An article on Enterprise Systems provides some practical advice about “integrating outsourced projects.” Although author Adam Kolawa provides some tips about integrating infrastructures, it’s what he advises around integrating staff — particularly when one staff is internal and on-site and the other is external and offshore — that I find really useful.
One best practice he suggests: performing exchanges. Actually, it’s not an exchange so much as a decision to bring representatives from the service provider (or your offshore team) into the environment of the client (or US-based team). The idea is that this handful of people will learn “your philosophy, infrastructure, and methods among their team members.”
The reason for planting these “so-called seeds” is to enhance communication — always a worthy goal on important projects, because it will reduce rework, always an expensive proposition. “The two groups need to connect on a human level.” And then they’ll be in a position to “establish (and then refine) the way they communicate.”
Make sure you read the section on how to tell when “it’s time to send the few outsourced developers back to their own location.”
