Offshore IT ProjectsBest Practices

Best Practices

• Proven expertise• Past Track record

• Financial Viability

• Empower

• Accountability

• Communication

• Continuous Improvement

• Clearly Defined requirements

• Do not require regular interactions with local teams

• Better use of resources

• Local team gets to focus on more mission critical operations

Why What

WhoHow

Why

• Each company will have different reasons

for considering outsourcing and

specifically offshore outsourcing

• Typical reasonso Proven expertise in a particular area (avoid re-inventing the

wheel)

o Cost savings, Higher return on investment

o Round the clock operations

o Ability to have onsite resources focus on more mission critical

tasks

Who

• Each company will have a different

process to select their offshore

development partner

• Typical considerationso Budget

o References

o Domain Experience

o Track Record

What

• Projects/Activities that have minimum day-

to-day changes and interactions with local

teams

• Clearly defined projects or parts of

projectso Projects with well-defined scope/boundaries and or parts of

projects that can independently executed

• Does not mean no dependencies with other teams, just

means dependencies are also well-defined

o If requirements are not well-defined, take time upfront to do so

o Support Projects – Production support and small enhancements

make a good candidate

How• Establish Accountability and Ownership clearly

• Empower the team with all the information and context

needed to understand the big picture

o Make expectations clear – clear list of deliverables

o Share all standards (design, UI, coding) you have

ahead of time

o Treat them as an extension to your local team

• Hybrid methodology - Pure Agile won’t work until the

team and delivery rhythm is established

o Take time upfront to do detailed requirements

analysis and technical design with review process

until you gain confidence

o Agile development model with frequent demos with

early focus on QA

How - continued• Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

o Daily Stand-ups – if needed

o Weekly Status Calls, Weekly Status Reports – Mandatory

o Common document repository

o Common Issues and Bugs tracker

• Proactive Reviewing

o Design Reviews

o Code Reviews

o Sprint Demos

o Sprint QA

• Continuous Improvement

o Be open to learn from mistakes and alter the process until it

works

o Each context is different and so there is no one size fits all

process