Offshore / Onsite Blend for Maintenance Projects

Maintenance for large projects requires a dedicated team effort for a considerable period of time. These projects require continuous support for at least two to three years, only after which they start stabilizing. These projects have to be supported for bug fixing, new report generation, new feature enhancements, production issues, etc. To properly take care of these issues to client’s satisfaction, we need to maintain dedicated onsite and offshore teams.

Maintenance activities can be classified into two sections:

• Onsite Production Support
• Offshore Enhancement Request Handling

The production support activities include providing twenty-four hour support to the client on all the critical issues that crop up now and then on the live application (running on production server). The onsite team has to be available all the time and respond to the client’s request within a stipulated time frame. The support provided by this team is very critical as they work on the live applications and the client cannot afford a delay of even a single minute. The onsite team is also responsible for the implementation of any new enhancement that has been developed by the offshore team.

The Offshore team is responsible for the other aspect of maintenance that involves building new enhancements in the application. The client keeps coming up with new enhancement requests that need to be implemented in the application being supported. Depending on their complexity these enhancement requests are classified as minor or major and are allocated time for completion accordingly. Any enhancement request that is sent by the client needs to be properly analyzed in terms of the objects affected by that enhancement. Depending on the arrangement with the client this analysis could be carried out by the client or by the offshore team.

The production support issues being business critical issues, the support for them has to be provided instantly. However, for the enhancement requests, since they involve longer duration there is a requirement for a tool for tracking these requests till completion. An online application is required for posting the new requests, uploading the concerned spec document, allocating them to a developer, posting notes on the requests, updating their status, maintaining their log, etc. This online application helps the analysts from the client end and the offshore team to be on the same platform for all the work units. Also a transparent communication between the analysts and the developers is a big necessity here. Since time is a critical factor here, the offshore team has to ensure that they deliver the completed enhancements on time, every time.

Although these activities seem to be quite independent, the onsite and offshore teams have to work in close coordination with each other. The onsite-offshore coordinator has to be aware of the status of each enhancement request. He also has to act as the teams’ representative to the client and resolve some critical issues whenever required. The coordinator has to be aware of the availability of both onsite and offshore team members so that during peak times he can easily coordinate between the two teams and deliver the requests on time.

Some of the factors that are of very high consideration for a maintenance project to be successful are:

• Transparency – This signifies a transparent communication with the client. The client should be aware of the status of each request, the problems being faced by the developers on the request, the chances of the due date being missed and the reason for the same, etc. This helps the client also to take necessary steps in advance and be prepared for any eventuality.
• Time – Time is the most critical factor here. The teams have to be managed in such a way that even during the peak times the teams are able to deliver the enhancement requests on time.
• Teamwork – Good teamwork is of utmost priority in a successful maintenance project. The number of work units coming in from the client can be high at times and there has to be a blended team working together on these work units. The team leaders have to constantly act as troubleshooters for their team members so that they don’t get stuck anywhere and lose precious time on any issue.

There are a lot of benefits that accrue because of this model. Some of them are:

• Cost savings
• Speedier time to market
• 24-hour workday (time zone advantage)
• Expanded team for the client
• Access to scalable pool of great talent
• Better utilization of local staff for core competencies