Developing software has historically been a risky enterprise. Consider these statistics from a study conducted by the Standish Group covering over 8,000 software projects and 365 respondents :

•          53% of projects were both late and over budget

•          31% were outright failures and cancelled

•          cost overruns averaged 189% of the original cost estimates

•          schedule overruns averaged 222% of the original time estimates

•          61% of originally specified features and functions were available in the released products

While this study summarized a range of project sizes, circumstances, and peculiarities that may or may not reflect your particular project, these are sobering statistics that underline the need for due diligence. To improve your odds against a failed project, the industry experience reflected in this study suggests that you must anticipate, confront, and mitigate the potential hazards of outsourced software development. While many of these hazards concern the quality of the developer that you select for the project, there are also hazards associated with how well you understand what the software you want is intended to do, how thoroughly you prepare guidance for the developer, how actively you participate in the ongoing development, and how well you evaluate the produced software against your requirements.

The mission of our outsourcing representation support is to help you confront and mitigate these hazards. In a typical scenario we’ll assign experienced software engineers to guide you through:

1.         Evaluating the experience of your software developer

2.         Establishing a vision for the proposed software product.

3.         Establishing goals and objectives for the proposed software product.

4.         Naming the software product.

5.         Defining users and stakeholders

6.         Defining a budget and schedule.

7.         Defining a management team.

8.         Defining constraints (policies, guidelines, regulations, required security, required auditing, required DBMS, required language, required platforms, required response, required capabilities, required reliability, required usability)

9.         Producing high-level use cases and initial business rules.

We perform Outsourcing Representation under a time and materials agreement. It will specify hourly rates for assigned individuals and require reimbursement for travel expenses (except for local Baltimore/Washington DC Metro travel) and any services or materials that may become necessary to fulfill the contract.