Outsourcing Web Development

Published on Sunday, February 01, 2009
ARTICLES

Outsourcing web development work can be a smart idea, given the drastic price savings of going off shore. You'll find people in China and India willing to work for 25% and even 10% of what an American firm will typically charge. However there are also challenges to outsourcing.

Below are some things to consider if you work with less expensive, out of country designers.

• Be very wary of outsourcing something that requires original creative thought, e.g. iPhone applications, custom web applications, database manipulation and the like. Off shore developers are better suited to tweaking existing functionality rather than creating brand new concepts.
• Instead of telling the outsourcer you "want a donate button," say "the ability to accept credit cards on a secure page with input forms for donor's name, address, phone number, etc." The more precise you are with your language and direction the better your outcome will be. If you don't explicitly state how each functionally should work, they will usually default to the easiest and least scalable solution.
• Consider hiring a more expensive web consultant to coordinate with less expensive contractors if your team is not prepared to give explicit instructions. A consultant can help you translate "I want a Web site" into a list of requirements.
• You get what you pay for when it comes to outsource companies. Five-dollar-an-hour vendors are generally of poorer quality than those that charge $15 or $25.
• If developing a new Web site, provide the art and template design to the offshore vendor. Only after you're satisfied with the design should you send it offshore with explicit instructions to create the online template based on the layout.

In the end, with some preparation, you can combine the American cultural strengths of creativity and flexibility with less expensive coding labor for the more structured parts of your project. This will give you the best of both worlds - and save your organization a few bucks.

Justin R. Hartfield is the chief information officer at the Prometheus Institute. Write him at justin@theprometheusinstitute.org.