How to keep a project on target when you take it offshore

By Brian Betkowski – Partner, Jabian Consulting

You’ve ventured into the world of offshore outsourcing for part or all of your IT needs. And you’re expecting great things. You plan to lower your IT cost, headcount, and overhead. You’ll have 24-hour development, testing, and support. With this new partnership, your organization will be free to focus on its core competency and quickly adjust to market demand.

These benefits are all achievable, but it’s not going to be business as usual. To keep your offshore project on target, you’ll have to take a more focused approach to your preparation, execution, and partnerships. Here’s how to do it.

Preparation: The Input/Output Equation

Even with locally-based software development, preparation is everything. The quality of the end product is a direct result of the quality of your input. But when you’re dealing with an outsourced workforce, the input quality becomes much more critical.

Think about it. You’re probably used to working with developers who not only know your technology, but also know your business processes. That’s how they manage to deliver successful solutions, even when working with vague requirements. Your new overseas outsourcing workforce won’t have that advantage. With the high rate of turnover in outsourcing companies, you can’t expect to build and retain that knowledge within the new workforce. To compensate for this knowledge gap, you have to do more at the preparation stage. This is what I recommend:

1. Adopt a process-driven requirements framework in support of your software development. Start with business scenarios describing real world actions that your users or customers will take when interacting with your technology. The business scenarios should, at a minimum, specify the inputs, users, scenarios, and expected results.
2. Then, create business process flows depicting the steps and interactions in the order they will occur to accommodate each business scenario. The process flows should indicate the users, actions, decisions, and impacted systems.
3. Document clear, concise, and comprehensive requirements as soon as the business scenarios and process flows are well defined. These requirements can then be turned over to your developers, architects, and engineers for detailed design and construction. Ideally, the scenarios, process flows, and requirements should be created in collaborative working sessions that include business stakeholders, software solution architects, and application developers. Collaboration saves time and improves quality.
4. Remember that writing good requirements depends on strict adherence to a mature methodology. The methodology must be practiced and refined over time. You’ll reap huge rewards from the diligent use of standard templates, shared document repositories, online collaboration, change management, and a good baseline set of deliverables.

Execution: Managing the clash of the time zones

As you move from the preparation phase into execution, you’ll face a whole new set of challenges. Your outsourced workforce may be halfway around the world with a workday that starts when yours ends. This necessitates a highly structured management style. Here’s how to provide it:

1. Implement a project management framework that includes performance measurements and near real-time reporting.
2. Demand detailed project plans and associated weekly status reports that include burn rates and Estimates to Completion (ETCs). This rigor in project management will help to identify problems before they spin out of control.
3. Insist on reviewing staffing models and sample resumes from the developers, testers, and project leads to validate their experience with your technologies.
4. Establish and enforce clear phase gates with exit and entry criteria so you can keep quality up and costs down.

Inevitably, your level of interaction with the new outsourced teams will not be as high as you were accustomed to before. However, there are several ways to keep every one on the same page, even when you can’t all be in the same place:

1. Invest in teleconferencing capabilities so you can connect with your new workforce on a personal level. They will appreciate feeling like part of the team, and you’ll see this reflected in their performance.
2. If your budget can support it, rotate your onshore management through temporary assignments at the offshore location to act as a bridge between organizations. You should also occasionally visit there yourself.
3. During ramp-up stages of the engagement, bring key leadership from your offshore vendor to your location to meet your team and understand the culture of your company. This face-to-face contact builds relationships and trust that is essential to successful partnerships.
4. Make sure there are clear lines of escalation and accountability so you know what to do if a crisis occurs.
5. Always document and distribute all relevant communications, meeting notes, key decisions, risks, and issues. Then, raise issues in a timely manner to avoid rework. You must also understand the underlying legal agreement signed with your outsourcer. It may stipulate service level agreements and other key performance metrics that impact your day-to-day management activities.

From a process perspective, it’s not enough just to have a good process in place. You must also communicate it effectively and stick to it. Keep track of process improvement opportunities and implement them at logical intervals, not midstream. Consistency is the key to a successful process. It can take a long time for change to trickle all the way through an organization, so minimize change where possible. Don’t fix things that aren’t broken.

Partnership: Making sure the partners and relationships both work well.

Strong partnerships are essential to your outsourcing success. They play a vital role in maintaining order and stability throughout your organization. Fortunately, outsourcing is not a new concept, so you can learn from the partnership best practices of those who’ve done it before.

Find someone you trust who has experience in the field, and give them an advisory or management role. Even though you’ll develop a close relationship with your outsourcing vendor, additional guidance from an unbiased third party can be invaluable. Look for someone who brings an independent perspective, but is not in direct competition with your vendor.

1. Your partner/advisor should be a neutral party that is only incented to make you successful.
2. Keep in mind the underlying bias of potential partners. For example, if you hire a large consulting company who makes their money selling 100+ person outsourcing contracts, they are more likely to steer you in the direction of large outsourcing contracts. Or, if a company has very strong relationships with a particular software or hardware vendor, they are more likely to propose those technologies even if they are not ideal for you. At the very least, do not let your outsourcing company drive your PMO to create and enforce your measurement and reporting strategy…this is a conflict of interest that is not in your best interest.
3. Find someone who has experience with large-scale outsourcing engagements. They have already witnessed a lot of mistakes and can help you avoid them.
4. Look for advisors who understand the estimating models of the outsourcer, so they can help with individual project negotiation. You want to be sure that the savings generated with the reduction in hourly rates aren’t negated by charges of double the hours for the same deliverables.

Patience, Patience, Patience

Successful management of a new offshore engagement can yield amazing results, but it does come with challenges. Don’t let this discourage you, and don’t be afraid to reach out to experts for help. Take your time, stay diligent, plan well, and finish strong. Your steady patience will pay off. The rewards are more than worth it.