Tips to Reduce Offshore Software Development Cost and Managing Projects Effectively

Tips to Reduce Offshore Software Development Cost and Managing Projects Effectively

Offshore Software Development and the Cost of Quality

Offshore software development helps enterprises across the U.S and European countries save 70% of the development cost. While outsourcing gives significant low cost advantage, it is important to know that these savings can actually cost enterprises in millions, if they ignore quality. Every year due to quality defects arising out of low cost service delivery, the U.S companies spend almost 60 billion dollars to fix bugs and quality related issues. Thus, if quality is ignored, enterprises may lose significant opportunities in their efforts to keep up with market demands. Therefore, managing offshore software development costs as well as quality are vital for realizing improved returns on offshore investment.

Here are some vital tips for reducing offshore costs and proper management of software application development at offshore site.

1. Create Project Development Road-map or Brainstorm with the service provider to create one

Unless the objective of outsourcing is not clear, it would be suicidal to execute and manage an offshore project. Having a clear project development road map goes a long way in ensuring the project sails in the right direction. Documenting project development requirements, methodologies, application’s functionality or testing methodologies help offshore service providers know exactly what is expected of them and save significant time by eliminating unnecessary meetings. It has been observed in many projects that a product release exceeds timelines due to unnecessary meetings arising because of lack of requirement clarity from the client’s end. If the requirements are yet to be explored the client should brainstorm with the service provider in order to explore the complexity of an application requirement.

2. Be Selective While Choosing Offshore Service Providers

This is indeed one of the toughest decision a client has to make. There are a lot of factors that goes into selecting a reliable offshore partner like location, time zone difference, partner’s past history, client base, communication infrastructure, language and culture affinity etc. It is imperative to keep those offshore service providers on top of the list who adhere to industry wide accepted quality standards like ISO:9000 series, Capability Maturity Models(CMM) levels etc. which demonstrates their reverence for quality compliance. An enterprise should carefully evaluate all the options based on these factors before selecting an offshore service provider.

3. Set Communication Plans across Strategic, Operation and Project Levels

When it comes to successfully executing a complex project, the scope of communication goes beyond the software development level and spans across strategic and operational levels. Effective communication at strategic, operational and project levels goes a long way in accelerating projects at hand and ensuring the development progresses without downplaying business objectives and quality standards. Enterprises which communicate effectively with their offshore partners benefit more than their counterparts as effective communication bridges the gap between requirements and the applications’ actual performance.

4. Manage and Monitor Development Progress

Depending upon the size of the project, project planning along with the team is vital for tracking software development progress and rectifying backlogs. Tracking project progress regularly through status meetings helps in identifying and eliminating the roadblocks impeding a software development process. A project manager can use various applications that are readily available in the market. to manage projects effectively.

5. Metrics to Measure Quality – Use Grant Charts if required!

If a project is following the agile route to development, it becomes hard to manage projects at times. This is because the project is divided into sprint meetings with successive backlogs. Managing and monitoring sprint meetings effectiveness becomes vital. To manage them effectively, preparing a grant chart to monitor quality based on metrics like time, team velocity, individual velocity, backlog frequency, burn-downs etc. can significantly improve the quality of the project through proper analysis of cause and effect variations. To ensure quality is not compromised the client and the service providers should plan it in advance to avoid any quality defects and application failure.

Source: Ezinearticles
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  • http://grayburks.wordpress.com/2013/06/27/your-main-tasks-as-an-offshore-software-company-is-to-provide-services-in-all-sorts-of-software-development-for-your-clients/ Slade Guzman

    This post is really very important for reader that gives the whole process of the offshore software development project. That is nice for the developer.

  • Nyk

    Good tips!The first and foremost key to success in case of outsourcing is choosing a good outsourcing guide.

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