stevie_b Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Does anyone on here have experience of outsourcing software development? I'm thinking of India or eastern Europe, but could be anywhere really. I'm considering doing this, and keen to hear about experiences, companies to recommend/avoid, process that must be followed, etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian C Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Don't do it. It's more expensive than you think - the headline cost figure is low, but any product you get will be garbage and won't work. The overheads of onshore resource time (and stress levels!) spent trying to control the project and trying to get anything done or fixed or made to any kind of working functional spec is massive. It'll require dedicated onshore people to wrangle them and to correct the mess that comes out. You may as well just develop it onshore as you'll basically be doing that with your 3rd line support people anyway This is based on a decade of experience of dealing with curry code at various levels in big-ass organisations and multiple offshore providers. Usually it's during high severity incidents caused by it failing dismally in live with memory leaks, slow performance, and zero scaling or resiliency. Or comical security breaches. I could go on but I think I've made my point -Ian Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 There's plenty of links about the pitfalls of Indian outsourcing, but I've heard that east Europe has a better mix of talent levels (meaning less mistakes to be corrected). But I'm still wary of it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RobUK Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 No such thing as cheap software development, I've employed many over the last 15 years, the good you pay them whatever they want, the bad you bin as quickly as possible before they ruin your project Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 No such thing as cheap software development, I've employed many over the last 15 years, the good you pay them whatever they want, the bad you bin as quickly as possible before they ruin your project Is that offshore outsourcing experience? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 https://www.freelancer.com I know a few people who have used this, some as developers and others wanting work done, if I was looking to outsource some work I would start here. One friend also uses another application with his remote developers which they have to agree to, it takes screen shots and records activity time so you can get true hour by hour billing, by implementing this he apparently cut some of his costs in half, I guess this is due to managing remote staff and having them slacking off or working on something else on your time. If interested I can ask him for more details and post it here Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 As no one else asked, what type of development are you looking for? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 Yes please Wez, interested in more details. The development is maintenance of a web app, MySQL backend with web pages written in C++ (more like C with STL) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Abz Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 We have had nightmare using off shore in both India & Eastern Europe. You know the saying that you get what you pay for and it is exactly that. They seem to be getting better but the initial cost is cheap till like Ian says you spend more and more time correcting things & pushing the deadline further and further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Yes please Wez, interested in more details. OK will have a chat with him and let you know Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian C Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I've worked on the front line for years on serious enterprise accounts, places with their own datacentres and x thousands of servers. Massive e-commerce architectures, big internal apps, multi million pound databases and so on and so forth, and they've all had a go at offshoring stuff at some point. It has never made things better. It's not even cheaper - one decent high severity incident that puts a website offline that brings in 50 grand an hour wipes out all the savings you could have made that year by binning stuff offshore. And you'll get those outages for sure. I've interacted with hundreds of techies, support staff, project managers, incident managers, general managers, account executives etc etc. and I have never, ever heard any of them say it was a good move. Only accountants and upper management do, and only because a) the rectification work/outage loss is a 'different budget' and b) chinese whispers and "managing the message" dilutes the train wreck more and more the higher up the food chain it goes. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Hmm, as I feared. If I do it I'll need to be extra-diligent, which of course costs time and money. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
grahamc Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Im with the others on this.... I work as a SQL Server specialist and have spent way too much time cleaning up the mess made and I mean the simple stuff. Projects that were 3-4 years late and 4-5x over budget and still not doing what they initially wanted (and doing all this very very poorly). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny g Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Don't do it. It's more expensive than you think - the headline cost figure is low, but any product you get will be garbage and won't work. The overheads of onshore resource time (and stress levels!) spent trying to control the project and trying to get anything done or fixed or made to any kind of working functional spec is massive. It'll require dedicated onshore people to wrangle them and to correct the mess that comes out. You may as well just develop it onshore as you'll basically be doing that with your 3rd line support people anyway This is based on a decade of experience of dealing with curry code at various levels in big-ass organisations and multiple offshore providers. Usually it's during high severity incidents caused by it failing dismally in live with memory leaks, slow performance, and zero scaling or resiliency. Or comical security breaches. I could go on but I think I've made my point -Ian This! Absolutely this. My company does software testing, and we see first hand the issue with off-shore/near-shore development. Day rate per person simply does not work on a scaling factor. You'll pay £x for so many days to get the "curry code" as Ian so eloquently described. You'll then pay more in testing, defects, triage, re-testing and reporting than you would have if you'd gone onshore. Freelancer works for small, adhoc, one-man projects, but invariably you need quality onshore people for a programme/big project of work. Again, as Ian says, in our work, we discover that you end up with poor performance, high CPU cost and memory leaks. They rarely pass a soak test (8+ hours of continual loaded tests without degradation), which means you'll never see out a working day. Go onshore, get a price, ensure you factor in a Warranty Period in to your work for the first 6 months for bug fixes, do not allow them to do their own testing, invest in third party testing with integrity (hi!) and go from there. I'm happy to help you in any way I can if you need it, drop me a PM. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I agree with pretty much everything said here and it really depends what you are asking for. It depends what you are looking for, is it an ongoing project, is it an existing project or something new? As above if you want a one off project completed and that be the end of it, you have good project plan and requirements documentation etc then outsourcing could work for you, if its a large ongoing project then you cannot beat having the expertise in house. You have to remember that they can only work to the documentation you provide so if you get something back and it doesn't work how you want and your documentation doesn't explain it clearly then you can end having to pay to rectify the issue. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Here is the worker tracking software I mentioned earlier https://hubstaff.com/ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny g Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Having a good Business Analyst work with you to thrash out quality Functional and Non Functional Requirements alongside a Requirements Traceability Matrix is massive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 Hmm, the message on here is pretty clear, here be dragons. I think I'll find another way to get the work done. Thanks guys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
johnny g Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 Hmm, the message on here is pretty clear, here be dragons. I think I'll find another way to get the work done. Thanks guys. What is it you need doing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Wez Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 As no one else asked, what type of development are you looking for? It depends what you are looking for, is it an ongoing project, is it an existing project or something new? What is it you need doing? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stevie_b Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 It's an existing project, long term development. A LAMP-style application, but with C++ instead of PHP/Perl. I'm looking to clear a backlog of relatively basic tasks. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
chilli Posted March 3, 2017 Share Posted March 3, 2017 If you want to outsource you really need to tread carefully and have organisational support for it. It can be fine, but for a small simple system (or legacy maintenance) you might just need one or more contractors. After all software can get VERY expensive VERY quickly. My team is in England, Scotland, Ukraine, Singapore, USA and Israel to name a few and it's not an issue, however time-zones can be a PITA, as can communications. Good luck! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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