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Take Java offshore

Should your organization outsource Java development overseas?

By Loren Siebert, JavaWorld.com, 07/20/01

Page 2 of 7

Build teams quickly

For some companies, the time it takes to put a team together eclipses the time spent developing the application. Both juggling internal resources and hiring new employees can delay a project indefinitely. Provided you are not looking for Java engineers who also possess some arcane skill set, outsourcing suppliers can generally have a team of qualified engineers assembled within days, although you can extend the process by interviewing the individual engineers yourself to ensure their suitability to the project.

Manage the project, not the employees

The benefits in human resources management continue even after the offshore team is in place, as you focus on managing engineering work, not the actual engineers. That is, while your organization is still ultimately responsible for the software produced by the offshore team, the supplier deals with HR issues, like an individual's career goals and the political consequences of giving him the cubicle near the window. What's more, as many companies have discovered, you may find it easier to work with engineers in offshore companies compared to many hot-shot American engineers. While culture often acts as one factor in these differences, as a bigger influence, offshore development usually proceeds as a team effort rather than based on the talents of an individual engineer.

Emphasis on quality assurance

With such potential for time and cost savings, companies often assume they must sacrifice quality if they employ an offshore team. Not only is this fear unfounded, but you may actually find the deliverable's quality better than what you would expect from local talent. Java engineers at reputable supplier companies tend to be well-trained in the fundamentals of software engineering as well as the specifics of the various Java APIs, and these skills are honed as the engineer moves from project to project, picking up best practices along the way from different client companies.

Perhaps even more impressive than their software development skills is their emphasis on quality assurance (QA), an aspect of the software lifecycle often treated as an afterthought in American firms. No doubt this is due in part to the difficulty in finding local resources properly trained in QA techniques who are motivated to do this often tedious job. For client-side Java development efforts, having an experienced Java QA team can save the day. By testing the application or applet early and often on a wide variety of OS platforms, JRE (Java Runtime Environment) implementations, and browser environments, these ready-made teams spot problems early in the software lifecycle while they are still cheap to fix, and relieve you from having to maintain a full QA lab locally. For server-side components, you have the luxury of being able to add and remove dedicated test-harness developers as needed. Finally, Java QA and software engineers in offshore companies often enjoy a long history working together in the same company, facilitating free and efficient communications among the team members.

 

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