ServiceCycle » Open source

Establishing and Managing Risk factors in Offshore Software Development

john — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:22:48 +0000

Outsourcing software development is usually done with the intention of lowering the cost of a project. The decision to outsource is also taken to redirect and conserve the competent skills of a particular business, or to utilize the more efficient skills of the outsourced company, its technology, and its resources.

In outsourcing a software project, traditionally, the onsite company hands over the management and the day-to-day functions of the project to be developed to a company established offshore. The onsite and the offshore companies enter into a contractual agreement. This agreement provides the terms and conditions agreed between the two companies related to the transfer of services. By this agreement, the offshore company acquires from the onsite company the documentation of the project to be executed, along with transfer of people, assets, and other resources. Such project outsourcing usually includes:

1. Information Technology.
2. Human resources.
3. Facilities.
4. Real estate management.
5. Accounting.

There are many onsite companies who outsource customer support, and call center activities, such as, telemarketing, customer services, market research, manufacturing and engineering.

The decision to outsourcing a project is usually taken by the high level management of an organization, and at some instances, the decision requires to be endorsed by the Members of the Board. The contract entered into by the onsite and the offshore companies brings about a sort of divestiture of a particular business function, in this case software development, made by the onsite company to the one situated abroad. Once the decision is taken in the matter of outsourcing, the search for an offshore partner would start.

The most important criteria in setting milestones offshore software development is to take care of the risks involved. The management of risks should start at the very initial stage, and as such, there are several risk factors to be taken into account. Risk management is as follows:

➢ Take early actions on identifying the risks.
➢ Determine the ways to mitigate those risks.
➢ Decide on when to mitigate the risks.
➢ Assign responsibilities to your staff to manage the various risks.

Usually, the teams involved in software development are “can do” groups, and it is not advisable to talk to them about process failures. There will be likely resistance from such groups, and you would need to overcome this attitude of resistance. You would need to plan for contingencies and also identify potential risk areas. In establishing such a procedure, the approach will yield the following:

➢ You will have a prioritized listing of all the risk that you envisage.
➢ You will have estimation of the probability of each of the risks occurring.
➢ You will be able to gauge the potential impact of the risks as regards the project or company.
➢ Contingency plans.
➢ Assigning responsibilities to individuals or groups for managing risks.

Further to the above, the following would make your risk management more efficient, minimizing and resolving the risk factors as identified by you in your offshore software development project:

➢ The software development life-cycle (SLDC) should be well defined between you and your offshore partner, remembering that SLDC is not only a project management tool, but also a risk management tool as well. Establishing the development life-cycle enables both the sides to set the time of completion of the project, and identify quality goals, deliverables and key milestones.

➢ Two project managers need to be identified, each from both the sides, who will be responsible to maintain the process as laid down in SLDC.

➢ For the critical areas in the project, you would need to set up the groundwork for “critical path management”, and front end load. This needs to be established as much as possible, for the critical path as identified in the project, becomes a crucial factor.

➢ As you define the milestones, you would need to define perceptive goals for each one of them. If this task is taken at the end, there could be drastic set back in the whole process of the development activity.

➢ You would need to plan for any deviations that can occur in the process of development. This is an important task, which allows you and your offshore team to highlight deviations, track the deviation properties, and learn from it.

➢ It is important that IP protection is in place and is mentioned in the contract drawn up between you and your offshore partner. When making a decision to outsource your software development, this is one important factor to be taken into that decision.

➢ The implementation of the enactment and enforcement of IP laws are different in different countries, and even if you adopt US related laws, enforcement still becomes difficult.

➢ Effective business relation and partnering would be the best way to mitigate the IP enforcement and enactment law. This could be done by effective maintenance of disciplines and auditing features.

Using Open Source in Offshore Software Development

john — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:22:02 +0000

The term open source software, OSS in short, may not be known to everyone. In your IT career, you must have heard of the Linux operating system. This is the operating system that has made a huge impact in the data center. Though LINUX has made its name as OSS, there are several others that fall under the category of open source software, some of these been developed by large organizations, such as SUN, IBM, and others. There are others from smaller companies which you might not ever hear about. There is a difference between what we call OSS and other software like the one from Microsoft, which is essentially proprietary software. Open source software allows free distribution of its copies. Not only that, you get to receive the original code that makes up the program. On the other hand proprietary software can only be distributed under license, and the original codes are never made available to you.

