Offshore Software Development Services

Maximizing the economic value of an offshore software development asset critically depends on understanding how best to use the available forms of legal regulations to protect intellectual rights. If vendor cannot be trusted to protect trade secrets, then the risks of an offshoring software development may outweigh its potential benefits.  Hence, it is critical to review the intellectual property policy of the potential offshoring supplier.

According to the World Intellectual Property Organization, offshoring software development means that company A turns over responsibility, in whole or in part, of an in-house software development to company B whose location is outside of company A’s national jurisdiction. 

Each type of intellectual property asset may be involved in such offshore relationships:

• Patents for ideas, systems, methods, and functions embodied in a software product;
• Trade secrets (the code with embedded ideas and concepts);
• Copyright and related rights to protect the source code and certain unique elements of the user interface.

The intellectual property protection policy of an offshore software development company must be reflected in these crucial documents:

• General Agreement;
• Non-Disclosure Agreement;
• Employee Confidentiality Contract.

General Agreement: How Good Offshore Software Company Should Protect Clients’ Intellectual Property Rights When Doing Work For Hire

We understand the importance of intellectual property to our Clients’ business development. The ownership of intellectual property assets created by our offshore software developers, as a part of the work done for hire, as well as patents, copyrights and all the data related to the Clients and their projects, belongs to our Clients.

This may be reflected in our offshore development Agreement in the following manner:

The SERVICE PROVIDER transfers to the CUSTOMER property rights on the developed software under an exclusive license. The exclusive right means the right to use the software at its sole discretion in any form and in any way. Exclusive rights are transferred for the whole period of copyrights and act in any territory of the world. Exclusive rights are transferred on a grant basis. The transfer of exclusive rights from the SERVICE PROVIDER to the CUSTOMER is reflected in the Confirmation of services rendered. Date of transfer of exclusive rights is the date of signing the Confirmation of the services rendered by the Parties. The source code of the software is transferred to the CUSTOMER in electronic form to the email address specified in this Agreement or to the server of the CUSTOMER.

Moreover, our Clients’ lawyers feel free to make changes in the Agreement and NDA which are signed prior to the start of any development work. 

Non-Disclosure Agreement: How Good Offshore Software Development Company Will Treat Confidential Information During And After The Project

To assure that Belitsoft treats intellectual property of its Clients with the ultimate care, we sign a Non-Disclosure Agreement (NDA) with all our Clients at the start of a business relationship.

Its contents may vary, but would typically contain the following statements:

“Confidential Information" includes all information, technical data, or know-how, including, but not limited to, that which relates to a disclosing party's research, products, hardware, software, designs, inventions, ideas, processes, drawings, business plans, product implementations, financial information, marketing techniques, business operation and systems, pricing policies, information concerning current and possible new employees, customers, and/or vendors disclosed by one party to another in writing, orally, by inspection, or otherwise.
The receiving party and its Representatives shall not disclose any Confidential Information to third parties, in any manner, and shall protect the Confidential Information for five (5) years following the date of its disclosure.
Nothing in this Agreement is intended to grant or imply any rights, by license or otherwise, to either party under any patent, copyright, trade secret, or other intellectual property right, nor shall this Agreement grant or imply to either party any rights in or to the other party's Confidential Information.
The receiving party shall take all measures reasonably necessary to protect the Confidential Information received from the disclosing party, at least as great as the measures it takes to protect its own confidential information.
These Terms and Conditions shall be governed by and construed in accordance with English law. Disputes arising in connection with these Terms and Conditions shall be subject to the exclusive jurisdiction of the English courts.

Employee Confidentiality Contract: Not Only Contract Party But Each Member Of Offshore Software Development Company’s Team Should Be Responsible

To assure that all Belitsoft developers are fully aware of the critical importance of protecting Clients’ rights, all Belitsoft developers sign Employee Confidentiality Contract along with their Employee Contract upon joining the company. These contracts would normally state that developers must comply with Belitsoft intellectual property protection policy.

In addition, each developer can sign a personal NDA with the Client directly on demand.

However, the study finds that only one out of four organizations can be described as a highly-effective communicator, the others have difficulty communicating with the appropriate level of clarity and detail and in the appropriate language to all stakeholders.

Business owners speak the language of money, they want to know «yes or no», «hard numbers». They are more focused on the «cost and benefits» and «business value». Programmers speak about issues such as «browser inconsistencies», «responsive Web design», and «encryption key authentication». They need detailed technical requirements describing the business functionality to estimate cost and time frame properly.

The staff of a good offshore software development company is not just well versed in topics such as .NET, Java, PHP, HTML5, CSS3, JS, SQL, XML, JSON, IDEs, APIs and so on, but also can explain how to use them to help meet the business goals of its clients. Such staff is often called business analysts or  technical project managers or team leads.

It means that a good offshore software development company should provide clients with the efficient staff with great communications skills, technical background and a problem solving client-oriented outlook. 

What is like to communicate directly with developers with and without seasoned expert who can translate business needs into technical requirements?

