Offshore Development Center Management in Action

Abstract

Serving as a virtual extension of the Customer's IT Department, the Offshore Development Center (ODC) model provides certain benefits in comparison with in-house teams including reduced development complexity, reduced operating expense, and access to a larger pool of talents. Nevertheless, ODCs are prone to problems in Scope, Schedule, Quality, Human Resources, and Communication. From the experiences of Project Managers who have worked in Offshore Development Centers set up by FPT Software-a leading IT Outsourcing Service provider, this paper offers a look at actual problems encountered in ODCs. We then provide a reference ODC Management Framework, which consists of Best Practices that we have applied into an ODC serving a Media Industry customer over the last 4 years. The results of applying the model are discussed to prove its effectiveness.