People often ask me for opinions on offshore development, and potential questions they should ask internally to determine if it makes business sense to pursue. There are a few factors to think about in making this decision:

- Cost. This is the largest driver of offshore development. In most cases we can hire a developer in say India, for a fraction of the cost for a North American based developer. If we have enough headcount/budget (ha!), then perhaps the value is not present.

- Time to market. Are we driven by dates? Need to show that flashy new feature for next year’s tradeshow? Offshore development can often expedite our efforts since we can have more resources for the same money.

- Focus. Often overlooked by PM’s, focus of our development efforts can make an enormous impact. We could potentially offshore a component or capability of our product, allowing our core team to focus on innovative new capabilities.

Along with the questions, there are often challenges associated with it. To name a few:

- Culture. This is the most overlooked issue with offshore development I see today. We assume we’re getting regular developers for a quarter of the price. Like most things in life, if it looks too good to be true, it probably is. The cultures of countries like India for example, are very different then here in the US/Canada. Developers over there build exactly what you have specified, and rarely go beyond, or find better ways to do things. You’ll find that developers on this side of the pool will often question the approach, find new or innovative technologies that we can make use of, or build that extra little button that we didn’t ask for. This can be good or bad but, either way is something we need to be aware of.

- Communication. Another challenge with off shoring, how do we properly communicate back/forth between our development centers If they are a world away, with a 12-hour time difference and a poor understanding of the English language, it’s a challenge we all need to be prepared to face.

- Iterative or Agile-based methodologies. Very few companies from what I’ve seen can truly gain value from offshore development in an Agile type environment. It can simply be too difficult to manage day-day communications while developing small chunks of capability very quickly. Likewise, a longer or more traditional waterfall development model could potentially thrive in this environment.

These are just some of the questions we need to ask. The most important thing to remember is that it is not as simple as # of developers and cost per developer. There are many factors that can lead to success or failure, and many environments were offshore can significantly augment our efforts but, other environments where it will actually slow us down.

So at the end of the day we need to ask questions, discuss our focus and determine if it really makes sense. Try to think about as many factors as possible, and talk to another company who has some experience in using these types of services. Weight the positives and negatives and make an informed decision.

Any thoughts or comments, positive or negative experiences with this topic, feel free to post comments.