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Home / Insights / Blog / 10 Offshore Software Development Myths, Busted
December 14, 2018 - by Manan Thakkar
As industries grow at an extraordinary pace, offshoring software development for technological and cost reasons is a strategic business move. By offshoring a range of critical software development tasks – from coding to custom software development to software support and maintenance – companies can free themselves from the challenge of hiring and empowering skilled staff, while ensuring they get the best quality software delivered in the shortest possible time.
Although working with an offshore development team is becoming a popular alternative in the software industry, it still comes with negative connotations thanks to a myriad of myths surrounding the offshore process. With this in mind, let’s look at 10 of the most popular offshore software development myths, and understand why they’re untrue:
Myth 1: Time Gaps Lead to Lower Productivity
In the IT world, completing projects quickly is crucial as ideas and new technologies are always evolving. Depending on the topographical location of the partners, offshoring can often translate to stark difference in time zones and work day hours between teams that result in low productivity.
Fact:
While this worry is understandable, it is important to remember there are many countries where part of the work day overlaps. Therefore, substantial collaboration can take place for improved transparency. If there is no overlap, many offshore development partners make the time zone difference work for them – offering around-the-clock support by working in shifts.
Myth 2: Communication with Offshore Partners is Difficult
Although offshore development is expected to improve software development quality, factors such as language barriers can throw communication off course when dealing with offshore teams.
In today’s digital world, with advanced technologies available, it’s possible to find an offshore team fluent in a particular language, comfortable with a specific dialect, or proficient in communicating through a certain channel. The idea that one cannot work in harmony with those from other time zones is, at most, an archaic idea. Today, email, video conference, and instant messaging allow clients and their partners from around the world to communicate with one another better than ever before.
Myth 3: Outsourcing Means Lower Quality Products
Since partners are located in far-away locations with no face-to-face interactions across the development project, trusting remote workers becomes reasonably hard.
While the above statement might be true with partners that lack credibility, reputable offshore development teams provide consistent quality of work. Reputed offshore teams make use of proven technologies and time-tested methodologies to help companies advance within the industry. Agile project management methodologies are specifically known to enable more transparency. As long as a partnership and relationship are established, and industry standard benchmarks are relied upon, quality is a top priority for most offshore partners.
Myth 4: IT Outsourcing is Only Suitable for Big Businesses
Most often, big businesses with multi-million-dollar revenues have an adequate budget for outsourcing contracts, which small businesses are unable to afford.
The reality is that any business can benefit from outsourcing – regardless of its size. SMBs can get guaranteed IT support service at a far cheaper rate than employing personnel in-house. Also, businesses can get customized services for a specific period of time, at an affordable cost from an efficient service provider that can offer substantial savings on fixed employee overhead.
Myth 5: Outsourcing Costs aren’t Beneficial in the Long-Term
Outsourcing is cost effective in the initial phase, but in the long run, costs increase rapidly and eventually, outsourcing becomes costlier than employing an in-house team.
Employing even a single person to control IT operations in an organization will cost tens of thousands of dollars each year in salary, employer insurance, contributions, and training. For organizations with complex IT requirements, more in-house staff will be required which will result in even greater expenditures. Using an outsourced support team can provide all of the benefits of a complete team of IT experts without the associated employment costs.
Myth 6: Outsourcing Leads to Security Issues
Several organizations advocate that data is most secure when stored locally, in their private data centers. Outsourcing involves disclosing a company’s sensitive data to providers who may not handle data in a safe and secure way – potentially risking Intellectual Property Rights.
Contrary to this belief, most outsourcing providers spend a lot of money and effort in developing a secure environment for data handling. The core functionality of an outsourced system is to provide data protection from unauthorized access and natural disasters. Companies with extremely sensitive data can sign an Intellectual Property agreement with the outsourcing partner, which ensures all of the work produced during the duration of the contract will be the property of the client.
Myth 7: Output isn’t Favorable Unless Tasks are Specified Down to the Smallest Detail
If specific, minute details are not provided to the offshore team, there will be misinterpretations that will eventually lead to incorrect software development output.
Leading partners often employ their most proficient project management team for offshore projects. Although specification is necessary to analyze the requirements of the job, it does not mean that every minute detail has to be specified distinctly. Detailed requirement analysis is an integral part of offshoring projects. Partners discuss the requirement in detail, and accordingly prepare detailed technical and functional specifications to make sure that a client’s needs are fulfilled. The work flow of the project will follow this specification with periodic interaction with the client for discussion, acceptance testing and project progress analysis.
Myth 8: When the Software is Released, the Project is Over
Offshore software development is a job – once the product is ready, it’s time to bid adieu.
No software will succeed if it isn’t monitored and updated periodically. All software products are live projects, and offshore software development partners take this very seriously. Once the product has been released, partners will continuously monitor user behavior and release features accordingly, to enhance their experience. Even when new features are not being added, the software is continuously tested to keep it bug and error free.
Myth 9: Agile isn’t an Option with Offshore Software Development
Since a major requirement of Agile is that product owners and developers should work in a single location, it cannot work for offshore projects. If product owners and other members of the team such as developers, testers, and QA are not in a single location, they cannot sync with each other effectively, ultimately affecting the quality and outcome of the project.
Thanks to modern communication technology, distributed teams can use collaborative tools such as e-mail, shared calendars, instant messengers, screen sharing, audio and video conferencing, and many others to work together and stay up to date. Nowadays, companies have access to a wide array of readily available communication tools, allowing remote developers to communicate with clients on project progress and drive efficient collaboration throughout the software development lifecycle.
Myth 10: Cultural Differences Affect Development Processes
Since offshore software development partners are usually located in another part of the world, the difference in culture, customs, and behavior norms can negatively impact the development process.
Although culture has often been cited as one of the biggest barriers to successful offshore projects, most offshore partners today understand the consequences and repercussions of a cultural misfit and make investments to ensure it does not affect the output. Conducting cultural awareness workshops at the beginning of the association enables both parties to be aware of cultural practices. In addition, many partners carry out culturally compatible resource deployment that uses local onsite personnel to manage the onshore client relationship, and some even have a culturally compatible offshore workforce to overcome cultural barriers.
Achieving Quality Offshore Results
Offshore software development has become a widespread phenomenon. The roots of its popularity are primarily in software product quality and labor cost differences. Despite the fact that more than 60% of total offshoring market is composed of IT businesses, the industry faces some serious accusations. A past history of cheap code, failed projects, and inefficient offshore partners have led to the rise in misconceptions surrounding offshore software development.While many companies still do not opt for offshore software development because of the various myths surrounding it, being aware of these offshore software development myths and understanding how partners make investments and efforts in ensuring high quality results at reduced cost is important to leverage the many benefits that offshoring brings to the table.Learn how you can maximize the impact of your offshore developments with dedicated offshore development experts.
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