The hourly wage for the equivalent skill-level programmer is lower in some countries than it is in Canada or the US. However, several issues need to be considered, including:

• code ownership
• authors rights and moral rights
• the ability to create binding contracts across international borders
• whether it will be possible to prevent secret/confidential information from being disseminated by contractors
• transaction costs
• etc.

Getting Optimal Results from Outsourcing

To truly benefit from an outsourced relationship, it is useful to contact a local company (such as Transparen in Canada), which may provide managed outsourcing services. For example, Transparen is a Canadian company (located in British Columbia, Canada) that can take care of the outsourcing arrangements with Russian programmers, and provide value-added benefits such as:

• Project specifications that are easier for remote programmers to act upon
• Cost estimations and fixed-price bids
• Local customer service and urgent bug-fixing service
• Managed legal relationships, with a local company to contract with
• Insurance against errors and omissions, or other liability, which would effectively not be the case if dealing directly with foreign companies
• Quality guarantees, such as free-bug fixes for one year, that could survive the relationship with an individual programmer
• Quality Assurance and Testing service - this is useful, because programmers will often report that a task is 'done', without being able to see the flaws. Organizations not using this service will spend a great deal of their own time tracking these issues down and reporting them back to the developer.
• Regular invoices and account statements
• Local 'buffer zone' where confidential and secret data can be 'scrubbed' from projects before programmers from overseas can begin work, which reduces the risk of information leaks leading to loss of reputation.
• 'Throttling' service - if your company wishes to spend only a certain amount per month, then we can set priorities and accomplish only that amount, while keeping track of what additional tasks are waiting for the next month.
• 'Fixed Rate' service - our experienced estimators can work with you to create a fixed-rate contract, which provides the essential components of your project.

Cutting Costs

For lower invoices from Transparen (but requiring more client time), Transparen can provide a direct contact with a highly skilled Russian programmer for a monthly retainer, and the local staff of Transparen will take a 'hands-off' approach to your project, allowing all interactions to be directly with the Russian programmer, while you still benefit from our managed legal relationships, regular invoices and account statements, throttling service, and quality guarantees.

Reducing Management Time

Clients who wish to spend less time managing the programmers may request

• Our project specification service, which for example, can turn two pages of a loosely described project into a two page parts list for $320
• Our cost estimation service, which takes a description of the project, produces a more developer-friendly description, and provides a clear idea of how much such a project would cost.
• Our Quality Assurance and Testing service - which automatically checks if things are really done as per your requests

Addressing Security Concerns

Clients with security concerns may make use of our local 'buffer zone', to prevent secret information such as passwords and medical records from leaving Canada, while still allowing outsourced developers to work on the project.

Fixed Price Bids

Clients who value knowing how much the project will cost may choose to request a fixed-price bid from Transparen. Such bids may optionally incorporate other advanced services.