Case study: Four-year Offshore Cooperation with a Swiss Client

The client

A Swiss venture capital company with its own IT solution department

What does the client want?

The client needs to migrate an intranet application from Asp to dotnet and to merge a set of controls into the new system to improve user experience. "...I like the idea of having more features available, like min value, max value, reg exp, etc. This is very nice and I think this really should be included into the project. Also, I like very much the idea of having a double check: one client-side (not secured but practical to avoid useless client-server trips) and one server-side (secured)... "

--- From client's emial on April 15, 2010

Features

• Original system is huge, complicated and unique in design.
• A lot of research & development work.
• According to feedback from end users, changing of requirement is very frequent.
• Very frequent delivery.

Challenges

• How to keep sustainable passion of offshore team
  Usually, long term cooperation with offshore team, especially the ones which are over a year, may suffer from lower and lower productivity because of less enthusiasm. Because their well planning, high productivity and timely adjustment, the team doesn't have to suffer endless overtime work, no need to spurt during most of the time. In addition, tasks are picked by engineers voluntarily according to their interest and capability. Daily work isn't sterile any more. The client becomes their partner to achieve each goal together. And the partnership becomes a virtuous circle which benefits both parties eventually.
• How to ensure communication effectiveness - Response frequency
  Offshore team working may have serious efficiency problem due to poor response frequency. In this particular case, when any of the following happens, the offshore engineers will try to let the client know immediately, e.g. technical problem can't be solved completely, primary estimation is proven to be inaccurate, original plan can't be completed in time, multiple design choices are available. It is not an hour later, not at the end of the day, not waiting for the next routine meeting, but immediately even the client may response days after that. Because the team members understand that honesty is the basis of long term cooperation. In-time adjustment on task priority and development plan is very meaningful to the client's business.
• How to occupy less time and energy of the client
  In the first half year cooperation, tasks are assigned with clarified iteration plan, design approach, etc. During this period, the client spends quite some time and energy on daily work of offshore team. Along with productivity enhancement of the team, mutual trust becomes to be built. Healthy collaboration atmosphere leaves the team a great space of creativeness and innovation. It facilitates many helpful suggestions of using latest technology and design mode in a long run. Acceptance is never a problem at all. Furthermore, the client frees up his hands from offshore team and focuses more on critical issues locally.
• How to ensure communication effectiveness - Language barrier
  Honestly, English of the very first engineer in this cooperation isn't good enough. On the other hand, instant message tool is prohibited in the client's company. With limited understanding of the system, plenty of communication between offshore engineer and the client is required at that time. Very possibly, it could have been a communication barrier from the very beginning.
  
  Both sides manage to conquer the difficulty by their own ways. The client tries to use tens of emails a day to keep the bandwidth of communication. The offshore engineer uses as much screen shots as he can to illustrate instead of language description. Go2meeting is used a lot to demonstrate complicated problems when screen shot doesn't work. With sufficient interactivity, a lot of things come to be easy, such as visibility of working process, efficiency enhancement, etc.