Offshore software development has become prevalent in IT based businesses, mostly because of its many benefits including bringing down costs considerably. Companies generally design separate process models and development methodologies for their offshore centers, to make them easier to implement and more effective in operations.

However, the success of offshore development takes a few other variables into account. If you are planning to implement an offshore center or have already implemented it, here are a few tips that could help you enhance your offshore operations and drive it toward success.

Onshore team lead

Can a person handle offshore responsibilities in his free time, on top of other responsibilities? If you think it’s possible, it’s not. It is a myth. There must always be a full-time team lead to take care of the technical responsibilities onshore while collaborating with the offshore team. 

The team lead should clearly understand business priorities for each projects undertaken and should be able to convey it clearly to the offshore team. His job responsibilities should include: creating coding standards and practices, offering support in technical activities when necessary, reviewing codes, explaining technical queries and even training offshore development team.

Contribution from every member of the team

Normally, the design and architecture decisions are made by the onshore team and later explained to the offshore team. But it’s better to let the offshore team in on design related discussions. Though this could involve a lot of participants in an agile environment, it helps the software development team to get the picture. The offshore team will be aware of the ‘whys’ and ‘hows’ of the design process and express their own contributions.

Video conference on a daily basis

There should be status-check meetings every day between the team leads handling onshore and offshore development. Obviously, video conferencing is the right way to do this. It is more effective than phone/text chat sessions and make motivating the team easier. 

The key is to properly collaborate the efforts of both onshore and offshore team, and support each other. In practice, it still isn’t easy to achieve success in offshore development. However, if you keep these practices in mind, it can make a significant difference in your offshore operations.