Web Development V-Team Case Study

Industry

Website Development Company

The Client

A Website development company out of Perth, Australia

The Challenge

To develop an offshore team that would work as an extension of the onshore team. The main challenge was to overcome the boundaries of time, distance, communication and language.
The onshore team had only an Account Manager/ Project Manager at the front end.

The Solution

The limited technical resources onsite was a critical challenge. We set up the team with a single point of contact. The team lead (our premises) was highly technical with great written and spoken communication skills in English. Our team lead was working hand in hand with the Account executive. After the initial setteling down period, a simple process was defined whereby we would take over the complete communication, development and related efforts i.e. once the contract was signed.

We were communicating with the customers on behalf of our client and providing solutions as a single entity working in a virtual environment.

Time & Distance:

The time and distance barrier was over come by strong communication and reporting processes and procedures. The Progress report was sent weekly to all the stake holders. Progress report clearly showed what was achieved last week, scheduled tasks for the coming week and the issues or hurdles that might delay any particular project. This ensured that all the issues were managed on a weekly basis and no major delay in any project went unnoticed.

During the important and critical stages of the project, the onsite team member was also available for about an hour during his night time either on the phone or on online Chat.

Offshore Team Structure:

  1. Project Manager: Responsible for communication, team assignments, project planning at offshore center, deliverables and progress report generation.
  2. Project team members: responsible for deliverables according to the requirements set out and the quality standards built into the system. 

Deliverable Management:

An interim, working hosting environment was created. Once the project achieved a certain stage it was made live on our projects2 server. This way we were able to get the customer feedback during the development process and the changes happened. This ensured there were no surprises for anybody i.e. the customer or us or our client. Once the project was completed it would be signed off and our team would make it live for the customer on their particular hosting.

Communication:

The communication was done through voice conversations, email and internet chat utilities. These three modes ensured that the teams both on shore and offshore worked as a single cohesive unit. A regular progress report was circulated to all the stakeholders every Monday by the offshore project manager. This progress report is detailed and all the actions in the previous week and coming week are clearly mentioned with each milestone is clearly defined and the responsibility was assigned. All of this is complemented with monthly video conferencing, this allowed both the teams to meet each other, touch base, discuss issues and resolve any pending items.

Language:

The offshore team constitutes of resources that have had at least a 4 years Bachelors of Computer Science degree. The medium of instruction in these institutes is English, which basically means that all the resources are highly conversant in both spoken and written English. We put a particular emphasis on the communication skills during hiring process. This is to ensure that we provide prime services to our customers in North America and other English Speaking nations. The project managers generally have experience of working with International Clients either onsite or offsite. This particular quality allowed us to overcome the language barrier to a level where it never was mentioned or considered an issue.  

Key Benefits 

Follow the Sun Strategy:

The client has an almost perfect 24 hour working cycle established. The offshore team starts work right about when the onshore team leaves office. Working in conjunction the teams were able to provide highly integrated and solid software solutions. This model offers an inherent economic advantage to the customer. 

Skill Set Compatibility:

All the advantages are gained without compromising on the experience and skill set of the technical resources. Skill set compatibility basically ensured complete control over the project and the quality of the deliverable. The skilled resources are available in abundance and skill set availability and compatibility was not an issue. Hence offshore team with similar skill set but lower cost was established, which offered the enterprise higher economic benefits from each of its software projects. 

Time to market:

A faster time to market has been achieved through the use of the extended development team model. The customer has seen benefits in the shape of taking products to market faster resulting in business benefits by going to market first and the savings through the use of offshore team. The lower offshore cost allows the customer to put more bodies on the project within the given budget and at the same time the working day is extended. Providing a dual advantage to organizations. 
Work in the 4th Generation Offshore Outsourcing model, by moving far beyond the established onsite/offsite model and adding to it the offer of an in-depth local consulting presence through the customer’s business resources which are part of the onsite team. The onsite team focus’s on the customers business applications, and works with the customers management to ensure successful project and happy customer .

Cost Savings:

  1. Lower per hour cost of the offshore technical resources
  2. No cost of facilities to be incurred
  3. No cost for ramp up of the team, the customer was able to manage the peak time easily
  4. Pay as you use model, allowed the customer to ramp up and down the team according to the requirements. Providing flexibility and minimum strain on the organization
  5. No additional HR cost like provident fund, health insurance etc. All of these were the responsibility of the offshore partner. Hiring issues were non-existent. Once the team member planned to leave it was the responsibility of the offshore partner to provide a resource with comparable skill set and experience. 

Scalability:

Due to the abundance of talent and skilled personnel at competitive rates, it is much easier to ramp up the team size according to the requirements. This has provided our customer with the advantage to using additional resources at short notices and without the hassle of any additional HR issues.