Getting Some Real Offshore Experience, Redux

I posted about getting some real experience working with an offshore development group. As I said, we entered into this arrangement with a short-term trial to see how it would work out. We ended that trail today and I guess I still have mixed results to report.

Working with an offshore team in an Agile world is annoying. A lot of time is lost because the offshore developers are not co-located (even within the same time zone). I would say that my initial conclusions about the TCO for code developed still holds -- about he same or even more than the cost of doing it with our regular development team.

We had some problems with the develop initially assigned to work with us. To their credit, the offshore company took care of that, replacing the one with a more mature/professional developer. We lost some time and money in that transition, but the startup cost of this kind of relationship cannot be underestimated.

I guess the conclusion I've come to is this, write good specs and way overestimate the cost. But the skills are there. I will work with this group again (probably). Next project we get.