How To Close The Productivity Gap When Outsourcing Web Design Work …A Real Life Example

It is well known that outsourcing does have some disadvantages. One of the biggest ones every user of outsourcing services has to battle with is the issue of productivity gap vis a vis the onshore worker.

Experienced users of outsourcing services know that the productivity gap is real…and they have some specific strategies to make sure that it is as small as as possible in the beginning.

Over time and with proper integration of the outsourced worker the productivity gap will shrink…and often times the offshore worker might become more productive than the onshore worker.

Below is the real life experience of one of my customers. The customer is a web development and design firm. When the company needed to increase headcount they decided to hire 2 web developers overseas and integrate them into their team of onshore web developers.

With our help the company devised a specific, 6 Step plan to integrate the developers.

Step 1:

The company assigned each one of the developers to a designer in their US office. The offshore designer were deemed junior to the onshore designers. In the event of vacation and/or sickness the onshore developers/designers would cover for each other and supervise the offshore designers. Importantly though…the offshore designers were not supposed to cover for each other.

Step 2:

Daily Skype Meetings. A schedule was set whereby each design team would meet up via skype once a day. In the beginning the meetings primarily served as a “get to know each other” opportunity. It was deemed important that a team spirit was created among the onshore and offshore designer and in order to foster it the Skype meets were deemed mandatory.

Step 3

It was decided that collaborative tools were to be used instead of emails. Specifically it was agreed that skype was going to be used for screensharing. Active Collab ( https://www.activecollab.com/) was to be used for the submission , feedback and related questions regarding any project assigned to the offshore designers.

Step 4

In order to enable the President to verify that the offshore designers were in fact working and not just playing video games both offshore workers were put on Hivedesk (http://www.hivedesk.com/). By using Hivedesk any perception that the offshore workers might not dedicate the hours needed towards the client were eliminated. It was agreed that the offshore workers were on a 9 hour workday with a one hour flex break.

Step 5

In order to properly integrate the offshore workers the company decided on a set course of action as to what the offshore designers were supposed to do. It was agreed that the offshore designers were going to build only webpages after the initial design had been approved by the client. The senior designer/developer (onshore) was responsible for the home page design and built. As such the offshore worker had only limited ability to bring their own design ideas into any project. The site tree and structure was already there and thus the offshore workers were to finish out the site after the approval of design and site structure.

Step 6

All communication between the client and the company was to be handled by the onshore developer/designer. The client would not communicate with the offshore worker.

Results/Conclusion:

The steps described above might seem simple in itself. The end result though was that a well functioning team developed between the onshore and offshore developer.

Within a few weeks the offshore designer became attune to the thinking of the onshore team leader and started to adopt and instinctively follow the design ideas of the team leader without having to engage in extensive back and forth.

The relationship stated to click, enabling the team leader to increase the level of responsibilities assigned to the offshore designer.

The company realized significant financial benefits and increased the size of the offshore team to 6 designers within one year.