Alex Turnbull (CEO of Groove, Newport, the USA) shares his experience about language challenges he faced as a non-tech founder:
I was lucky to team up with one of my best friend - developer who had just left Yahoo! and agreed to join me. Before he got started, I tried to sit him down and explain all of the features and functionality I imagined our app would have. After about five rambling minutes, he stopped me. “We can’t build from a list,” he explained. “Let’s organize your thoughts and map this out so that we know what it’ll look like first.” I started to draw sketches. And then those turned into wireframes. And finally, I learned how to use Photoshop and built mockups of the app. It bridged the gap between the thoughts in my head and my cofounder’s understanding of them, which meant that we saved a lot of time on changes and iterations early on. And while these days I’ve ditched Photoshop and switched to Balsamiq for mockups, it’s still my favorite way to show our team exactly what we need to do….
Early on at my second startup, we were trying to build a login page for our customers, and it was going…poorly. “The form needs to be bigger, and we need fewer navigation links,” I emailed our development lead. “No problem,” he’d say. And an hour later, I’d get a new version with a too-big form box and critical links missing from the header. We had been dancing this dance for days; me flat-footedly asking for vague changes, and him dutifully matching my steps. That afternoon, we had a long discussion that was incredibly helpful for me. I learned the importance of giving clear, thorough feedback. Now, instead of “fewer navigation links,” I might say “let’s remove the About, Contact and Features links, and increase the size of the form submit button by 20%.” Things move a whole lot smoother”.

The user of Reddit (networking service with headquarters in San Francisco, the United States) with ChiefMaster nickname notes that he works hard to close communication gaps with his programmer:
I'm a non-technical founder. I have a full-time developer that works for me and we work really well together. A lot of why we work together is we communicate well. Here's some general advice: […] one of the most frustrating things for a developer is when the schematics are constantly changing or if the expectations aren't clear. It makes my brain hurt, but I try to write out/draw out in as much detail as possible what I want to avoid any confusion. As more of a creative/sales person this relies on skills that don't come naturally to me so it takes a concerted effort to be really clear, but it makes things MUCH easier for the developer and also helps the timeline. As a point of consideration, most large organizations have "translators" that help non-technical and technical people communicate more effectively.

A qualified expert can handle all described above issues in an easy and convenient for the client way.

Belitsoft is an offshore software development company that operates since 2004. We successfully provide software development services (software development, software testing &QA, software maintenance, dedicated teams).

Our highly-effective project managers deliver custom projects to companies both large and small.

Senior technical Project Manager Dmitry Baraishuk is working with us since 2005. He began his professional career as a software developer. Now he is responsible for managing several projects, controlling development processes and creating new teams. During his career in IT, he efficiently solved marketing, sales, technical, managerial issues and leaded successfully TOP company projects. He has strong training and coordination skills, also ability to work with parallel assignments simultaneously keeping good quality and delivering on time.

Senior technical project manager/Business Analyst Dmitry Garbar is working with us since 2007. He started his career as a software programmer. Currently he manages several types of projects, including fixed price and Agile. His team usually consists of 10 in-office developers, designers, html coders and a number of distributed non-staff members. He is strong-willed, keeps a very tight rein on all processes and provides high-quality software products on time.

Today many enterprisers from the United States, the UK, European and other economically developed countries prefer to use services provided by offshore software development companies instead of using local resources to have an opportunity for flexibility and very competitive costs. However, lack of control over offshore software developers may lead to broken promises, failure to deliver product on time and increase in its price.

Keeping offshore development under control means that business stakeholders have the possibility:

• To get detailed information about what/when project parts are going to be developed, how long it will take, what date the software development will be started, when it will be finished, project assumptions, etc (Statement of Work);
• To talk to the developers (project manager) about how work is going on by phone/Skype/Google Hangouts on a daily basis;
• To track progress and budget using Issue tracking and Project management tools and  timely updates via email/chat.

THE ROLE OF STATEMENT OF WORK (SOW) AS A BASIS FOR CONTROL OF OFFSHORE PROGRAMMERS

SOW is a legally binding document that describes what the work is and includes criteria for how the Client and the Offshore Service Provider will agree that something is successfully completed.

A good SOW may include such items as:

• Project description and what is required to be done;
• Key deliverables and when they're expected to be performed (timing, milestones);
• The tasks and assignees who are responsible for them;
• Communication plan;
• Project Assumptions;
• Required resources;
• Budget, Payment terms.

Communication plan as a part of SOW specifies how and when communication will take place. For example, weekly reports and meetings to review the project’s overall status, the acceptance of deliverables, the project schedule, and open issues.

On demand direct developers’ contacts are provided for communication with the Client for any development or testing questions.

TASK MANAGEMENT APPS USED IN THE OFFSHORE SOFTWARE DEVELOPMENT PROCESS

Good offshore development companies manage the projects and workflow for their development and IT teams with the help of  online collaboration software tools – Issue tracking and Project management tools.

Such software makes each step of the software development cycle visible to the Client. Each manager from the Client’s side has an idea who is working on a current task, how close the task or project is to the completion or which steps are remained.

Issue traсking applications help to prioritize issues, give the visibility into trending problems, as well as the ability to track each developer’s work on specific issues.

Before we signed numerous SOWs, we included in them all necessary for our Clients information as well as bug fixing warranty.

We as well as tons of great tech companies rely on easy-to-use JIRA for issue tracking but we are fine to use other Issue tracking and Project management tools such as MS Project/Base Camp/RedMine, Mantis, etc.
 
Our Clients know they will receive updates and reviews on any task they ask for, as soon as possible.