Have you ever felt tempted to hire an offshore web developer?
Many people find it difficult to resist the appeal of the low hourly rates offered by offshore developers in China, India, and the Philippines. What are the dangers of outsourcing, though?
Many businesses have tried outsourcing but given up after experiencing problems with their offshore vendors and switching back to reputable developers. Outsourcing to foreign countries entails risks and costs for your company.
Indirect costs of outsourcing may include:
- Time spent drawing up and rewriting briefs
- Time taken waiting for a response overnight
- Time taken testing and identifying broken functionality
- Damage to your reputation when a system doesn’t work as specified or is not delivered on schedule
- Loss of customers due to SEO not being implemented properly
- Additional cost dues to “patch on top of a patch” coding
- Redevelopment costs due to not using modular coding practices
In addition to these issues, the following are some common problems that are reported.
Problems with communication
Communication problems are one of the outsourcing process’s most frequent issues.
Without the ability to make direct contact with developers requirements can be misinterpreted, often resulting in simple issues taking much longer than is necessary to fix.
This issue can become compounded, resulting in projects running over budget and once delivered not meeting the clients requirements.
Poor quality of code
Many developers work on one project as part of an outsourcing project.
There is nothing inherently wrong with this, but because labour is so inexpensive, many offshore suppliers just add extra developers to projects to hasten their completion.
The final product suffers from a lack of careful planning, coding standards, or quality control.
As a result, it takes a lot longer (and eventually costs more) to add new features and capabilities. Over time, there is a higher chance that defects will appear and the system will malfunction.
This frequently leads to the system needing to be created again sooner than necessary.
Low levels of quality assurance and testing
The testing performed by offshore developers frequently falls short of industry standards.
This results in you having to spend your days and nights testing functionality that ought to have been accurate from the start.
Little to no guidance and oversight
When it comes to using web technologies to achieve your company goals, offshore developers almost never offer advice on the best approaches.
Aspects such as SEO are often overlooked, for example.
Security of the source code
How confident are you in a group of developers you’ve never met?
Can you be certain who has access to the source code?
Are you sure your purchased solution isn’t being resold to other people?
You should also think about the risk of outsourcing your code security.
Conclusion
The dangers of outsourcing your web development project are minimal if you have extremely simple, clearly defined, and well-documented needs for a system that is not mission-critical and a very constrained budget.
On the other hand, you should employ a local developer with a solid track record if you need expert advice and a solution you can rely on for years to come that was produced for a defined fee in a fixed time frame.
If you would like to know more about UX and UI or discuss your requirements then please get in touch or call us on 01625 666900.
