperation between distributed teams. You need a project management tool that deals with planning, estimates, time registration, tasks, bugs, storage of documents.

D. Define responsibilities

Make function profiles for every person involved in the cooperation. This ensures that each person knows exactly what is expected and by discussing it, it also becomes clear.

To conclude, there is no secret, it all comes down to establishing the right routines, to ensure that the people show the desired behavior. And to do so, it’s important that you spend time involving the right people and think about how you will communicate with them.