Outsource Software
Good and Bad Week for Offshore Software Development
At first, I considered it a bad week for my offshore software development efforts. But, then after further thought, it was actually quite positive.
As mentioned before, I find it efficient and cost effective to offshore software development work when the deliverable is clearly defined. This past week, projects I’ve been working on had some very specialized functionality requirements. I won’t bore you with both sets of requirements. One of the requirements involved translating a HTML to a differnet structured format.
I turned to RentACoder a coder for both projects and found what I considered competent developers within 48 hours. Of course, I received the generic, impersonal bids as well, so those were immediately removed as contenders.
I engaged one developer from China and another from Poland. I had not worked with either in the past. In under 24 hours, both developers said they would not be able to complete the project as originally estimated and asked to cancel. At first, I was bummed and considered it a bad week… cursed the lost time. But, I soon came to realize the alternative was worse.
The alternative of working with a local developer would have taken much longer to find, setup and actually start developing before discovering the project could not be completed on time/ under budget.
