It's hot. It's happening. It's the way of the future. Offshore development that is. Wages are much lower is countries like India and Russia in comparison with US and Western Europe. But it's not only the money that makes it attractive for companies to move their programmers force to other countries. It's the availability of talent. People are well educated in "offshore software development countries" and are still available. Something that's harder and harder to come by in "the west".

So it seems it is something we should get used to in software projects. The aim of this guide is to see how management of offshore development differs from the "standard" software project management.

For all the right reasons

Remember when I talked about doing projects for the right reasons There is a big issue also with this in respect to offshore software development efforts. Most often the differences in wages are quoted. And I must admit, the differences are astonishing. For the price of a European cheeseburger you can have an PhD working for you in India. But is this a fair comparison

Risk number one within software projects is always problems within communication. And with people working on an entire different continent and time zone, like in offshore, you have a whole lot of communication going on. Communication that is made difficult due
to different languages, different cultures, and the absence of continuous face-to-face communication. Even if you understand each other perfectly, even if you have the same cultural background, direct communication always provides the extra bit needed for talking about software requirements. And reducing this risk will cost you money.

So you have increased risk going offshore, and a lot of it, as we will see in this guide, but on the other hand you have a drop in development cost and availability of talent, which also are more reluctant to job-hop from company to company. Are you up to it?

Relevant links

Hytech Professionals - Your long term partner
Hytech Professionals is a US Based Software Outsourcing Company with a supporting development office in India. Our expertise include ..Net, C#, C/C++, Java/J2EE, JSP, ASP, XML, Servlets…and many other solutions.

Freelance programmers and custom software development projects at CodeLance

Sign up now at CodeLance, the leading online marketplace for freelance programmers bidding on custom software development projects.

Offshore Outsourcing Directory & Offshoring Marketplace

Dassnagar Infosystems
Indian Offshore software development company. Offers web development, web design, flash website design, RFID Consulting, ASP, VB, VC++, PHP, SQL, Oracle, .NET programming, database creation expertise.

Macromedia Dreamweaver, Flash/ActionScript training courses
Macromedia Dreamweaver and Flash/ActionScript 2004 MX training courses, basic to advanced level. Instructor-led classes held in central London, on-site training available
throughout the UK.