As often happens at the start of the year, well at the start of the Chinese New Year in this case…we take a look back at what we did in the past. This year I decided to take a look at the very first blog post I did almost 6 years ago and see if the reason I started the blog in the first place still has meaning.
Back then I wrote, “Most information on outsourcing, books written lately, magazine articles and blogs have been geared towards larger companies. On one hand this is great, it is great to learn from the big guys who have been doing this a while. On the other hand, it leads to a lot of discussion on areas that may not be applicable for a smaller firm who needs 2, 3 or 15 persons offshore, not hundreds.” The idea behind the blog was to provide information to entrepreneurs with new company ideas, or smaller firms who would have smaller teams of software engineers. I emphasized the objective with the tag line, “Outsourcing is not just for the big guys!”
In order to determine if this topic was still relevant, one of the things I looked at was what Softjourn’s clients have told us over the years. Six years ago the quote from one of our start-up clients was, “My fears and concerns (with offshoring) where alleviated by having a local contact who was not just relaying information back and forth but who seemed to understand that he needed to have a firm grasp of my goals before assigning the work overseas. Every attempt has been made to provide an excellent product. Issues were addressed promptly and through the entire process I felt that I had a partner not a contractor.” So clearly there is concern over the location and the distance.
A more recent quote from a client looks like this, “It was great to find someone to work with us as a collaborative partner. We have never done this before so sometimes we didn’t know what we were asking for and we were figuring things out as we went along. When you’re creating something totally new it is absolutely necessary to have a partner offer suggestions, be proactive, and think 3 steps ahead instead of merely executing what we said. I can’t thank you enough!” Obviously more recently, there is less emphasis on where the people are, and more on how they can be an effective partner and assist in getting a company, or a new service, up and running.
When I first started this blog, it was less common for smaller companies to want to work with remote teams of software engineers. Start-ups especially though, we are working too fast, how can we work remotely? Now, however, it is expected that start-ups will work with remote teams; it is considered basically obligatory. It is also more and more common for smaller companies to have team members all over the world. But with the move to more global teams, there still comes the challenges such as: managing time differences, collaborating with individuals in multiple locations, making sure everyone is on the same page, managing different sets of goals, and so on. This blog has always been about helping start-ups get their businesses launched and helping small and medium sized businesses add new services and improve on their current ones. Going forward I will be placing increasing emphasis on helping these same companies overcome the challenges they are facing while trying to grow their businesses with global teams, after all, “Global teams are not just for the big guys”!