The combination of OSS and offshore development, yield high quality, and cost effective software, which is more easily available. As it is it is a good idea in having OSS as a part of the software development project that you want to outsource. However that is a different topic all together, but covered in a previous article Open Source and Offshore Development.

In choosing to outsource your software development project, it is not only the pure coding skill that should be considered as far as the offshore company is concerned. A decision to outsource your project involves many other aspects to be considered before that decision is taken. There is obvious trust that you should have on the offshore company, who you wish to partner with, and this trust would develop over time. However establishing trust needs to have a beginning. First of all the offshore company should be having good references of their previous work. There should be case studies that you can go through, which would reflect their professionalism in the work that they have done so far. At the same time the applicable skill set that the team has, needs to be evaluated. Even after all these, there could be those nagging doubts that you may have in trusting the offshore company in the way you would want to, since the company concerned is not a referral from one of your previous contracts.

OSS source is the foundation of trust and confidence when you choose to outsource your software development. It provides you with the trust in the software being developed. It provides insurance in the worst case the project has not been delivered in the way you wanted. You still have the code and your infrastructure based on open source architecture which can be resumed or modified by a different software development partner. In other words, you still have the opportunity to engage other programmers to update the software much faster, since it is based on open source. If open source was not used as the base of the software being developed, it would have been more difficult to replace the programmers, in the event of worst case scenarios.

There are different interpretations to the term open source. In the previous example, open source would mean the complete product, which includes, tools, libraries, etc. Delivery of the developed software would not just mean delivery of the source code with the solution. It has to include the open source product, tools, library, and others which need to have some established resources. This reduces the time and effort of the new programmers in analyzing the software. The new programmers would take much more time to get on to the speed, if the software development is not based on community based open source software.

When you choose to outsource your software development, chose developers who would use open source architecture in developing the software. In such outsourced projects, open source provides the confidence and trust in much shorter time. In a decision to outsource, open source takes a positive approach to your risk management system. You can obtain the most competitive cost in choosing a vendor who would use community established open source architecture with appropriate license. This would provide you with the quality that you require.

Software Outsourcing to Canada for greater efficiency and good customer services

john — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:07:10 +0000

Converging technologies and global connectivity have redefined the way modern enterprises do business, and international giants like IBM, Microsoft, General Electric, British Aerospace, and General Motors have thrived further — thanks to the bottom-line benefits of successful offshore outsourcing to Canada. The competitive advantages bestowed by some of the companies offering offshore outsourcing services in Canada results into reduced development & maintenance costs, greater efficiency, quicker time-to-market, and better focus on core functions. You, too, can benefit immensely from a successful offshore outsourcing strategy that will help build highly efficient, flexible business models and add value to your business. Outsourcing to Canada is rapidly becoming a management strategy, as international corporations recognize its multiple benefits.

The outsourcing budget of global leaders has increased significantly and the worldwide expenditure on outsourcing services is expected to reach $151 billion. Most importantly, corporate giants in the USA, Europe, and Japan prefer Canada for cost-effective and high-quality software development solutions. According to National Association for Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), the outsourcing industry is heading towards $1.2 trillion in 2006. And India, as one of the biggest outsourcing services providers, is likely to gain the most from this market trend. Software Outsourcing helps companies to:

1. Cut application development and maintenance costs.

2. Deal effectively with the peaks and valleys of software demands.

3. Focus on more strategic work.

Canada offers vendor sophistication, as more than 200 companies are quality accredited and serve more than three hundred Fortune 500 companies. Canadian outsourcing firms meet stringent international standards and comply with the ISO & SEI-CMM (Capability Maturity Model) standards. Three out of every four SEI-CMM 5 companies worldwide are located in Canada. Substantial cost-saving can be achieved by IT outsourcing to Canada, as compensation packages are much lower. Studies and analyzes suggest that outsourcing business processes to Canada saves as much as 70%. Apply for outsourcing services in Canada please apply at www.olivecanada.ca