Maximize Quality-to-Cost ratio through agile + nearshore outsourced web development
Having developed software for many years in New York City, we have struggled with contradicting objectives – to reduce our costs and to increase the quality of our work. In other words, we have been striving to maximize our Quality-to-Cost ratio.
Like many other development teams, we’ve been successful in using Agile development (particularly the Scrum methodology) to produce high-quality software that is effective in accomplishing business objectives. The reasons for this are widely discussed. A really good (and free) tool we use to manage our sprints is Pivotal Tracker – free lightweight agile project management and team collaboration.
We have also found that the most effective way to save money without incurring a lot of hassle is by utilizing great talent in South America – often called nearshore outsourcing. Learn more about “Culture, Conflict and Where Value Fits In” at Nearshore Americas – smart sourcing for the competitive enterprise.
Morpho offers the possibility to combine both of these powerful components resulting in tremendous maximization of your Quality-to-Cost ratio. Our office in Quito, Ecuador is in the same time-zone as eastern United States, which makes daily Scrum meetings possible. In addition, Morpho account managers are experts in team-building, and our developers are good communicators – sharing a relatively similar culture to their counterparts in the US. This helps make daily Scrum meetings not only possible, but easy. Learn more about how Central and South American culture fits well with US companies from this video interview with human capital expert Lori Blackman.
At an IxDA event in the Bloomberg building (which has a koi pond inside), two guys from IDEO did a presentation about interaction and business design. They considered “how interaction and business designers approach problems, how the relationship between the two disciplines has changed, and how collaboration can lead to rich user experiences and business solutions.”
This was intriguing. On IDEO’s website, they explain that their “business design specialists take a user-centered approach to understanding our customers’ business. We consider the capabilities of our clients and the needs of their customers to prototype new business scenarios. As we iterate towards a solution, we assess the implications of our design. Our goal is to deliver appropriate and actionable strategies… ”
What does this mean? It means that IDEO has expanded into business strategy consulting, usually provided by the likes of McKinsey, because there is a demand for something more than just traditional design or traditional business strategy – companies want a hybrid. Having been involved in the development and launch of so many new products and services from a design perspective, IDEO saw an opportunity to also consult on the business implications of the design, branding, and user-experience decisions. With everything changing rapidly as industries converge and social media transforms how you manage PR and your brand, companies need help figuring out the repercussions of potential actions to help guide their business to success, not just making things look aesthetically pleasing. An example of this is IDEO’s work with the Adobe Creative Suite, where they worked on “creating sustainable packaging for a design-savvy clientele.” Essentially, they helped Adobe make business decisions in combination with packaging design decisions. Learn more here.
Morpho’s approach to web development outsourcing is similar. Just writing code isn’t enough. Included in the cost of our developers, we provide a US-based account manager and South American-based supervisors, who are web developers / business consultants that continuously monitor progress and seek out opportunities for improvement. They are proactive – anticipating and addressing issues before they become actual problems, and they fill in the gaps that they identify in clients’ existing processes with our best practices.
We guide web development not just to completion by writing code, but to success by helping our clients maximize their outsourcing operations, which results in saving money, increasing productivity, and ultimately increasing the quality of their web-based products and services.
