As you all know, there are two major styles of offshore development, “contract type development (contract for each project)” and “lab type development (lab type contract)”. Both styles have advantage and disadvantage, but we will focus on lab type development in Vietnam and I would like to introduce the advantage in detail.
１．What is lab type development?
As you know, lab type offshore development is a way to develop software with a team consist of fixed members, which is planed for certain period and certain budget. In othere words, it is close to having a part of its own development base in Vietnam.
It will be handled in much the same way as our own development base so you can conduct very flexible development if it goes well.
Meanwhile, there is serious lack of IT engineers in Japan, and this problem is considered to continue because it is showed in trend of the population. So, we want to recommend lab type development.
Lab type development has the potential to stably keep excellent and abundant Vietnamese engineers, so it is highly expected as one of the solutions to the shortage of engineers.
Offshore and lab type development
２．Benefit of lab type development
In general, software development happen to problem that cost and schedule will be over expected one. For example, spec changed by clients during developing, or trouble handling for past project. However, this problem is not limited to offshore development. Naturally, even if you consign to a vendor in Japan, there is a possibility that similar problem can happen.
- Lab type contract are easier to budget.
Lab type development is said to be able to solve the above problems. In lab type contract, members and budget are secured in advance, you can change the work description requested to the team, and can adjust the work amount of each member.
Therefore, the orderer side can actively respond to tasks together with offshore team. We summarized the well-known benefits of lab contract as following.
- Secure personnel matching your business stably.
- Improve management efficiency and quality by adopting your own process
- Acquire the skills and experience of each member
- Easy to budget development cost
As described above, you solve the problems of offshore development.
３．What can I do to make a lab type development successful?
According to the previous paragraph, it sounds like lab type development is perfect, but there are some difficulties to overcome in order to gain above benefits. In other words, there is no benefits expected without overcoming these difficulties. Then, let us show you what to do. There is 3 important matters.
- Training: Conduct skill up training
- Close communication: The relationship that can be called workmate
- Raising consciousness: Keep motivation up
3.1.Training is important in lab development
First of all, training is important. there are two types to make up members in offshore team.
- Lab development team made up only professional members
This is the most immediate way. Teams consist of only skilled and experienced members. It is Ideal, but it is actually difficult to gather such members enough in Vietnam. (Although there is higher possibility than Japan…) Also, you have to prepare enough cost to employ such members.
- Lab development team leaded by excellent key person
As a national strategy, it is hoped that Vietnam become an advanced IT country, so there are many young IT engineers. But unfortunately they don’t have much experience at the moment despite their high potential.
However, it is clear that some of them have already experienced offshore lab type development with Japan for many years.
Therefore, it is good way to allocate young engineers who have high potential with low cost, leaded by these experienced key persons. Then they accumulate project experience, and grow the team power.
It similar to educate and train new employees in your company. In addition, universities in Vietnam have an internship curriculum and the students take practical IT education. Therefore, lab development teams in Vietnam starts-up faster than Japan.
Realistically, it seems the best way to make up team leaded by excellent key person. First, strong guidance from the Japanese side is important. While training Vietnamese engineers, they gain experience on the actual project at OJT, Through this process, they will learn the software development process, quality concept, etc. that suits your company.
Please remember to make up the process while respecting the way of Vietnamese people. You can get a lot of tips from them because they have worked with various companies on lab development.
3.2 Close communication and good working relationships are important in lab type development.
When you carry out lab type development in Vietnam, it is very important to treat Vietnam as an important development partner, not only an offshore destination. It will make them trust you and try to meet your expectations.
I mentioned about “close communication”. The importance of communication is not only to lab type development, but also a common issue for offshore development.
However, the communication mentioned here means not business communication like regular meetings and reports, but rather face-to-face communication such as on-site invitations and business trips to Vietnam.
Communicating directly with them and talking on topics other than work will expose valuable faces that cannot be obtained through formal meetings and will build valuable bonds. It is ideal that you build close relationships with them.
3.3 Keeping motivation up is important in lab type development.
The purpose of lab type development is to secure excellent members sustainably.
In Vietnam, where the job transfer market is more active than in Japan, they are always attracted to good salaries, but that’s not all. What a important work they do and how important their position is in your team, there are essential to keeping their motivated up.
Achieving challenging work together and keeping motivation up can lead to securing long-term human resources.
４．Conclusion
To get the benefits of lab type offshore development, you need to as following; Raise up engineers and having them to your company’s development style, Build good relationship with them by close communication, To know their skills and characters well.
These are not special things but the same as things you’ve built with your Japanese partner over the years.
Although there are differences in language and nationality, you can do the same with Vietnamese partner, they will be an important long term partner because they have hot national character.
Lab type contracts are not only for low cost. As mentioned earlier, it will be more difficult to secure engineers in Japan alone. It is worth considering the lab type development by Vietnamese who familiar with Japan as a solution.
BAP Co., Ltd. has development bases in Tokyo, Osaka, Vietnam Danang and Ho Chi Minh. The total member is 125 people.
Our strength is that the Japanese and Vietnamese who can use excellent Japanese are always stationed in Japan and can carry out projects in the same environment as a development team in Japan. They can clear various problems and it is much cheaper than developing in Japan.
We are ready to work both type offshore and lab contract.
