INDYProjectCon 2018 - September 7th, 2018 http://projectconevent.com/

1. A Deep Dive Look at How to
Manage Outsourced Teams Effectively

2. Scott Evans
sevans@guilfordgroup.com
Scott Evans is a PMI certified project manager with over 11 years of
experience managing the quality control standards and leading key
enterprise development that combine local developers with outsourced
teams. He is experienced in Agile project management methodologies and
has managed projects across multiple verticals including Transportation,
Manufacturing, Finance, Retail and Technology. Most recently, Scott worked
on Indy’s City Website Redesign Project
www.guilfordgroupoutsourcing.com

3. Guilford Group
• Based in Carmel with over 20 Years experience in software
development outsourcing.
• Development operations locally and internationally.
• Projects managed by senior PMO leaders.
• Specialize in the Transportation, Logistics, Distribution, Financial,
Healthcare, Insurance, Construction and Real Estate industries.

4. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
1 - Cost Savings
Outsourcing makes sense for cutting costs while reducing
workload on your internal IT resources.
Outsourced labor may cost up to 90% less than the same labor
performed in-house particularly for low-level tasks. You won’t
need to make any upfront investment, which makes
development projects much more attractive.

5. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
2 - Time Savings
Software development takes less time when people are working
on your applications around the clock, so you can get your
product to market more quickly than your competitors can.

6. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
3 - Lack of in-house experience
When the internal IT resources of the company are not enough
to manage the company’s IT services, outsourcing software
development will bring new dimensions to manage a company’s
IT portfolio.
Business applications will be more reliable for increased overall
performance.

7. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
4 – Flexibility / Hire-on-demand
When you outsource, you can easily scale and don’t have to
spend time:
• Recruiting
• Hiring
• Training
• Housing employees

8. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
5 - Talented IT Professionals
You’ll have immediate access to the best and brightest
information technology professionals bypassing the gaps in
current hiring pools.

9. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
6 - Improved Compliance
Outsourcing software development would create an automated
compliance system that will reduce human follow-ups in
business processes and regulations.

10. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
7 - Enhanced Accuracy
Outsourced development will improve work accuracy in terms of
given deadlines on a project. Defined software will deliver
accurate results in less turn around time.

11. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
8 - Technological Advances
Technology is evolving constantly.
Companies thriving to a gain competitive advantage are better
off outsourcing software development for technologies that are
advancing.

12. Why Outsource Your Software
Development?
9 - Risk Mitigation
You can mitigate risks by choosing an outsourcing firm that has a
high-quality project management system and a tried-and-true
process for developing applications.

13. Outsourcing Summary
1. Cost Savings
2. Time Savings
3. Lack of in-house experience
4. Flexibility / Hire-on-demand
5. Talented IT Professionals
6. Improved Compliance
7. Enhanced Accuracy
8. Technological Advances
9. Risk Mitigation

14. How We Approach Outsourcing
1. Extensible Development Teams
2. 24x7 Development, Maintenance & Support Coverage
3. Maintenance & Support is Boring Work
4. Rigorously Follow Your SDLC (Whatever Maturity Level Desired)
5. Cost Savings

15. Major Challenges and Opposition?
1. Disconnected Teams
2. Lack of Control
3. Productivity Delays
4. Communication Barriers
5. Quality Control

16. Challenge:
Disconnected Teams
Roles & Responsibilities CLEARLY
defined for each team member:
• Project Manager on both ends
(internal/outsourced)
• Tech Lead/Architect on both ends
• Business Analysts are local
• Development (UI/UX, BE, FE) is
outsourced
• QA is outsourced
• Things “slip thru the cracks”
• Lack of ownership (falls to internal
team)
• Lack of face-to-face contact
Solution:
Integrated Teams

17. Challenge:
Lack of Control
• 15 minutes or less
• All individuals contribute with:
o Completed/in progress tasks
o Upcoming tasks
o Roadblocks/issues
• Meetings followed with written
summary by PM/SM for
accountability
• No “finger on the pulse”
• Lack of communication
• Delays due to decentralized
location of teams
• Catching issues at the 11th hour
Solution:
Daily SCRUM Meeting

18. Challenge:
Delays from Waiting
We leverage JIRA Workflows - Guides
the step-by-step process to complete a
development task.
• Developers define their approach
and add any assumptions they make
in JIRA and not wait for answers.
• Tech Lead reads JIRA comments
daily to review assumptions made
and course correct as needed.
Solution:
Initiative Encouraged
Dev team productivity loss in SDLC
process - stop and wait for answers.
• Not enough initiative to further
development independently
without having all answers up
front.

