My experiences with offshoring - Part 3

The Project

What is the right project to start with, is a hard question to answer - how do you transfer knowledge half a world away? We write medical software, so the problem is compounded. We have to transfer domain knowledge, the American health care system is totally unfamiliar to the offshore team, and we have to transfer knowledge about our code base and our development processes.

I decided to start with an existing product. It submits clinical measure data to government agencies every quarter. The government agencies update the specifications every 3 months where they might change measure specifications, or add new measures. The advantage of starting here were

• It was a working product.
• The code base for the previous 6 versions was already written, so the offshore team would have a complete blue print to work from. Communication should be easier when you are not relying on verbal communication for everything – code is code in any language and has no accents.
• The product had to be upgraded every 3 months, having done this for 6 quarters now, we had a documented process in place regarding version upgrades
• The specifications published by the Joint Commission every quarter were detailed and set in stone.
• The delivery date was also set in stone – we have 3 months to get the next version of this product to our client sites.

The team and the project now chosen, we are ready to start work. But how will teams who don’t know each other, don’t trust each other and don’t work the same hours communicate and collaborate?