Doing Business in China

Software Outsourcing mistakes #2 Unreasonable Expectations

Unreasonable expectations lead to despair and failure.OK, so what are some examples of unreasonable expectations?

Lots of people expect to just write down a few general ideas about what they want a program to do, put it up for bid on a freelance auction site, pick a programmer, then sit back and wait for the finished product.

Unfortunately, it's just not that simple. You need to put time and effort into planning, managing, and testing your software to get exactly what you want.

Hiring a freelance programmer is not "fire and forget" technology like a cruise missile fired at a land target from a ship. It is more like a battle tank that needs to be driven onto the battle field, properly positioned in formation, aimed at the enemy and fired at the right instant. To succeed, you need to be involved in the process.

Some features turn out to be impractical; some "easy" features take forever to get right; some "difficult" features turn out to be no problem at all (just don't bet the farm on it).

You must be prepared, determined, and flexible to complete a good-sized software development project.

You should start with something small and easy to manage. Software projects get much more difficult with size, so get some experience the easy (and inexpensive) way. Starting with a large project is a painful way to learn how to manage a software project.

You probably have at least one small project you want done; perhaps a new look for your web site, or a PHP script to generate reports from your site's database.

Even if you were thinking of doing the project yourself, it's a perfect candidate to outsource. This allows you to learn the ropes on a project you fully understand. It also frees your time for other more important or more profitable tasks (most likely the reason the project is not already done ;-).

Software Outsourcing mistakes #2 Unreasonable Expectations