As a developer here are my two cents: http://blog.hirelite.com/what-developers-think-when-you-say-rock-star
On Nov 16, 12:05 am, Phil Morle <[email protected]> wrote: > Hey All, > > This is a very interesting discussion. Thanks. I definitely have some > reflections from our experience at Pollenizer. We formed Pollenizer > India 2 years ago with 2 guys. We now have 60 engineers working out of > that office... in fact, I am sitting there right now. > > I believe there are two important dimensions for a startup: speed of > learning and cost. > > Speed of learning. The faster an engineering team can iterate upon > measured customer impact of their work on the product, the more likely > the product will succeed. This means that the team needs to understand > what they are building and there needs to be systems in place to take > action as the work develops. If your choice of team (local or > offshore) depends upon a big spec, you are less likely to succeed. We > have needed to: > > - Implement common tools for fast distributed communication. Our > weapons of choice: Jira, Confluence, Yammer and Skype. > - Implement processes for rapid communication. We have daily text > huddles in Skype, weekly detailed sprint planning calls, weekly > sprints, continuous integration to staging servers with every commit, > unit testing, feature flipping (http://code.flickr.com/blog/2009/12/02/ > flipping-out/) > - Spend face time. We go every 2 months to India but you may only need > to go once. It makes a HUGE difference to get to know the people. You > can work faster and with more honesty. > - Start every projects with a big session to describe what we are > trying to build - what the goal is as well as some of our initial > ideas for execution... > > Cost. Developing with an offshore provides a required economy for a > startup. You can put on bigger teams to get things done faster. You > can flex the team up and down to be responsive to the inevitably > volatile world of your business. There are some things to be careful > of though. I'll say this, if someone is half the price and the work > takes twice as long, that person is not cheaper. > > Hiring an offshore team to anything material is a big commitment. The > worst mistake I have seen people make is: > > - Look on the web or oDesk or Freelancer for a team > - Hire them based on price > - Send them a spec > - Wait for the deliverable > - And wait > - And wait > > I've seen it happen a lot. > > You can outsource the engineering effort but you can't outsource the > accountability for getting it done. Spend time on it daily... hourly, > like the team is in the same room as you. Treat them as mates because > its easy to think someone remote is an idiot and its probably because > you don't understand each other's context. > > Its not been all smooth sailing for us, we have had to work bloody > hard... but I know that we could not have delivered any of our > products without our shared commitment with Pollenizer India. > > I hope this helps > > Cheers > > Phil > > On Nov 15, 2:42 pm, Jeromy Evans <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > > On 15/11/2010, at 5:35 PM, Michael Guilfoyle wrote: > > > > > It it will be the way of the future, many st... > > > > Citation needed. :D > > > I know the guys at Pollenizer have formed offshore teams based loosely > > on this concep. Hopefully Pollenizer or one of their clients will pick > > this up and comment on how they set up their teams and lessons > > learned. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Silicon Beach Australia mailing list. Guidelines on discussion: http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia/msg/351e183e1303508d?hl=en%3Fhl%3Den No lurkers! It is expected that you introduce yourself. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/silicon-beach-australia?hl=en?hl=en
