Project Management in Software Development

The Offshore Software Development Company keeps the Outsourcing Company informed about the progress on a regular basis for safeguarding the development process. It is necessary in Software Outsourcing both parties need to follow a communication methodology, wherein they acknowledge mails immediately and also ensure that emails are not lost or left unanswered. This email communication plays a vital role as most of the dialog between the engineers and the client is done via this mode. It is found out that communication between the Outsourcing partner and the Offshore Software Development through document sharing, intranet sites or certain chat-group-ware like ICQ is the best means of checking and solving technical problems.

Engineers from the Offshore Software Development Company ask questions and get answers to get a full understanding of the project via chat to make all the specifications clear. Good specifications made by them lead to result in good quality software and considerable savings in time taken to complete projects within deadline.

In the specific case of research, or when the Offshore Software Development Company actually produces the specification, the process of course has to be modified to suit actual requirements. It is believed that a project should start with a meeting or an email-dialog between the parties, to define the business problems and the software solutions. What is chosen depends on what the client is comfortable with and also on the nature of project. For small projects email dialog might be sufficient. The Offshore Software Outsourcing Company should submit a proposal work with both non-binding and binding estimates, fixed price and running hours. 

After Software Development success, the Indian government looks at software exports as one of their key growth areas and has set up an environment, which very strongly discourages any and all forms of Software Piracy and theft of software in India. INFAST is responsible for policing and tracking down any software theft, and formulating policies, which act as a strong deterrent for personnel and companies. Make sure your Offshore Software Development Partner signs an Intellectual Property Right Pledge and a confidential statement or non disclosure agreement as part of the initial stages of your partnership.

Some problems might occur if both parties are not aware of how the Offshore Software Development process is done. The main problems are Quality discrepancies, Lack of a repeatable process, Language and cultural barriers, Time differences, Technical communication problems, Skill mismatches, Security problems, Bad management and hierarchical inflexible organizations. Sometimes the Outsourcing Company overlooks these risk factors, thinking that the cost savings is so high that these risks are well covered. But in reality this can be a major trap. All of these can be rendered, by choosing the right Offshore Software Development Partner and working with proper and proven project management processes evolved during the earlier Offshore Software Development assignments.

16:53 - 17/2/2009 - post comment