Effectively Leveraging the Strengths of IT Development Based Out of India
India has really good, experienced software engineers with enormous expertise. The software industry in India has reached a point where it generates software engineering talent on an unprecedented scale. In addition, many Indian software engineers have come back from working overseas, bringing a global perspective on best practices and industry sector insights to bear.
While there is still a good labor arbitrage argument, the main reason to look at India is this ability to offer strong engineering talent at scale. Few geographies have such a ready supply of highly skilled software engineers who can augment in-house teams, complementing and extending their expertise. Business leaders, and not just those on the technical side of an organization, have an opportunity to extend their software platform development capabilities into India. But outsourcing to India has generated some negative perceptions in cases where the quality of delivery has been less than expected, and core knowledge has also been outsourced, making the business too reliant on their service provider. Unfortunately, current engagement models and practices used by some firms prevent the talents of this region from being brought to bear effectively and have contributed to these negative perceptions. So what’s the solution?
Business leaders should mandate a retained team in India based more around a rhombus-shaped staffing model that aligns to their in-house IT structure, with a broad middle layer of highly experienced staff, rather than allowing their provider to staff with a pyramid model that includes a high percentage of untested juniors. This retained team approach promotes a unified software delivery capability comprised of in-house and offshore team members, and addresses concerns around knowledge retention & continuity, experience and productivity. In addition, a suitably experienced, high-calibre team in India knows how to build software based on business requirements, allowing a wide range of business stakeholders to specify the software platforms to be built in terms of the business capability desired. The retained team, based on its experience, can determine the most effective way to build that software, often using innovative steps.
At Ness, we offer our clients the ability to create their own retained teams, and as a well-known brand in India, we attract and retain top talent. We help identify and select staff to meet specific client requirements, and we nurture them and provide local line-management with strong HR practices to support their career growth. This enables our clients to manage “their” staff from a functional standpoint as an extension to their in-house teams, and to benefit from the business and technology expertise our engineers have to offer, without having to worry about administrative challenges.
India offers a great opportunity to leverage software to propel your business forward in the Digital Economy. Why not take advantage of it? Your competitors are already doing so.
