Outsourcing challenges
Managing requirements is often cited as one of the most significant factors that can threaten the success of a software project. When undertaking outsourced or subcontracted projects, development typically has to be coordinated across external service providers. This can make the following challenges more pronounced: ensuring a clear definition of and a correct understanding of requirements provided to external contractors;
Outsourcing failures can be attributed to many factors such as poor communication, unclear expectations, interests becoming less aligned over time, selecting incompatible providers, cost cutting measures which may force providers to cut corners, and poor selection of projects to outsource, e.g. offloading work because it is less attractive to do in house rather than selecting projects which make more sense for the company’s objectives and are more suited to an outsourced context.
Key best practices to adopt when undertaking outsourcing include the following:
1. Establishing clear objectives and a clearly defined scope and schedule for the project - this includes a clear definition of the project requirements up front, making sure the service provider understands the project specifications, ideally being as detailed and precise as possible.
2. Choosing the correct service provider – ensuring they are a good fit, that they have the experience that your type of project requires and are compatible with your company’s culture and objectives.
3. On-site presence – i.e. someone to oversee development, to keep communications fluid, to manage changes in scope or direction, to maintain visibility of quality and progress. However, this can be expensive if you need to use some of your key resources to achieve this such as senior developers.
4. Communications - regular reporting of progress, ensuring agreement, preventing interests and understanding from becoming misaligned.
How Code Rocket Helps
Code Rocket assists in the following key areas:
1. Providing a clear definition of scope and requirements up front.
2. Improving communication between client and contractor to ensure a correct understanding of the requirements prior to development.
3. Assisting ongoing review and discussion of requirements during development, to retain alignment.
4. Improving visibility of the detailed stages of development to assist with monitoring quality, progress and correctness of work.
5. Clearer demarcation of Intellectual Property.
Clear definition of requirements
With its detailed design support, Code Rocket allows in house senior developers or architects to efficiently define the core functionality and business requirements expected for the project to a much more precise level than other tools, taking you right down to the algorithmic level if required. Therefore helping to reduce the grey area where ownership of (intellectual)
Code Rocket achieves this by bringing together tried and tested software design principles (such as pseudocode and flowcharts) in an innovative way, making them a seamlessly integrated part of a designer’s toolkit. Intuitive, automated, time saving strategies ensure that designers can focus their efforts on the content and quality of their designs, rather than struggling with inefficient drawing and editing tasks. Unlike many other software engineering tools which focus on higher level architecture designs, Code Rocket goes further, taking your design right down into the algorithmic / business process level. Combined with subsequent forward engineering of high quality code skeletons from these detailed designs, this provides your onsite team with much finer control of what is handed over to contractors, setting expectations for standards to be adopted and providing a clear definition of implementation requirements.
Improving communication and ensuring development remains aligned with objectives
No matter how hard one tries, there are inevitably challenges in ensuring a correct understanding of, and reaching agreement on the requirements of what is being developed. Things are missed out, not correctly understood or just not written down correctly. It is difficult to talk about the detailed functionality of a system in a way that everyone can clearly visualize and understand without ambiguity.
This is where Code Rocket really shines. Code Rocket allows you to define and discuss very detailed system requirements in a way that anyone can understand, including non-programmers. Code Rocket achieves this by providing two simple but powerful views of the requirements that have to be implemented:
Improving project management cost effectively
With its simple but powerful mechanisms for visualizing code, Code Rocket provides project managers with improved visibility of the detailed stages of software development. This allows them to assess code quality and progress quickly and efficiently, providing visibility of the business requirements expected to be implemented and possible adherence to development standards and code quality. For example, assessing how well commented the code is, being able to easily visualize complex pathways in the code where testing effort should be focused and/or performance testing. It is very easy to identify large, sprawling, rambling flowcharts which give an indication of code that requires possible quality improvements. Code Rocket can provide automated documentation reports throughout the development stages of a project, not just at the end. Therefore, offering continuous monitoring of the development status and its conformance to expectations and assisting contractors to fulfill their reporting and documentation requirements.
Clearer demarcation of Intellectual Property
By providing deeper definitions of designs and requirements, including possible skeleton code for handover to contractors, Code Rocket assists with making clear the distinction between Intellectual Property that has been developed onsite, prior to hand over to contractors.
Summary
Outsourcing of software development work presents many challenges. Adopting recommended best practices can help to alleviate the risks involved. With its automated design and reporting support for detailed stages of development, Code Rocket provides valuable assistance for achieving these best practices: providing a clear definition of scope and requirements up front; improving communication between client and contractor to ensure a correct understanding of the requirements prior to development;
Find out more at: http://www.getcoderocket.com
