Picking a right service model is very essential phase of planning offshore software development. Choosing offshore software development model relates to selecting appropriate teamwork and partnership working arrangement for the project delivery. There are four standard types of offshore software development models to decide from. Each model has its own advantages and disadvantages. What one to go with depends upon factors such as difficulty level of the project, time demanded by it, level of interaction required with development team, resources and more. Below are the four offshore software development models explained along with their utility.
Onsite services model:
Under this model the offshore development team goes to client’s location for project development. This model is suitable for the cases where projects are very complex in nature and require Client Company’s input on frequent basis. It is also chosen in the cases where local production environment is an essential factor and client wants the ability to oversee day-to-day project progress first hand.
Offshore development model:
In this model an offshore development center (ODC) acts as an extension arm for project’s software engineering, maintenance and support facilities. The only project related activities that take place onsite are requirement gathering, feasibility study, implementation and support (partly). All the core development activities such as functional specification, system design, development, testing and support are performed offshore. So if you have initial planning process and critical components of project identified offshore software development model can significantly reduce the development costs by drawing on the extensive resources at ODC. Three major reasons of going for offshore development model are cost, skill and expertise.
Cost: When your allocated budget does not permit you to outsource onsite you can opt for offshore outsourcing to places with cheaper manpower and resources.
Skill: When there is shortage of skills relating to a particular field or technology onsite.
Expertise: When the required level of expertise is not to be found onshore.

Fixed Cost Development Model:
This type of setup goes well for the projects with well defined requirement and functional specification. After analyzing the project requirements the offshore software development team offers a fixed cost solution. The fixed cost is decided on the time and material basis.

Hybrid Development model:
Hybrid model combines the benefits of onsite and offshore development model and is generally suitable for lengthy projects with high level of cruciality. The projects that require high knowledge transfer and involvement of business users but need to take advantage of offshore cost and skill benefit are done under this model.

Tags: Offshore software development, Offshore software development india, offshore software outsourcing, software outsourcing India

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