Outsourcing some software development tasks [closed]

Question

We currently have a development team of 5 people and a support team of 8. We are based in Ireland and are doing ongoing software development on a product we license and support to a number of customers.

We are currently considering linking with an outsourcing company and in tandem increasing our development team in Ireland.

I have a contact who is very well known and respected in the industry who has an outsourcing team based in India.

I've an initial meeting with him soon to discuss this, and these are the points for my agenda.

• Experience: Type of projects your company have done before Available resources (expertise and costs)
• Communication: (e.g. daily stand ups, communicating progress during the day, instant messaging etc, what time will outsourced team be available from to, what about weekends etc)
• Source control: (e.g. we would expect code to be checked in daily to our TFS)
• Code Review: (e.g. making sure code is TDD and developed to our standards)
• Code ownership (our company will own the code)

It is also my view that the outsourced devs, would work strongly with my devs (e.g. on the same projects, doing code reviews etc).

I like a list of other things to discuss during this initial meeting before committing so we can avoid any common pitfalls.

Answer 1

I would also suggest asking them to come onsite for a few days or weeks.

Reason being, you want to make sure that their team and your team have some time to get acquainted. I've found it is far easier to work with someone who I have met in person vs someone I have not. Especially when that person is in another country, several time zones away, and that is from a different culture.

You will also want to check their bill rates, and probably compare them against others in India. If they are very low, that should be a red flag. Likewise if they are very high.