offshore development

Submit captions for this cartoon of “Offshore” in this post’s comments. And don’t forget to submit captions for the other Software Engineer Types as well…

Offshore

Where are these guys, anyway, and what time is it there? Who knows; you always have to count the time difference on your fingers.

But anyway, they seem very nice, and they do try to read the documentation. They just don’t always understand it and it’s not their fault that they were home sleeping when those critical changes were decided last week.

Distinguishing Characteristics:

• Located in Malaysia, China, or a former Eastern Bloc country. (Ukraine is the new India).
• Their proper English is downright charming.
• Sometimes they say they understand when you know they don’t.
• They make a lot more work for you, including having to attend 9PM meetings. On the upside, it is nice to have a glass of wine in your PJs while discussing the desired behavior of wildly far-flung corner cases for no other benefit than that of QA.
• Will often do the needful.
• Sometimes their code isn’t great. But, as I have mentioned, they are generally quite polite.
• ARE ULTIMATELY NOT CHEAPER. But we’ll let CPM cover that topic separately.

Project Pitfalls:
Too many to count on your hands.

Achilles heel:
Communications.

Best Bet:

• Document the hell out of your requirements and functional specs.
• Provide completed mock sets,including exception scenarios.
• Keep up with change requests.
• Meet with them often, and for God’s sake speak slowly (but not louder, because duh) and speak clearly
• Stop the meeting conversation often to see if they have any questions.
• Also, I know you don’t want to hear this, but for best results, you really should just go there for a week or so.

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