19. Challenge:
Communication Gap
1. Mis-translated Requirements
2. Nuance of language lost - sometimes
things taken too literally
3. Questions not fully answered
4. Objectives of project lost
Solution:
Open Communication
1. Confluence – Documented
Requirements, assumptions and
Q&A that all team members have
visibility to throughout the project.
2. JIRA - Team cohesion throughout
project utilizing JIRA workflows to
support the Software Development
Life Cycle.

20. Challenge:
Quality Control
• Architect and Tech Lead (outsourced)
have regular meetings to remain
aligned on technical direction.
• Tech Lead is responsible for technical
guidance for the outsourced
development team
• Tech Lead provides final code
reviews via JIRA process flow.
Solution:
Technical Leadership
• Lack of ownership
• Accountability dropped
• Code quality diminished without
appropriate oversight
• Missed quality checks from
disengaged team

21. Summary
• Daily Scrum meeting is for transparency and to help the team
quickly escalate issues that need intervention and resolution.
• Create an environment where outsourced team are empowered
to take proactive actions.
• PMs and TLs need to supervise / monitor work done on a daily
basis and respond with course corrections as soon as identified.
• Clear and constant communication is paramount to keeping the
team members aligned on requirements, project objectives and
deliverables.

22. Outsourced Development Best Practices
From a Developer’s Point of View
Small, local development teams can cut a lot of corners on
development, but outsourced development should follow best
practices as open source community projects often do.
Chris Hoyt will discuss...

23. Chris “The Brain” Hoyt
me@christhebrain.com
Chris “The Brain” Hoyt is a consultant who has worked with outsourced
software development teams, and consulted on redesigns of major software
projects for Creative Indoor Advertising, DATTUS, Carmel Parks & Rec., and
Capstone Technologies. He has over 15+ years of experience in helping
startups find innovative ways to maximize development productivity.
www.guilfordgroupoutsourcing.com

24. Why Modular Development
Matters?
• Customer and Account Managers focus on features and requirements, but
good development practices are key to meeting long term goals.
• Think about a kitchen.
It is easy to make and deliver orders from a clean kitchen, but as a team cooks, the kitchen
gets messy. If no one stops to clean the kitchen, it starts taking longer to cook. After a while,
the kitchen is so filthy that it’s impossible to cook until everyone stops to clean.
This is what happens to developers as well.

25. Unix Philosophy Top 4
1. Developers should build a program out of simple parts connected by well defined interfaces, so problems are local,
and parts of the program can be replaced in future versions to support new features. This rule aims to save time on
debugging code that is complex, long, and unreadable.
2. Developers should write programs as if the most important communication is to the developer who will read and
maintain the program, rather than the computer. This rule aims to make code as readable and comprehensible as
possible for whoever works on the code in the future.
3. Developers should separate the mechanisms of the programs from the policies of the programs; one method is to
divide a program into a front-end interface and a back-end engine with which that interface communicates. This
rule aims to prevent bug introduction by allowing policies to be changed with minimum likelihood of destabilizing
operational mechanisms.
4. Developers should avoid writing big programs. This rule aims to prevent overinvestment of development time in
failed or suboptimal approaches caused by the owners of the program’s reluctance to throw away visibly large
pieces of work. Smaller programs are not only easier to write, optimize, and maintain; they are easier to delete
when deprecated.

26. Dependency Structure
Code Segment
Stored Data
OR
Object Library
Stored Data
OR
Object Library
REST /
db Call /
Object
REST /
db Call /
Object
All code will be developed in “self-dependent” segments. Each segment should have a clear entry
and exit point for data.

27. Segment Requirements
1. It’s own folder (/parent/name).
2. A readme.md describing the dependencies (stack) and basic functionality.
3. .doc or link to java doc detailing functions.
4. A Google drawing showing flow of data and relationship to major functions.
5. A testing script/process and instructions.

28. Segmentation Example
/Hub/Connect /Gateway /Core/Ingest /Core/EventGenerator
dbEvents
/App/Notifications /Portal
Stage 1
Embed Team
Create capability for capturing data
Stage 2
Offshore Dev
Create capacity for processing and
storing data
Stage 3
Front End Dev
Create functions that respond to data and
front-end to see data and manage
preferences.
Update Docs | Test Update Docs | Test Update Docs | Test Update Docs | Test
Update Docs | Test

29. Questions ?

30. ProjectCon, LLC
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