Offshore Service Model

Introduction

Some of the Major concerns for an outsourcing organization are, physically monitoring and controlling offshore projects, develop offshore client trust, develop long lasting relationship, and develop confidence with offshore vendor for timely delivery of project as committed.

To successfully address above concerns a lot depends on how Project Management methodology is adopted by an outsourcing organization.

Keeping in mind above concerns OOS has adopted innovative project management methodology. With its varied expertise it has established high standard communication practices. It has successfully implemented customized Quality Assurance process for offshore service business, which in turns helps the overseas client to keep updated on the project on daily basis.

OOS also understands the importance of updating their overseas client, the project progress in very simplified and acceptable format.

It also understand the reason for the overseas client to go offshore, is timely implementation of a project with desired quality result. It is also important to increase client comfort level through effective means of communication and 24×7 support.

Various different stages adopted at OOS to handle offshore project are:

Project Viability and Acceptance

• It is essential for all projects to understand the requirements of the project in terms of functional requirements, non-functional requirements, resources, technicality, timelines, information availability, delivery expectations and costs. At the same time, it is equally or more important to communicate this understanding to the client upfront and advise the client of the assumptions.
• At OOS on receipt of project information in the form of functional requirements, specifications, use cases or any format, a document of understanding is prepared which conveys the following information to the client:
• Understanding technical requirements
• Assumptions and pitfalls in the project
• Our understanding of the clients requirements
• Estimated overall timelines and deliverables
• Required Information
• Our expectations from the client
• Resource requirements
• Approximate cost of the project
• With the help of teleconferences and electronic media above document is thoroughly discussed and analyzed with the client and the final draft is prepared to send across the client for approval.
• We at OOS allocate enough time to requirement analysis phase to make your project a success. Our experienced men-power with adequate domain knowledge plays major role in this.

Planning and Resource Allocation

The project proposal is prepared based on the Project understanding. This understanding covers following aspects:

• Project introduction
• Project details
• Overview of the different phases till implementation with special emphasis on stages specific to the current project and diversions from the standard plan
• Deliverables and Milestones in brief along with the benchmarks to project evaluation
• Assumptions/comments/clarifications
• Open issues and information requirements
• Task plan in terms of breakup to the smallest unit of work that can be done by a single resource
• Assumptions for the Timelines
• Based on the overall timeline discussed with the client resource management and allocation
• Timelines in MS project along with the resource allocation
• Project Costs

OOS offers several models for the proposal i.e. fixed-price based, Time and Material based, hybrid.

Development Cycle

During the development cycle, Project performance is measured regularly to identify variance from the plan. It includes various factors i.e. time, cost and quality.
Development cycle of a project is constantly monitored by taking aid of tools and reporting methodologies.

• Project planning and monitoring tool for tracking (e.g. MS project)
• Task times and work done updated in this tool
• All change implications in terms of time are updated
• Standard and customized progress reports
• Project reports prepared by the project manager
• Status reports on a daily, monthly and weekly basis

OOS follows communication plan rigidly for client communication. As project progresses, client is continuously updated with progress reports defined in the plan.

Change Management

For a success of any project, it’s timely implementation, tracking changes and managing them are key areas of concern.

At OOS we understand that

• Changes, additions is a part of project cycle
• we have a documented change management process defined In order to properly manage modifications
• This enables modifications and additions to take place in a controlled environment
• This process keeps the client informed of the implications in terms of time, cost and resources for each change
• Only on the client accepting the implications and authorizing the change, it is implemented
• Specifications are updated to account the change and the timelines and resources planning adjusted

Version control is managing through Visual Source safe to keep track of changes. This allows the proper testing and deliverables to be setup and makes timelines more manageable.

Best communication practices– to achieve customer delight

OOS knows that customer delight is a critical success factor for establishing long term relationship. To achieve this on an offshore project, we concentrate on efficient Communication. Effective information sharing gives comfort to the client and builds their confidence and trust in the relationship.

The communication practices include:

• Reportingschedules
• Team teleconferences schedule
• Management meeting schedules
• Emergency communications on a 24x7 basis at technical and managerial level due to global nature of our services.