Understanding Offshore and Near-shore Let us first understand the difference between near-shore and offshore software development.
Near-shore software development refers to outsourcing software or application development projects to a service provider residing in a nearby country to save on development cost of a project and reap the benefits of similar language and culture for effective collaboration.
On the other hand offshore software development means outsourcing project development to a foreign country that gives higher cost saving scope than a near-shore development service provider.
The demerits of offshore software development are at times it becomes difficult to get an alignment on the foreign country's culture and language which is the core of effective communication.
So how does a company evaluate between choosing an offshore or a near-shore partner? Here are some 5 tips to evaluate both the options from close quarters: Objective of Outsourcing Whether it is to save costs, leverage skills of a particular company, build a quality product or to reduce time to market your product, a company's outsourcing objective should be clear.
Nature of the software development Depending upon the complexity of the project, offshore development calls for a well-documented road-map of application requirements.
Working with service providers located in distant region can be difficult at times, so having a clear road-map of software application development can go a long way in developing successful offshore projects.
Communication, Meetings and Locations It is important to evaluate communication channels to keep tabs on software development progress.
Whether it's going to be through regular project meetings, offshore meetings or through an interactive medium like Cisco enabled networks to have live video conferencing with the team members.
In case a company wants to have regular face to face meeting with the offshore development team, it would be wise to look out for a destination nearby as a distant offshore visit to a foreign country might be a little time consuming.
Hence, evaluating offshore service provider's communication infrastructure play a vital role in selecting an offshore service provider.
Nature of Software Development Model It's difficult to interact with offshore service providers especially if they are following agile development model.
Agile model calls for regular client interactions with the development team as unlike the waterfall model there's no planned structure of software development.
Near-shoring an agile development model would be a viable option as the time zone difference is minimal between the two countries and regular meetings through video conferences can be scheduled during working hours.
Govt.
Policies Govt.
IT policies play a major role in doing business with a particular company.
If a development project is data sensitive, it is quite lethal to have those companies access to sensitive data.
In this case near-shoring works well for a company as we are more likely to have familiarity with Govt.
Policies and economics of neighboring countries.
This might not be a universal truth, but to an extent this holds the fact.