Outsourcing: Pros, Cons and reliable sources

SpaceCowb0y

Hi all

Just wondering if anyone has any advice on outsourcing work, i've had a good bit of freelance work over the last while which has been great but i've had to turn down one or two jobs due to the fact the work was out of my ability. I'm a good (or so i'd like to think) designer but my development skills outside of HTML/CSS are basically nil.

I've thought about outsourcing in the past but in the end shied away from the idea and passed on taking the jobs on. I'd love to take on some of these bigger jobs as there's obviously more to be made from them but without a developer to build the backends for these sites i'm at a loss.

If anyone has experience outsourcing work either to companies in Ireland or abroad i'd love to know about your experiences and was it worth it? I friend of mine had a site built by a company in India and said it was a nightmare, project was 6 weeks late, lots and lots of back and forth to things done correctly but the price was good.

I'd really like to find a reliable company or proven developer i could use for these bigger jobs but i'm worried about doing it for the first time.

Banta

Regarding outsourcing internationally, that's a common problem. I'm not painting it all with the same brush, but I've had a lot of experience outsourcing to other countries, and the pay off for the much cheaper price is generally deadlines missed, and sometimes work needing to be sent back as it's not up to scratch. That's all based on my own experiences (5 years of it) and that of the company I used to work for.

I understand the dilemma of not being able to take on work because you don't have the necessary skills, in this case, in terms of development. However, have you thought of finding someone to partner up with who does have the development skills? What I mean here is that there are a lot of developers out there who know they don't have great design skills, and also developers out there that just hate designing. They'd rather be looking at code than looking at Photoshop palettes. You could come up with an agreement with someone where you could do the design aspects of a project, and them the development side of things. I know a developer who did this and it's worked out quite well. He found a designer who designed well, but couldn't really match the designs in terms of code. He, himself, freely admitted that he wasn't great at design and found that the whole process tedious for him. He coded up some lovely websites but knew they didn't really look great as he didn't really have an eye for design.

It's still outsourcing in a way, but it's a change to your mind set when you're looking for someone. Instead of thinking, "Who can I out source to?" you'll be looking for potential candidates to partner up with where your skills compliment each other on projects. You may find someone on the Boards Development Forum? Start off with a small enough project, which maybe you could both do separately but agree to do together just to see how the working relationship pans out?

SpaceCowb0y

Banta wrote: »

Regarding outsourcing internationally, that's a common problem. I'm not painting it all with the same brush, but I've had a lot of experience outsourcing to other countries, and the pay off for the much cheaper price is generally deadlines missed, and sometimes work needing to be sent back as it's not up to scratch. That's all based on my own experiences (5 years of it) and that of the company I used to work for.

I understand the dilemma of not being able to take on work because you don't have the necessary skills, in this case, in terms of development. However, have you thought of finding someone to partner up with who does have the development skills? What I mean here is that there are a lot of developers out there who know they don't have great design skills, and also developers out there that just hate designing. They'd rather be looking at code than looking at Photoshop palettes. You could come up with an agreement with someone where you could do the design aspects of a project, and them the development side of things. I know a developer who did this and it's worked out quite well. He found a designer who designed well, but couldn't really match the designs in terms of code. He, himself, freely admitted that he wasn't great at design and found that the whole process tedious for him. He coded up some lovely websites but knew they didn't really look great as he didn't really have an eye for design.

It's still outsourcing in a way, but it's a change to your mind set when you're looking for someone. Instead of thinking, "Who can I out source to?" you'll be looking for potential candidates to partner up with where your skills compliment each other on projects. You may find someone on the Boards Development Forum? Start off with a small enough project, which maybe you could both do separately but agree to do together just to see how the working relationship pans out?

The idea of finding a developer to work with hasn't eluded me either. It's trying to find someone reliable and capable to partner up with thats the tough part. But i'll give your idea of heading to the Dev forum to see if i can find someone a go, don't know why i didn't think of that before seeing as i get a good bit of work from this forum myself.