Over the last 3 years roaming in the startup community, I met a lot of people in the following situations.

“I have a web 2.0 business idea.”
“I don’t code so I am more on the “business” side of thing.” (Frankly all non-techie founders said this)
“I am looking for a CTO to prototype my idea so I can raise $5 million dollars from VC.”
“But so far I havn’t found the right partner yet” (it means haven’t found anyone who wants to work on a bad idea for free)
“And I can’t hire full time programmer now so should I outsource to India?”

For startup founders with business background, offshore programming is a great solution to get cheap engineering done for an early stage idea. However, most of these startup projects failed because founders have no experience managing outsourced projects. Problems come in 4 steps.

a. Founders have no real experience managing software projects to begin with.
b. Because founders are inexperience in software development, they rely on offshore vendor’s advice and technical expertise to drive the most critical early stage development.
c. Founders’ ideas are constantly changing with new market feedback which result in frequent change of software requirements.
d. Finally changes are not communicated properly to the offshore team due to time, distance, language barriers and cultural differences. Project falls apart, relationship sours and engagement fails.

Here are a few ideas startup founders can follow to improve the success rate of their offshore software development projects. We will disregard feasibility of the startup idea for now and purely focus on tips to help startup business founders to execute offshore programming works.

1. Pick up your software development knowledge. For founders with absolutely no computer science background, it is a good idea to burn through a few books on principles of software development. It is useful to at least learn how to analyze work flows, read use case diagram and understand why they impact the entire system design. I recommend this book, UML for the IT Business Analyst.
2. Up your knowledge on offshore outsourcing. Same applies here. Founders should also increase their knowledge on offshoring, especially offshore software development. They should understand the process involved in defining outsourced project requirements, selecting vendors, evaluating proposals and managing end to end outsourcing life cycle. Many are common business practices, but few specifics apply to offshore engagements like labor rates, project management with remote teams, and cross cultural communications. I recommend this book, The Outsourcing Handbook.
3. Be as clear as possible with your requirements and provide many reference samples. Although it is difficult for startups because ideas are immature, try to define feature requirements in small intervals and avoid long software development cycles. You should also communicate your visionary product road map to the offshore team so that they take future scalability into consideration.
4. Hire local User Interface designer to help. I have seen many offshore software projects failed because of user interface issue. UI design is a specialized skill that is heavily influenced by local cultures. The usability acceptance is very different between Americans, Indians and Chinese. You should consider hiring a local UI designer / consultant to mock up your application before coding. Not only your product will have better look & feel fitting local style, but you also help offshore developers visualize the application before they code. It greatly reduces offshore project risks.
5. Hire dedicated offshore developers. It may not be a bad idea to consider hiring dedicated offshore programmers for a few month to develop your early stage idea. Dedicated developers work on the time & material basis. They are like your virtual employees who are full time for you. This way, you can work with the developers as ideas are refined. It doesn’t lock you down to specific development requirements. The total cost of project can be lower if executed properly. You should consult with your offshore vendor to put together a team for you with the right skill set, domain knowledge, team size and hiring period.
6. Be extremely patient. Patience always pays off in any offshore software development projects. Remember things will almost always take twice as long to finish than anticipated. You have to spend a lot of time communicating with the team and regularly provide detailed feedback on their work progress. Do use visual graphs, screen shots, and photos to help explain your points. You are in the business to build long term relationship. Patience and persistence with your offshore partner will pay off in the long run.