Why Not Offshore Development?

Why Not Offshore Development?

In the early 90′s, outsourcing critical software projects to places like India, Russia, and Eastern Europe was all the rage.  Today, it is well understood that “off-shoring” is appropriate and can offer significant cost-advantages for certain types of projects.  However, for many other projects, off-shoring turns out to be a significant mistake.  Some of the problems include:

• Engineering Quality — The quality of most off-shore engineering practices is hit-and-miss.   Expect to receive what they know how to do, not best practices that are developed and applied through years of experience and project management rigor.
• Project Communication — Effective communication is the most critical factor to the success of custom development initiatives, yet this is where most off-shore efforts fail.  Does it take ten (or more) attempts to get something right, due to disconnects in communication?
• Business Continuity — Where is that small team half way around the globe going to be in six months or a year from now?
• Critical Thinking — Most foreign cultures simply do not challenge the status quo or offer the critical thinking that is necessary for most projects to succeed (they do what you ask for, not what you need!

If you have very well-defined need, with super-clear, detailed requirements, and you have a project manager who is dedicated to riding herd on the off-shore development effort, then you may have a project that is a good candidate for off-shore engineering.

If on the other hand any of these conditions are not true, you will very likely end of paying more in the long run.  The result is likely to be a solution that misses the mark.

Here we compare factors for off-shore development versus development by Practical Computer Applications (PCA):

PCA believes there is a better way. We provide experienced engineering, coupled with transparent project communication, and Smart Client solutions that provide an ASP-like approach to centralized, repeatable application deployment and security, with ZERO ongoing Licensing fees.  End-users get a highly-functional, high performance, easy-to-use and reliable application powered by industry standard MS SQL Servers.

Contact us today for a free initial consultation.