Challenges of Outsourcing

Shaer HassanCEO, Nascenia IT

www.nascenia.com

Differences

• They are not in your payroll

• You can’t see them often• You can’t communicate

them as easily

Challenge 1: Not in Payroll

• Development Team not in payroll. There remains a psychological barrier in communicating to them

Challenge 2: absence of nonverbal

• Non-verbal communication consists of two-thirds of the communication between two persons

• Nonverbal communication: body language, facial expression (smile, frown, surprise etc.), even touch and smell are completely absent.

Challenge 3: time lapse

• Time lapse in communication. It’s not like go to the next desk and give some instruction.

• Difference in time zone• You might not feel comfortable to dial a

number any time of the day and discuss an issue right away.

Address Challenge 1: not in Payroll

• Communicate the expectation and requirement clearly – responsibility of both the parties.

• Understand and make understand the business domain

• Understand that delivering working software is paramount important

• Act like members of a single team

Address Challenge 2: Nonverbal

• Use humor carefully. Humor can be regarded as sarcasm. Understand cultural difference.

• Be clear. Make the requirement well-articulated. Be rather over-communicative.

• Save the warmth of communication for video call.

Address Challenge 3: Delay in communication

• Be organized• A well documented requirement saves

hundreds of hours and millions of dollars down the line

Tools to use

• Mails: Communicate the requirement at first• Skype: Making understand the business domain,

clarify understanding• Yugma / Skype screen share: Clarify understanding,

showing demo (if reqd.)• Google Doc and spreadsheet: communicate

requirement at first, for managing a very small project

• Project Management tools: During development phase – managing a small to large sized project

Project Management Tools

• Basecamp: very basic, easy to setup and use• Pivotal Tracker: Provides little more flexibility• Version one, Target Process, Mingle etc.

An Outsourcing Story1. Client Mark sends email: “I need this work …, can you do

this?”2. OSD Fuad replies: “Yes we can, sends some work example or

references to prove expertise”3. Mark sends spec often in a doc or spreadsheet.4. Fuad sends back Questions on spec and domain5. Mark sends reply or set up a meeting6. Fuad estimates time, milestones and cost7. Mark and Fuad negotiate and agree on price and estimate8. Mark sets up project management tool (OSD helps on that)9. Mark provides access to existing codebase (if any), to version

control e.g. Git, SVN.10. Fuad and his team starts work

Outsourcing Story (cont.)

• After finishing milestone sends invoice• Client make wire transfer• Repeat…

Success Rate

• 98% for us• We have been doing it for

more than 5 years. Nobody complained about communication issue in last two years.

• People all around the world are have been doing it for tens of years!

Brighter Side• You are automatically

becoming organized. All your requirement and bugs are documented and threaded in a project management tool.

• You are in good hand of professionals who have experience of developing myriad of software

Brighter Side

• Projects are completed often faster. Hey! They aren’t in your payroll! They want to finish the work, get paid and move on!

Brighter Side

• You become efficient, flexible, competitive and agile. Focus on your core business.

Brighter Side

• You save money:– Save by paying at the rate of a low cost living

standard. – Save by not keeping developers on your payroll

round the year.– Save by not paying for the training and overhead

cost.– Save by avoiding hassle of hiring and retaining

programmers.

• Supply meets your flexible demand.

• You achieve workforce productivity

Brighter Side

Bottom-line

• With the expense of organizing and streamlining your communication, you save your cost, time, effort and hire an experienced and large team offshore!

Thank you

shaer@nascenia.com