Mobile Offshore Development
At the recent London Momo, Tom Hume related some experiences in using mobile offshore development. He described how it was difficult to find people who actually knew about mobile development, in particular connected mobile applications. However, he has eventually found a reputable company. He also said that any savings in cost were balanced by the increased timescales quoted by most offshore companies.
In the last six months I have been contacted by two offshore companies who have taken on work only to become ’stuck’ during implementation. When asked how they could afford to use a developer in the UK, I was told they were willing to pay in order to build their reputation. As an aside, nothing ever came of this ‘work’.
I have also been contacted by two companies in the UK who previously used offshore companies that pulled out of projects when they got into difficulties. The UK companies were looking for quick solutions because the offshore companies had lost them a considerable amount of time.
I had another client who used me to do feasibility/design work on the understanding that the implementation would be done in India. I was OK with this. Once the initial work was complete, my client found it very difficult to find a suitable offshore developer and ended up coming back to me.
It’s a difficult choice. Many mobile projects tend to be inherently risky. Offshore mobile development can compound the risk of technical success yet also minimise the financial risk by potentially reducing costs.
December 21st, 2005 at 12:06 am
Just to clarify: it was actually Mark Curtis of Flirtomatic who related his experiences digging around for offshore development. We’ve worked with the company that Mark found, and have had good experiences with them.
I did talk about savings in day rates being balanced out by longer time estimates; I don’t know how representative this is of other folks’ experience, and it’s worth noting that this is the only time where we’ve considered offshoring any of our dev work.
I think you’re right to note that there’s inherent risk in mobile projects: they’re targeting a variety of software and hardware problems, involving producing consumer-ready services, and are typically operating to aggressive timescales.