When people talk about outsourcing, it’s like a cold, dark wind comes into the room.
It has a bad reputation of being cheap and low quality.
I want to change this, How to do this ?
Of course there is going to be some cheap, bad developer that will be out there. But when you go to a resturant and get food. They food will very depending on the budget of the resturant. If you go for a higher budget here are some things that you might think of to keep a good project and slim the costs.
Write down the goal. This is something that to many miss. They have an idea and start to build and half way in the realize that this was not the idea at all, it was not a good idea or things around the idea did not work as aspected.
So this is allways a good idea, take the project for a virutal test run before you build it.
This will many times give you the “ah ha” things that you didn’t think of, that might change a project size from 3 monts job to a 1 year job.
And this also gives you an idea of how much and what you want to out source.
Here is 5 bullet points on what should exist in every project.
• Goals of the project
• Budget
• Timeframe
• Users and target audience
• Design consideration and preferred aesthetic
• Success criteria
When you have the goals, you can filter out people that can’t help you reach that goal.
If you need a database, you will need someone that can handle a database. You can choose a full-stack developer or an back-end developer. Probeply not a front-end developer.
And so on, this can give you a better price as well. A know-it-all guy will probeply be more expensive then the i-can-back-databases guy.
Budget and timeframe is allways an estimation. But a range between two numbers can nerrow it down.
Some times things happens to the client, they want to put the project on hold.
You where going to get paid when the project was finnished, they might say “Let’s continue next year…”, and then you will not get paid until next year.
Tuff luck.
And price range, many people think creating a facebook like website is a few clicks away, some have some idea of how long it can take.
To give a range here also is good so everyone knows when to expect what. If it’s huge, the client might even want partial deliveries, to verify that the project is going the right direction.
Users and target helps with how to build it and design. A child might like many scarp colors. A bussniess man might like it simple and clear and structured.
Success criteria is very important. We are doing all this for a reason, right ? How do we meature this ?
One way is the Key Performance Indicators, KPI’s. This could be stuff like, increase number of members, increase traffic etc.
Easily put, something that you can meature before and after the project is done.
And when you do this 6 pointers, think of what is needed, don’t fall for buzz words.
Now you have a good description of what is going to be done, if you now use a outsource for this be super clear on what you mean.
Sure a email is super fast, but the guy on the other end need to have time to read it, time to understand it and time to repsonse. It might take a day before he can manage all that. If the deadline is far away, no problem. But if you use emailing as a slow chat, things are going to go really slow.
And a note, a designer and a developer might have diffrent ideas on things. An expericed designer knows the basic rules that developers need to follow, but a new designer might design something that requires the developers to work twice as much to accive that design. And some designs requires special tecnics and some designs are just not worth or posible of creating.
It’s also important to know that developing a software or site is that somethings that might seems super easy to an none technical person might be super hard and some things that might seem super hard for a none technical person might be super easy.
And make this clear, “just a tiny change”, might cost the developers a lot of hours. And sometimes you might just let it go, and then the client will come up with more of this things, and more hours go, and then they come up with more. And then you had engouht, and say “it will cost extra”, then the client will get mad, and the relationship between you and the client is damaged.
If any change comes up, better to say “ok for this one. but next one might cost extra!” or something. It’s better to be clear from the begining.
Working with remote peers
• Be specific
Make the goals, timefram, target audience, success criteria from before clear to everyone, this will keep them in the right direction.
Break things down and take one step at the time.
• Do everything to remove misunderstandings
Use mockups, wireframes, comments, pictures and everything to make it super clear what you want. Don’t treat them as they as stupid. But sometimes, ask you self, or someone outside of the project, am I making my self clear ?
• Keep away subjective words to prevent conversation go personal and be polite
We are all people, sometimes we miss understood or miss comunicate. Try to keep objective and don’t say words that might make it personal. Don’t use words like “bad”, “weird”, “that’s wrong”.
Ask like “I have not seen it like that before, why did you do it like that ?”, just try to keep it friendly. They might also know the latest trends and are going to impress you with it, and you say it wrong or weird. Keep in mind happy people does good work.
• Answer quickly so your work doesn’t get delayed
This is off course up to you. But they might be in the flow and come up with question that they need answered before they continue. Sometimes you will win on being a bit more available.
•
5 cases when outsource is an good option:
• An important client has a new request that falls out of your experience, but you’d still want to address it to ensure a future commitment with the client’s business
• You said “yes!” to a project because it looked like an easy task, but the client made some changes and now it’s a larger or more complex project than before
• You’re a small agency with no in-house resources available at that time and a small-to-medium web project just entered the office
• You need someone to help you solve your current work situation
so you look for experts that would be able to provide you with what you
need
• You’re in a rush and need help to quickly finish a project
And final, a short checklist for the outsourcer:
• Did I share one other communication channel other than my email (Skype, Google Hangout, phone number) for emergencies and misunderstandings?
• Is my task/project clearly explained?
• Did I provide additional resources to get the outsourced expert a better idea about the desired outcome (mockup, visual sketches, links)?
• Did I provide the expert with all information needed to complete the task?
• Did I talk about hosting, maintenance, and future updates?
• Did I share the login credentials to access my staging website (or other tools)?
Be First to Comment