Website
developer Web Design Magic has opted for seat outsourcing as the optimum way to
maintain control of client projects while leveraging the benefits of a growing
relationship with Mitrais.
With four full time, Bali-based engineers on its software development team,
the Gold Coast company’s business strategy of using outsourced software
development resources has evolved over its 10 year history.
Says CEO and company founder Daren Hawes, “by seat outsourcing, we mandate
the technology and maintain project control, while having access to the high
quality of Mitrais staff as well as being able to scale up very quickly for
major projects.”
With clients on the Gold Coast and in Brisbane, Sydney and Townsville, the
company provides web design and development services, including web programming
and graphic design. It employs more than 15 full-time staff, located in its Gold
Coast office and in Bali.
In contrast to WDM’s prior experience of engaging external, offshore
contractors on a fixed price basis for each project, Mr. Hawes said “we wanted
Mitrais to be an extension of our company and not just a once off
sub-contractor.
“We wanted a long term relationship with our staff and felt that by seat
outsourcing we could train Mitrais software engineers, shorten the learning
curve and subsequently the development time of the next project.”
He says that outsourcing and expecting sub-contractors to make vital
decisions was not satisfactory. It is important, for WDM’s clients and the
success of projects, to keep the responsibility for such decisions in-house.
“Based on this we mandate all technology platforms and simply issue tasks to
our Mitrais developers,” Mr. Hawes said.
As such, all management, design, interview, user interface and visual
competencies are managed from within WDM. From these a functional specification
is created that will eventually result in a list of programming tasks.
“We have a simple rule,” Mr. Hawes said.
“Our Mitrais developers look after the C# coding and we do the rest. We found
it better to work that way as we retain all of the forward facing responsibility
and Mitrais engineers are simply are task-driven, focusing on getting all the
“bits” to work as per the specification.”
As WDM has grown its management faced some strategic questions. Did it employ
more developers in-house? Did it outsource and pray that the sub-contractors got
it right? A fundamental decision was made to retain control of projects and
remove the risk of failure by ensuring that ownership of projects stayed in
house. Mr. Hawes says it was really hard to explain to sub-contractors what the
customer required, regardless of the amount of scoping or documenting exercises
that WDM undertook.
Previously the company used developers in the USA and India who worked on
fixed price contracts. Consequently, they wore the risk if the project over ran.
While Mr. Hawes said there was no argument about the quality of the work
undertaken by these developers, timing became an increasingly important issue
that would impact on project development.
“When our staff worked, the contractors slept and vice versa. We really
struggled to get momentum on jobs when simple questions took a full 24 hour
cycle to be answered. There had to be a better way.
“This is where the near-shore location of Mitrais and a decision to trial
seat outsourcing came into play.”
Ultimately, said Mr. Hawes, the decision to establish an ongoing relationship
with Mitrais was a combination of business strategy and financial criteria.
“We felt if we simply extended our team to Mitrais, treated their developers
as our own and called them part of the team we could leverage benefits like
Mitrais excellent staff, its training and the ability to obtain staff relatively
fast compared to conventional business HR practices.”
Testimony to how WDM sees the outsourcing relationship in the long term is
its commitment to the training of Mitrais engineers in the particular technology
platforms and products that it has selected.
Two major website development projects called for an ASP.NET foundation and
the Kentico content management system. While Mitrais boasts a large pool of
ASP.NET developers, an investment in training Mitrais engineers in the Kentico
CMS was a necessary prerequisite to these projects being initiated.
By using Mitrais, WDM is able to keep control of projects in house and scale
up where required.
With only two hours time difference between Queensland and Bali, and
email and instant messaging, it is as if all developers are in the same room.
To ensure effective, day to day management of its Bali-based software
engineers, WDM uses systems to monitor tasks and projects. It can easily track
the duration of tasks and to be alerted if issues arise which might impact on a
project.
Daily and weekly reporting helps avoid surprises and ensures total connection
between WDM and the project stakeholders. “It is important for both our project
managers and our clients that our Mitrais developers work with us day to day
just as if they were in the office next door,” Mr. Hawes explains.
With plans to expand the scope of the seat outsourcing arrangement, in line
with WDM’s own growth, Mr. Hawes says “it will be perfect if our customers can
come back for the second phase of a website development and have the same
developer.”