1. Experienced Offshore Architects – While standard offshore models call for having architects onshore only and leaving code development and testing to offshore team, we believe otherwise. Keeping architects in close proximity to the developers and testers ensures quality of deliverables while keeping the overall cost of delivery reasonable.

2. Maintaining Overlapping Hours with Customer – Key resources, like architects, must maintain overlapping hours with clients ensuring smooth flow of communication.

3. Communication Skills – Key resources, especially architects, must be able to communicate in English very clearly. This includes both verbal and writing skills.

4. Redundancy of Resources – With just one internal person, customer faces a single point of failure. An offshore team should be able to train and keep backups ready to fill critical roles. If the main developer becomes available, there should be another developer trained to fill in the spot.

5. Elasticity – Client should be able to Increase and decrease team size based on need with relative ease.

6. Fractional Resources – Generally with onshore resources, you acquire them in whole numbers. With offshore partner, you should get more flexibility in terms of being able to hire fractional resources. For example, you should be able to easily acquire 2.25 FTEs per month

7. Team Approach – Offshore model should allow you more flexibility to leverage a team even for small engagements. For example, for just one person per month of support, you should be able to get 10% of architect’s time, 60% of developer’s time, and 30% of tester’s time. With multiple resources working on your project, the output should be better.

8. Intellectual Property Protection – Your offshore partner should be able to provide you with indemnity against errors and omissions and theft of intellectual property. For this to happen, your partner needs to be a locally registered entity and carry all necessary insurance.