How Transparent Is Your Software Outsourcing Vendor?

 Over the years and across the countless number of products that I have helped bring to market, the ones that nearly failed were the ones that an organization I worked with at the time used an external software outsourcing vendor. The vendors in question ultimately were selected because an executive's friend referred them or had a piece of the action getting some sort of kickback.

In one particular case, it led to quick agreements that based the relationship on just sheer speculation that the vendor was to be trusted, and thorough vetting was not required. 

The first red flag popped up when the vendors refused our software engineering teams to review detailed resumes. Instead, we received a card stating that the individual had "X" number of years of experience with the exact technology stack that we were using. Because of this, the executive team put pressure on the engineering team to get started right away.

There was not a single test, nor line of code reviewed, nor even questions about code structure and object-oriented programming — not even a problem to solve to see how the engineer approached complex problems. The team grumbled a bit and just focused on the day-to-day while getting the new front end, back end and, supposedly, a tech-lead ready to ramp up on the systems.

The second red flag came when the first group of engineers started onboarding with our teams. It took days of back and forth with the engineers because they were nine hours ahead. It took four to six weeks to start seeing production delivery. The code that was delivered did not pass testing. And a junior developer replaced the senior tech lead.

Staff had to spend more time coaching, teaching and guiding the outsourcing team, which took focus away from critical deliverables and ultimately delayed business objectives by several months. The outcome affected the business, which lost opportunities and frayed existing client relationships. In the end, we all learned a valuable lesson, and we had to have a heart-to-heart talk with the decision-makers concerning all the problems encountered when our teams could not vet the vendor and its candidates thoroughly.

After that, I made sure to review in-depth every single vendor. Yet I still faced enormous challenges when it came to vendor transparency on talent, costs, skills and performance. Other problematic areas I commonly discovered using different vendors was talent assigned to other projects while working on my products, talent rotation and engineers unavailable when meeting critical production deadlines.

To this day, when talking with technology executives, those similar gaps still come up, so I decided to tackle that challenge and push for greater industry transparency.

In leading a software engineering services organization, a strategy I share with business owners, engineering stakeholders and economic buyers is to approach software outsourcing vendors with a vetting plan that focuses on total transparency, talent evaluation, onboarding process strategy, training and retention programs. Furthermore, the vendor needs to be able to understand fully what your needs are. If they don't get it, move on.

So even if you are a small startup or mid-size company, it is useful to have preliminary documentation on the following, if applicable. Based on my experience, here are a few questions to ask about your business before engaging a vendor.

What are your business overview and objectives? 

Spell out what it is that your business is trying to achieve. Also, review the reasons the initiative requires certain technical elements to materialize and maximize ROI.

What does your tech stack look like?

Break down the technology stack you are using or looking to use. This overview guideline is basic and can expand depending on complexity and scope. This includes a full technical stack review, meaning apps and data, utilities, DevOps and business tools. A basic product introduction might entail:

• Agile PM Platform: Documentation (e.g., Jira, Rally, Trello, etc.) 

• Repositories (e.g., GitHub, GitLab, etc..) 

• UX: Adaptive, technical feasibility, asset manipulation

• UI: Performance-optimized

• Front End: Performance/ReST APIs focusing on the presentation layer of architecture schema

• Back End: Schema cocreation/authentication/data management

• iOS: Objective C/Swift/React Native/Flutter

• Android: Android Dev Kit/Java /Kotlin/React Native/Flutter

• QA: Test-driven development/unit testing

• DevOps: Docker/Kubernetes

• Security: Best practices 

• Compliance: Protocols 

• Server Setup: Local, staging, testing, release/production 

What does your architecture overview/workflow/diagram look like? 

1. Presentation Layer: This entails all the components for users to interact with the application (UI stuff too). It is for processing the user's input and returning the accurate response to the user.

2. Service Layer: This serves as a transactional boundary and contains both the application and proprietary infrastructure services.

3. Business Layer: This includes the core business rules and functionality of the application.

4. Data Layer: It's the bottom layer of the application. It communicates with stored user data.

After signing an NDA and presenting the software outsourcing vendor, your business requirements document should cover the following, which you may want the vendor to address:

• Ability to review resumes

• Ability to review preliminary screens from the resumes proposed

• Ability to provide calibration feedback and pivot the search

• Review preliminary technical screen 

• Review technical testing video and actual code of those tests and challenges 

• View resource salary requirements, taxes, benefits costs, insurance and vendor profit (total cost of ownership calculator)

• Review onboarding strategy

• Resource equal replacement contract clause

Bottom Line

Doing your due diligence before embarking on a technical project with software outsourcing vendors is vital to ensure business success. Take time to review all necessary components of such a partnership to ensure goals are understood and processes are outlined across the team from the start of the collaboration.

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Article resource: https://www.forbes.com/sites/forbestechcouncil/2020/07/13/how-transparent-is-your-software-outsourcing-vendor/?sh=200113e6ef2a