In the first part of this post, I briefly explained the concept of Lean thinking as it relates to Nearshore application development. Due to economic pressures and other factors, many companies have begun seeking Nearshore partners who have adopted the Lean approach in order to improve the cost, quality, speed, and agility of projects. In this installment, we’ll look at what the Lean concept actually means as it relates to the client, and the ways in which these principles manifest in real-world project scenarios.

But what does “Lean” actually mean?

Although the word “lean” may initially be confused with frugality, we must be attentive to its depth. Remember that the purpose of Lean application development is to improve cost, and also quality, speed, and agility – and it’s no accident that agility and speed are grouped together. Agility does not necessarily mean doing things quickly. It means doing the right …

In any economic climate, a company’s most important objective is ensuring that the cost of doing business does not overshadow any returns it derives as a result. When margins are robust, companies can afford to invest heavily in technologies that may not immediately produce visible returns, but can be counted on to reap benefits several years down the line.

However, when these margins become razor thin and the future looks uncertain, companies must quickly adapt their strategies and invest in only the projects that can provide an immediate return on investment. With companies seeking new IT approaches for achieving faster (almost immediate) ROI, many have begun looking for partners that can incorporate Lean thinking in their Nearshore development projects.

Based on the manufacturing model Toyota successfully leveraged as it achieved market dominance, Lean IT provides a systematic approach to simultaneously improving cost, quality, speed and agility.

Experience shows that it is …

In the first installment of this post, I looked at the importance of user experience in Nearshore mobile application development, as well as how companies seeking to engage a provider for development projects should consider those who can create a customer feedback loop to determine the features that will ensure apps are both downloaded and kept on the devices by their users.

In this installment, I’ll look at another key tactic companies can use to ensure that their providers are developing apps that can provide an optimal user experience.

Find a Provider That Makes Creative and Development a Unified Process

In many Nearshore app development projects, companies will engage an outside user experience (UX) designer to define the usability and design components of their apps. It’s always beneficial to bring in a proven resource that genuinely understands user interaction, and can effectively use this knowledge to bring the development team …

As companies across industries continue to engage Nearshore providers for mobile app development, one thing is becoming increasingly clear: the line between great mobile apps and bad ones is becoming easier to see.

By Daniel Viveiros

Recently, I looked at the rise in popularity of cloud computing amongst software developers in Nearshore engagements. But questions still remain as to the cloud’s security and reliability, and what the future holds.

Despite the benefits of cloud development in the speed and cost savings it can offer to clients’ businesses, many still view it as too unstable and unreliable to be trusted to host their infrastructures. Though their concerns are, I believe, somewhat warranted, I also believe that with the right considerations and planning, companies can clear this mental hurdle and start leveraging the cloud for their Nearshore projects.

The key to leveraging the cloud is to be smart about how you approach it. It’s not something you can just dive into, and it should be approached in the same way as any other considerable IT investment– with a backup plan in place. Clients need to prepare …

There was a time when any mention of “the cloud” was met with skepticism by IT executives. Few knew what it even meant, and of those who did, few expected that it would go from buzzword status to actually having a major impact on their IT organizations. Yet here we are, many years later, and the cloud has gone from a mere catchphrase to being a very real force on the IT landscape.

Last month I had the pleasure of attending the first ever Nearshore Nexus conference – a terrific event that I look forward to attending again next year. At the conference I presented a session with a good friend of mine, Guto Araujo, Founder & CEO of Carousl Labs, about an issue that we at Ci&T have recently been seeking to address: the challenges tech startups face in developing and delivering disruptive products to market quickly, without the benefit of a huge development team. Often in nearshore the focus is on attracting and working with big, global companies on designing web or mobile applications that can either contribute to current product lines or create new revenue streams.

But there’s also a universe of small, innovative startups with creative ideas for products that can truly disrupt the market, and we are extending our client portfolio to include these emerging companies.  …

With the launch of the iPad 2 last month and the attempts from Samsung, Toshiba, Sony to compete, I think it’s clear that tablets are here to stay, not only in the hands of consumers but also in the corporate world.

Mobile has solidified its position as one of today’s most vital marketing channels, as well as an effective productivity tool for people on the go.  Not surprisingly, one of the biggest trends we’ve been seeing in nearshore outsourcing is engagement for mobile development projects.

Traditionally, most nearshore development has focused on web applications and enterprise software.  But more and more companies are now looking to providers to develop mobile apps for both smartphones and tablets, as both promotional vehicles and workforce enablement tools.

But developing apps for mobile and web is different, and while the reasons for engaging a nearshore provider for each is similar, before you do so, ask yourself some …

When perusing the book “Agility Across Time and Space” recently, I came upon a very effective way of summarizing  some of the differences between farshore and nearshore outsourcing that I’ve been talking about on this blog in recent months.  The book is a collection of cases studying how agile methods have been used in distributed software development environments.

In a previous post, I showed that the simple inclusion of the onsite: offshore ratio (a.k.a the inverse of the offshore leverage) on the blended rate calculation can dramatically change the perception of price in outsourcing.  Now, let’s try to add another element to our TCO model:  the cost of the attrition rate (a.k.a turnover) in the team working on the contract.

The attrition rate is the percentage of the team that is changed/replaced over the course of one year, for various reasons.  An attrition rate of 30%, for instance, means that 3 out of 10 resources that were on the engagement at the beginning will have been replaced within the next 12 months.

The attrition rate can vary considerably, and often depends on factors such as the overall economy in the locality where the labor pool is, how “hot” the industry is at a given time, how rigid the labor …