Janeiro Digital

The cost savings of developing offshore can be pretty sweet – in most cases a fraction of what you’re used to paying for local talent.  If someone tells you that they could do the same work, for less than half the cost of what you’re paying, and you’re not listening, you’re crazy.  In an economy where established companies are being asked to do more with less, and startups need to show up at the venture table with a whole lot more than a comic strip written on the back of a napkin – a low-cost and scalable development solution sounds delightful – right?

So why hasn’t everyone moved all of their development offshore?

Some have, and some have had success with it.  But, there’s been enough mixed results, and enough horror stories to make you think twice about the risk you’re assuming when handing off your mission critical development to a place far far away.  It’s a shame really, because offshore development does have its place and can work like a charm with the right team, following the right process, managed by the right people.  Sounds simple, but its not so easy to make all those stars align.  Enter Progressive Development.

The whole idea behind Progressive Development is to maximize the benefits of offshore development and squash the risks.  You keep the cost savings and all of innate advantages, like the ability to automatically scale up and down, the access to any skill-set you need for as long or short as you need it – but with the assurance that you’re going to deliver the right solution, on-time.

Now if you’re reading this and shaking your head, then you’re probably one of the unfortunates who’s been burned in the past on an offshore project.  It’s cool – I’m one of them too.  We can have beers.  In fact, were it not for the soul-wrenching experience that was our first offshore development project, we never would’ve pioneered this progressive hybrid model, which has filled my life with joy (and a lot more free time).

Here’s how we do it.  We combine a local on-shore presence, that works face to face with the client and handles all of the technology strategy, architecture, and project management, with trusted remote resources that turn the plan into reality.  Each project starts with a minimum of a CTO (like me), a project manager, and a full-time remote engineer.  As a CTO on a given project, I typically spend a bunch of time up front with the client understanding and (sometimes… usually) challenging the requirements, then helping with everything from architectural decisions to execution planning, etc.  Once we’re ready to rock and roll, we start adding resources.  We handle all of the day-to-day management, and I constantly ensure that the team is delivering something that’s squarely in line with the goals of the customer (especially as requirements adjust).  We use a highly agile, scrum based development model that we’ve tailored to work with offshore resources, and combine it with a pretty awesome local team and an equally awesome and trusted group of remote talent.  So far, the results have spoken for themselves. We’re habitually delivering high-quality results, - ON TIME. Seriously.    :-|

In the next couple of installments, I’ll break down the different parts of the process.  I’ll also talk about some higher level things like scheduling and setting expectations, and anything else I can think of to educate you on our progressive process, while at the same time convincing you that I’m not just blowing smoke up your chimney  ;D

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