| Cross-Cultural Communication - an offshore | | | | country and communicating effectively and frequently. |
| development company, one in a different time zone, | | | | When the developer is offshore and the specification |
| often with quite different business practices and | | | | is continually changing, the risk of failure goes up |
| etiquette, different national holidays, and the (not | | | | dramatically. With the best will in the world, many |
| always so) obvious language barrier can be difficult to | | | | customers find it difficult to resist changing the |
| manage. Now it's a given that high quality offshore | | | | specification part-way through a project – especially |
| companies will have a variety of fluent languages | | | | given that business needs and priorities do change |
| spoken, but the simple fact is that slang, different uses | | | | over time. |
| of abbreviations and misinterpretation all lead to costly | | | | Selecting the right partner can be difficult as quality |
| mistakes, creep in budgeted hours and time delays. | | | | standards are extremely variable across the globe. |
| You just can't beat a native speaker. | | | | The communication issue works the other way around |
| Technical specification has to be 100% watertight. Now | | | | here – it can be very difficult to make a good |
| whilst this is the ideal scenario for every software | | | | judgement on whether an offshore developer is up to |
| development project be it onshore or offshore we all | | | | the job on the back of a review of their website and a |
| know it's very difficult to achieve. Its importance | | | | couple of teleconference calls. Hence, a supplier with a |
| however is magnified in an offshore development | | | | proven track record of delivering to the UK and some |
| because the offshore developer is less likely to be | | | | good UK references are extremely important. |
| experienced in your native development culture and | | | | In short there is a somewhat higher risk of failure when |
| your native marketplace therefore not allowing for | | | | sending a software development project offshore, as |
| flexibility in the build or innovation. | | | | compared to keeping the development work onshore. |
| Project Management - change requests and feature | | | | The perceived cost savings are often eaten up by |
| creep during a project are difficult enough to manage | | | | additional hours needed to sort out misinterpretation |
| when both customer and developer are in the same | | | | and general communications issues. |