Offshore Development - Know Your Location

As an offshore outsourcing developer, it is very necessary to see where you are, and even the location of the company needs to have a concept.
Because we should be clear about what we should do, what the company should do, what is right and what should not be done.

Offshore companies seldom face end customers directly. Here we will review these two words again: onshore, offshore.

The so-called onshore is the person who is responsible for contacting customers, and the so-called offshore is the person who undertakes the project.

For example, there is a customer overseas, and there is a project, which is undertaken by company A. Company A subcontracted to Company B in China.
At this time, company A is onshore, and company B in China is offshore.

For offshore, onshore's position is like a customer - because with onshore, we have projects. So, what onshore said, we all have
to obey. In fact, many people who do offshore probably have this idea.

Therefore, many people will feel that the people onshore are more and more difficult to serve after a long time. In addition to meeting various requirements, they are often
accused . And we are powerless to resist, and we cannot resist.

While we complain, we should also think about what the relationship between us and onshore should be like?

1. Is onshore a customer?
onshore is not a customer. They are members of the same team as we are, only they are closer to the client or have the same native language as the client.
However, the cooperation between offshore and onshore is based on a certain reasonable agreement.

For example, a project obviously needs 10 man-months to complete, but onshore requires offshore to use 3 people to complete it within 2 months. Assuming there is no other solution,
Then offshore can refuse onshore's request.

For example, someone maintains a system, and onshore often asks him to do some additional tools, and these tools are very time consuming. Then offshore can reject this
unreasonable request. The reason is simple: doing extra work interferes with normal work.

The so-called "rejection" is not to say "No" directly to onshore. Our projects are from onshore, and their actual status is still higher than that of offshore. The so-called "rejection" must be presented with data and influence.

For example, the above example of making tools. Offshore can list such numbers: 8 hours a day, normal work: 4 hours; tools: 4 hours. That means I spend 50% of my time working on tools and not doing the actual work. The impact is to reduce the quality of work, which is likely to cause problems with the system.

In the face of data and influence, qualified onshore will recognize their own problems. After all, normal work is what counts.
By "rejecting" onshore in this way, onshore will be easier to accept.

2. Does onshore do everything correctly?
Not all people at onshore are geniuses. Although onshore makes most of the decisions, it does not mean that all onshore decisions are correct.
For example, a project I have experienced is very large in scale. However, there is a serious shortage of personnel on the onshore side, and many people who have just graduated from college do design and analyze requirements. The result is that it has been done for almost a year, and the requirements of many functions have not been analyzed and understood.

Another example, we discussed with onshore, a small project takes 2 man-months to complete. But after a period of time, onshore didn't remember it, it took one person month to complete it. Should we accept such unreasonable demands? of course not. We looked up emails from a few months ago, found the email that decided this, and sent it to onshore. Onshore said nothing after that.
Digression: Be sure to keep a piece of evidence, such as an email, for decisions made at work.

Therefore, for onshore's mistakes, offshore can point out at any time; for onshore's deficiencies, we can confidently ask onshore to improve.

The relationship between onshore/offshore is both equal and high and low; offshore can reject unreasonable demands, but pay attention to strategies and methods; offshore can maintain an equal relationship with each other, but must understand certain skills and rules.

The content that follows is a discussion of some of the offshore communication, management skills, and various methods of self-improvement.