Short-Term Project Outsourcing

What type of companies does this engagement model fit?

Companies of any size may identify a software development need that’s deemed to be short-term and have predefined objectives and release requirements. Examples of short-term projects include:

• Startups that need to build their “minimum viable product” and have finite funding to do so.
• Companies that have built a software product with a backend and a client for one platform, such as a web app or an iOS app and want to outsource the development of clients for other platforms that use the same backend. This is sometimes referred to as “porting” an application from one platform to others.
• Companies or departments that need to build tools for internal use in managing their business where those tools are not considered to be Intellectual Property or the core competence of the internal development organization.

The commonality of customers engaging in short-term software projects is that the project has well-defined goals and requirements such that the scope is clear and a fixed bid for the project can be accurately prepared by your potential outsourcing partner.

What makes CodeStringers unique in completing outsourced short-term software projects?

Short-term projects carry a lot of risk to the client in their scoping of the effort. Many potential clients will provide high-level requirements – a couple pages of goals and features – but not a full release plan. Many outsourcing vendors will leverage poorly defined requirements in order to provide a cost and duration bid that they know will ultimately not prove to have been accurate and complete, but giving them the ability to blame the client due to poorly defined requirements.

CodeStringers is different. If you’re requirements are too high-level or unclear, we’ll spend the time upfront, prior to bidding on the project, to help clarify the requirements into a comprehensive release plan that includes user stories (definitions of feature requirements), user experience and interface wireframes and styling, and an software architecture and technology stack. Only then do we estimate the effort and duration such that we are confident in the accuracy of those estimates. This enables us to make firm commitments to clients that we will achieve their release date and stay within budget, unless the client changes the requirements once the development project is underway.

When a software development engagement is long-term, CodeStringersr will complete the “discovery” – the process of defining and estimating the release plan – at no charge to the client. This may also be true for short-term software development projects depending upon the size of the project. Either way, we’ll communicate clearly how we plan to approach the project and what costs the client can expect to pay. And most importantly, we honor our commitments and keep our promises. If we blow an estimate, we take responsibility for increasing resources at our cost, not the client’s, so we can hit our committed release dates. In short, we believe that organizational integrity is the key to developing long-term relationships and we invest in short-term projects with the hope – but not the expectation – that the quality of work we do and the integrity that we bring to the relationship will ultimately result in future work we do for clients.

What are key considerations when choosing a short-term software development project partner?

Transparency and honesty are the keys. Short-term projects often become outsourcing nightmares for clients because the vendor doesn’t honestly engage on discovery and estimation, provides a lowball bid knowing that it’s not realistic, and then sends the client a series of “change orders” that ultimately delay the release date and increase the project cost. It’s a trap and the only way to avoid it is to select a partner that has a proven reputation for NOT playing these games.