I'm trying to find out more about outsourcing software development (as in, paying engineers that aren't your employees and possibly live in another country).<p>As an engineer in Silicon Valley, I know very few people that outsource their development and haven't heard many success stories (I recently learned that fab.com is built by a team in India that used to be a development agency, though). I do, however, see a lot of potential to accelerate or reduce the cost of development for certain types of projects.<p>Would you mind sharing your experiences with projects that went well or not so well? Is there ever a good reason to outsource development, even if you have in-house developers?<p>How do you make sure the development team is any good? Or, how do you find a good team?<p>Is there any forum (in real life or online) where people who outsource development and development teams congregate and discuss best practices/challenges?
FWIW, I have witnessed a few projects that went terribly wrong (usually, because I was called in to salvage the project).<p>From sitting in on some calls, it became clear that a large source of issues were misunderstandings between the client and developers. Usually those misunderstandings were around technology.<p>This is one category of issues that would be less likely to happen if the client has some technical knowledge.