Ask HN: What would you do with this outsourcing situation?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4009890

by cateye • 14 years ago

1 3 14 years ago

news.ycombinator.com

Founder x has a business idea and hires an outsourcing company. they agree on the price and scope of the project and signed a contract.

The outsourcing company missed every deadline and after months of work, they haven't a working product. They blame the founder that the requirements are vague and changed often.

At the other side, after I analysed a couple of things I came to the conclusion that:

1. The outsourcing company just doesn't have experience and knowledge to deliver such software

2. The founder has high expectations and underestimates technical complexity

At this moment there are 2 choices:

a) Demand the delivery of working software (with the risk that it will take months and will be of very low quality and maybe not working at all).

b) Quit the relationship and begin again (with the risk that it will take months and hit against the wall again).

What would you do? Give an other chance or rewrite it with other people?

unsolicitedowl2• 14 years ago

How 'technical' is the founder? It sounds like he/she doesn't have the background to be able to tell whether the outsourcing company knows what they are doing. It's really difficult to manage a project like this when the founder can't look at the code and tell whether it's crap.

It might be worth it to find a developer who can look at what you have so far and talk to the outsourcing company to find out if 1) what you have is salvageable and 2) whether the team is capable of completing the project. There are a lot of hacks out there that will hold themselves out as accomplished outsourcing firms. You have to be careful who you hire.

cateye• 14 years ago

The founder is not technical at all. He knows his business well but can't see the difference between HTML and JavaScript.

I'm the one who has to look at the code.

What I see can't be saved. It is a total mess. The team is clueless but at the other hand they really put a lot of effort and work hard. They now want to change the framework and refactor a portion of the software. But I have a feeling that this a never ending story.

What it makes it really difficult is to accept the loss, trow away all the money and time and begin all over again. So the founder has the feeling that there must be a way to launch with this code base and delay the rewrite.

unsolicitedowl2• 14 years ago

Sorry to hear that. It's a tough situation. I've been in a similar fix with an iOS dev. We tried to work with him for way too long before scrapping everything and starting over with new people. It just ended up delaying the process even further because we wasted so much time trying to make it work with him. The client shouldn't be paying in time/money for the outsourcing company's learning curve. It's hard to walk away from a sunk cost, but it's the future benefit that you should be concerned about. It sounds like you aren't going to get anywhere with the current team. I think the founder should start looking for someone new.

In the meantime, the founder should take a couple of web development courses. There are some great Intro classes through Skillshare, Codecademy, etc. It will definitely help him in the long term if he is planning on running a tech startup.