Runtime - The Accelerance Blog

Sustainable Outsourcing

Some advisors recommend you maintain an adversarial and purely economic relationship with your outsourcing vendor. Those advisors help you “squeeze every ounce of value” from the team that develops your software.

But what you lose in this approach is a trusting personal relationship between you and your vendor. You also lose a valuable relationship between the offshore programmers and the software they create for you.

This kind of adversarial relationship is not sustainable.

This past week my wife dragged me away for a few days off. We attended a wine tasting even in Yosemite National Park called the Vintner’s Holiday. Several very successful wine makers came to talk about their craft and share wisdom on how to appreciate their wines.

The soaring granite cliffs of Yosemite Valley do not support grape growing but they do create the perfect environment for spending time away from the rest of the world. We enjoyed hiking in the valley in the mornings and then tasting wines with friends in the afternoons and evenings.

One of the speakers was John Williams from Frog’s Leap Winery in the Napa Valley. John is famous for making Frog’s Leap an organic winery although he will not use “organic” on his wine labels. To him it is about creating wine in a sustainable way. See http://www.frogsleap.com/html/organics101.html for more details.

What does this have to do with outsourcing?

One of the things John Williams said really struck me and I think it applies to outsourcing your software development as well as wine making. Part of the sustainability of his wine making is to use the same workers each year to cultivate the vines and harvest the grapes. This way each worker develops a relationship with the vines. Each worker is assigned rows in the vineyard and he accumulates knowledge of the vines that keeps them healthy and producing grapes in an optimum way.

My wife says only I could go to a wine tasting and think about outsourcing!

But I think there is a useful comparison here. Many consider offshore programmers as commodities that can be hired at the lowest price. That’s exactly how many wineries and farms in California hire migrant workers that cross the border from Mexico. It might be okay to use random workers that are different each year for picking cotton or lettuce.

But growing wine grapes is different.

So is developing software applications.

The development of your software over multiple releases will benefit from hiring a stable and consistent software development team. When you hire programming employees, you don’t move them around from one part of the code to another. You don’t swap them out for new, cheaper programmers next year.

You want each of your programmers focused on one particular area and to become experts at how the code works and how your software delivers value to your users. It is the same for your outsourced team offshore.

Your challenge is to find a vendor that is committed to working with you in the same way that Frog’s Leap Winery creates wines. You want to partner with a vendor that gives you a team of craftsman committed to creating great software. All Accelerance global partners fit this profile.

You shouldn’t need to squeeze your offshore vendor like an over ripe grape to get the high quality software you deserve at the lowest possible price. Partner with a vendor that will gladly deliver quality software as a matter of pride, and as a product of low-cost sustainable outsourcing.

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The Runtime Bottom Line: If you have an occasional small software development project then outtasking to the lowest bidder is a reasonable strategy. But if you have ongoing needs for software development then churning your offshore software development resources will cost you more in wasted time than you can save on an hourly rate for programmers. Partner with a stable offshore vendor and get the software you need for years to come.

Until next time,

Steve Mezak, CEO

Risk-Free Outsourcing
Accelerance, Inc.

http://www.Accelerance.com

Outtasking vs. Outsourcing

“I’ll try anything twice!” is the old joke line.

That’s about how many times people try outsourcing before giving up in frustration and disgust.     

But are they outsourcing or outtasking by mistake? You need a different kind of programmer and software development process for each. And you can get into trouble doing one when you really need the other.

A few months ago I got a call from an entrepreneur. He was looking for a software guru to help start his company. He wanted a local technical person to develop the prototype of his software product.         

He didn’t find one.

Instead he hired an offshore vendor referred to him by a friend.

Sound familiar? That is the way most people find an offshore vendor. The problem is this method only gives you a choice of one. Or two, if you have two friends with offshore outsourcing experience. That’s still not much of a choice for such an important relationship.

But this entrepreneur lucked out. The offshore vendor did okay. Not great, but good enough to get the project started.

Then he hired a freelancer to polish up a few things up and the prototype was finished.

Voila! A prototype software product at an extremely low cost. But what is really going on here?

He was really outtasking rather than outsourcing.
            
You want to use outtasking when you have a small project and need quick, short-term help. You provide a description of what you want, the programmer does the work and you’re done. Everybody is happy.

And outtasking to the lowest bidder is fine. Pay only after you see some progress, or use an escrow system. If your selected programmer doesn’t get the work done, then you can choose another one and lose only time.     

Go ahead and use outtasking to one or two individual freelancers if you have a small, well-defined and short term project you feel comfortable managing yourself.

But beware! Outtasking does not scale well. It is very difficult to manage a larger group of freelancers scattered around the globe. Outtasking doesn’t work well in a larger project where you need multiple engineers programming over an extended period of time.     

Instead you want to develop a relationship with an offshore vendor that will manage the programming over the months needed for one or more bigger projects.
            
This is outsourcing.

Instead of trying to find the cheapest programmers, you should look for the ones that are the most reliable and do the best job.     

This way they become part of your team of resources and an asset to your business. When you need programming work in the future, you then have someone you can rely on.

If you use outtasking when you really need outsourcing then you lose out on some things. 

Like the entrepreneur mentioned above, you can get a prototype at a low-cost. But the knowledge and understanding of how your software works is left in the heads of the programmer(s) that worked on it. After you project is finished, then off they go to work on other projects. They are unavailable for future updates to your software.

Are you frustrated by a lack of progress using a handful of offshore programmers to work on your software? Are you really outtasking when you should be outsourcing? This is something you can fix.     

But can you quickly switch from outtasking to outsourcing with the right resources? You bet!
            
Accelerance Outsourcing Jumpstart services are the best way to get started with offshore outsourcing quickly and safely. You can find the best offshore vendor from a well-qualified short list in just a few days.

You can quickly find a true “outsourcing” partner that you can rely on for years to come.

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The Runtime Bottom Line:  Outtasking is fine for one or two short term programming projects. But if developing software is an important on-going part of your business then outsourcing with an offshore vendor you can rely on is a much more efficient and productive strategy

Until next time,

Steve Mezak       

Accelerance, Inc.
Risk-Free Outsourcing                   

http://www.Accelerance.com