Dedicated offshore center for networking development & testing for a large telecom provider
Networking related technologies can be highly challenging areas – and it is difficult to find quality resources outside the United States. However, this customer needed to trim its US operations and do more with the same budget. An offshore team seemed the right choice.
The group had product teams in four locations – Santa Clara, Atlanta, Canada, and Sweden. Based on strong offshore networking development capabilities and track record with offshore execution, Calsoft Labs was tasked with demonstrating results and increasing value for the customer. A broad plan was drawn up, with four phases.
- Team Setup
- Initial engagements
- Offshore team setup
- Value addition and steady state operation
The scope covered development, testing and maintenance. A coordination team was formed consisting of the director at the customer organization, four product managers, a program manager from Calsoft Labs, and an offshore project manager from Calsoft Labs. All members involved in the coordination committee were onsite, except for the offshore project manager.
Data entry during installations and process reengineering efforts is a difficult area for many organizations. Offshoring this activity for a low cost can improve service level ratings. Similarly, offshore transcription – which involves transcribing a batch of paper records into digital forms – has been successfully applied to legal, medical, and software installation situations.
Three initial engagements were sketched out, and work began. These were challenging assignments, conducted for the Sweden, Santa Clara and Atlanta locations.
Calsoft Labs ensured that project leads assigned to the pilot projects received face time for interpersonal relationship building. One project needed to be started in very short order and could not go through a formal initiation process.
Significant problems were seen in the initial engagements – with one project proceeding smoothly and two others showing mixed results. The onsite committee was unsure of the quality and direction of code delivered by the offshore team. The offshore team was under intense pressure – routinely working 16 or more hours a day. One of the fixed price trial projects went over budget by more than 400%. A progress review was conducted, and it was decided that
- The customer would take ownership over setting tasks and priorities for the offshore team, and customer product managers would proactively share responsible for quality.
- Onsite project leads from would visit the offshore location, and spend a week or more on knowledge transfer, and getting to know the offshore team better.
- Communication between onshore and offshore teams would be a focus item, with bi weekly communication between customer project managers and the offshore team.
- Offshore team members would be treated on par with those onshore. Performance criteria were set with consideration for ramp-up time.
An engagement committee was formed to put this plan into action.
Team selection was revisited, and the ideal team members were selected over a 60 day period. After the teams were in place, a major training workshop was conducted by customer project leads aided by the director in charge. Bug fixing and module design assignments were aimed at understanding key modules. Reviews were planned, and offshore members were treated on par with equivalent onshore members.
Three months into the arrangement, offshore team members performed at the same level as onshore members. Fixes delivered rarely fail, and quality from the offshore location is far better than equivalent members with three months of exposure to the customer’s products.
While technical strength was a given for the offshore team, outstanding results achieved came from attention to Customer Involvement and Project management. This exercise highlighted some other aspects of setting up an off shoring arrangement.
- With greater scale an offshore center delivers greater quality
- Results must be owned by both offshore and the onshore teams
- Communication and Integration with the onshore organization is key
The customer is now considering expanding the scope of the outsourcing arrangement to include documentation and support, and is pleased with excellent performance.