Comment on Ooohs! & Aaahs?!! of Outsourcing (suggested by Adam benayoun)

As a project manager, i have many years of experience with outsourcing, i’ve been playing from both side, many time as a freelancers and many times contracting the freelancers.

BE aware that outsourcing isnt the same as offshoring.
Outsourcing is delegating an internal project to an outside entity. This entity (the freelancer) can be local and you can meet him and in case of bad experience you can sue him if needed.
On the other side, offshoring is outsourcing to another entity in another nation which mean are able to lower down the cost than outsourcing, but take in mind that wont sue the outside entity (freelancer) if its a low bid or even wont be able to meet him and personally explain him the nature of the project.

After years of experience, i always go with outourcing. you not only can meet with your freelancer and set the standards, sign an agreemen and basically have a better impression of the man you working with but you also control the overall price of the project which mean you CAN be on price and on time if you know how outsource and manage your projects or part of your project.
I would also advise you to have some kind of basic understanding of coding in order to go over the code and make sure it has been written in a good manner and spot potential bugs/anomaly.
In case you have no such skills, i would advise to look out for a friend that will help you check the code before paying for it, or if the project is in big scale, hire at least a project manager to make sure that everything will be delivered in time and within the price scope.

Regarding the offshoring, i did it many times and always got disappointed. You cannot meet the freelancer nor sue him which mean that if you have a problem after completion of the code, you are in big problem. Timeframe are never met (but to be honest you need to take this in mind and calculate the timeframe with all the possibilities available). Price are never met since you always have to hire someone else afterward or go over the code and sometime fix it yourself or fire/hire/fire/hire several coders until your code is done and time = money as we know.
Personally after dozend offshored project, i stopped with that and now local outsource my small projects, i generally end up paying 20%-25% more for them but i know that i will be on time and on price.
Also, if you are small startup, i would strongly advise you to never outsource/offshore your business core, there is noone that will do a better job than yourself/yours coders.

About Adam Benayoun
Adam Benayoun is a serial entrepreneur. CEO and founder at Lionite, he currently develops Octabox, which provides a Web platform combined with a professional social network for small businesses and freelancers. If you'd like to share your past experiences and discuss, you can contact him at adam [at] octabox dot com, Check out his profile at Facebook or LinkedIn.

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Adam Benayoun
(114 points)
June 04, 04:06 pm

It would need a complete rewrite, but i would like to write a more complete article regarding outsourcing locally vs outsourcing overseas.

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