At the time of a new engagement, managers take into consideration many activities like project planning, effort estimation, defining goals and metrics, cost, outcome, etc. One factor that is most important for any project to succeed is engaging the right onshore/offshore staffing ratio to execute the project. This factor is mostly not given adequate importance in many recent delivery models. For managers to meet project profit margins, they try to limit the cost spent on project resources and execution. With the limited resourcing budget, it is not feasible to have a default onshore/offshore ratio that fits all projects.
After gathering some experience in working offshore (2007-2008 in Bangalore, India) and onshore (in Germany and Switzerland) I started to wonder if there is a optimal onshore/offshore ratio. Quite soon I concluded that this question is not easy to answer. So I did a breakdown to certain aspects and instead of answering them by myself, I set up a survey and hope to get your support!
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[Update 15 Nov 2014]: After collecting data over four weeks (18 Oct – 14 Nov), the survey is closed. Results will follow soon.
Basically, I’d like to address three groups to answer this survey:
- Employees of traditional consulting firms
- Employees of Indian pure players (such as Infosys, TCS, HCL, Wipro, etc.)
- Employees of clients of consulting firms
Of course, I’m going to share the results after evaluation. Thank you for participating and sharing the link with your colleagues! Also retweets are highly appreciated…
Are you involved in projects that are delivered (partly) offshore? I'd be happy if you would share your experience! http://t.co/wCqJbUa0TO
— Alexander Loth (@xlth) October 18, 2014
