As I have pointed out in other threads it takes lots and lots of work to do this. You really have to work with GOOD people, and believe me, many of these guys are indeed no-goods with often very poor knowledge/experience. Dont take anything for granted and if anything seems suspicious it often is. Ninety percent will tell you what you want is a piece of cake, they´ve done that 100 times etc - let the alarms go off. A few advice (from working with this during 5-6 years):
DO NOT work with Indian/Pakistani developers if you dont have to. I have nothing against them and many are good but, the difference in culture/ethics/moral are just TO big if you are an "outsourcing-newbie". Indians are a very nice and friendly people, BUT, they may often be found very lengthy and hard to deal with - its often like talking to marsians. Best, and I mean best, is to get Baltic or Russian developers. The best we´ve had so far are the Belarussian guys.
The pros are many - we are very much alike (that goes for you americans aswell, I am talking a western world perspective), the time diff isnt as big (well, in europe anyway) and the peeps are DEFINETELY much easier to work with. Having Indian developers may many times be compared to babysitting - they just arent used to work independently and need rigorous attention + specs to follow. Russian/Baltic developers , on the contrary, find solutions to problems. You tell them what you want and they make it work. They, in most ways, are much better to work with for, at least, the small/medium webmaster.
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