StarSmart –A framework

for Distributed
Outsourced Product
Development

Abstract
In recent years, market forces and changing business models have
created new pressures on product engineering teams of technology
companies. Product teams need to continue product innovation, sustain
current product lines, support existing customers, but with lower R&D
budgets. The emergence of the flat world has made technology
companies adopt product manufacturing techniques long practiced by
discrete manufacturing companies – basically, adopting the principle of
‘do it where makes best business sense’. Blue Star Infotech, a leading
provider of Outsourced Product Development and support services, has
developed a distributed software product manufacturing model,
StarSmart, that enables ISVs to adopt this principle easily and rapidly. .

This paper dwells into the Distributed Outsourced Product Development

model and demonstrates how an independent software vendor (ISV), by
leveraging Blue Star Infotech’s StarSmart- a framework for Distributed
Product Development – can become better equipped to cope with
environmental pressures.
Introduction
In the current economic scenario, with shrinking revenues and R&D budgets, there is a great need
for ISVs to reduce their cost of development. It is critical for them to shorten the development life
cycle and to have frequent releases, which accommodate features based on the changing industry
trends. Additionally, product solutions need to leverage technology innovations to enrich the
customer experience. More importantly, globalization has resulted in an increasing trend is to have
distributed teams spread across global centres and leverage follow-the-sun relay development
models

Distributed Product Development enables the ISVs to reduce their cost of development as well as to
have access to a global talent/resource pool. ‘Time to Market’, a primary KPI for technology
companies, is significantly shortened with the “Follow the Sun” model. It provides the ISVs with the
flexibility to quickly ramp up or scale down the size of the distributed teams based on the prevailing
scenario. This model allows the ISV to focus on Product Management as opposed to the nuances of
managing a team. Also the ISV can re-direct their focus to critical aspects such as market analysis
and marketing. In this model, the ISV can allocate work based on the expertise of the distributed
teams and thereby get higher ROI.

Apart from product development, maintenance activities (defects & enhancements) for an existing
& mature product line can be handled by a distributed team while the core team focuses on helping
sales in customer acquisition activities or on product enrichment.

Challenges in a Distributed Development Model

Like other development models, distributed product development model also comes with a set of
challenges. If not handled properly, these challenges can diminish the value that ISVs expect to gain
out of a distributed product development initiative. Below listed are some of key challenges faced in
such a scenario:

 Cultural Differences – The differences in background and culture of the distributed team
members tend to negatively affect relationships within the team
 Communication Challenges – The lack of face to face interactions and the dependence on
emails & documents as the only mode of communication, presents a challenge to effective
communication
 Requirements understanding – As typically the Business Analyst or Product Owner is part
of the core team, the distributed team members do not have a mechanism to immediately
address their doubts related to the specifications. This results in loss of time in waiting for the
responses and thereby hampering productivity
 Code Integration – In a situation, where distributed teams are working on separate code
repositories, integration of code tends to be a challenge, especially if there are multiple
(common modules) integration points
 IPR related Concerns – For a product development company, the Intellectual Property of the
product is an invaluable asset, and there is a concern of IP violations in a Distributed Product
Development model.
Overcoming the Challenges
Many of the barriers associated with distributed product development activities, as mentioned
above, can be overcome by selecting an experienced and reliable R&D partner with requisite
product engineering expertise, quality orientation, structured processes, proven credentials, and an
impeccable record on protecting its customer’s IP. This will ensure that product engineering
principles are in use and best practices are consistently applied. Cost advantages are achieved
through various means such as – optimization of the R&D process, usage of innovative & reliable
frameworks, tools usage, and leveraging low-cost test centers. Keeping this in mind BSI has built a
framework – StarSmart that uses agile software development methodologies to deliver distributed
product development services.

StarSmart – An overview
StarSmart is built on the principle of power of 2 – Processes & People, two most critical ingredients
required for any successful product development methodology. Over a period of 15 years, BSI is
partnering with multiple ISVs, from start-ups to Tier-1 ISVs, in their product journey. This journey,
through different phases of product engineering evolution, has created wealth of experience inside
BSI. This framework is the result of the best practices that we have practiced, and processes that we
have followed in many successful strategic distributed product development initiatives. To achieve
the best result, BSI has created a framework, which is:

Simple:
This framework follows the principle of simplicity to ensure that usage of this framework does not
bring any overhead. This framework is an easily customizable one, and can be used in any kind of
product engineering engagement. This framework, being a collection of best practices from different
product development initiatives, also ensures that it can be adapted quickly and easily to any
product development scenario.

Metric based
At BSI, we understand that in a product development initiative, product features, cost of
development, time-to-market, and product quality are most important parameters to be measured
for success. Keeping this in mind we have built a metric based framework that helps us to collect
and analyze the above said matrices, and use the result for achieving engagement goals. This helps
our customers to get higher productivity, efficiency, and improvement in product quality

Agile:
This framework is based on the following principles of agile software development methodology:

 Deliver customer value early and often

 Working software is the primary measure of progress
 Deliver working software frequently
 Welcome requirements changes, even late in development. Agile processes harness
 changes for the products's competitive advantage
 Continuous attention to technical excellence and good design
 At regular intervals, the team reflects on how to become more effective, then tunes and
adjusts its behavior accordingly
 Processes that promote sustainable development

StarSmart is built on the SCRUM methodology, because we see more and more product companies
are adapting SCRUM for product development. BSI is one of the pioneers in using SCRUM in
distributed product development scenario. This has helped BSI to use SCRUM as the centerpiece of
this framework. Though it is built on the concept of SCRUM, it can be used with any other agile
methodologies.

This focus on agile model enables us to deliver subset of features at frequent and regular intervals.
This approach also enables the ISV to give feedback on working features at the end of each iteration.
The development team can work on new features or make improvements to the existing ones in the
subsequent iteration based on priority to deliver higher business value.

Unlike waterfall model, this framework also enables us to manage requirements changes
throughout product development lifecycle more effectively. Because of this flexibility of managing
changes and shorter iteration periods (typically 2 to 4 weeks), ISV can add new features in the
subsequent sprint, which are driven by the changing marketplace or technology advancements. This
flexibility provides the ISV a competitive advantage.

This framework places a great deal of importance on collaboration. A customer/biz representative is

part of the highly collaborative development team, which facilitates the developers to be
knowledgeable about the product, hence deliver suitable solutions. As agile teams are self-
organizing, an environment of team work, ownership, and trust is present. Also, the team
collectively reviews their performance at the end of each iteration, and identifies corrective actions.
These practices facilitate higher productivity.

Like other agile models, in StarSmart also, working software is considered as the primary measure of
progress. This framework facilitates transparency; hence it enables early identification of risks.
Additionally, the daily “smart meetings” and “smart reporting” by the team helps in identifying any
impediments and provide better visibility and control.

This framework is designed to adapt to different agile practices such as “Test Driven Development”,
“Coding Standards”, “Pair Programming”, “Continuous Integration” and “Refactoring”. These
practices, along with frequent releases, result in early detection & correction of defects as well as an
optimal & maintainable codebase. StarSmart enables the ISV to achieve the goal of a high quality
product and thereby results in higher customer satisfaction.
Reliable
BSI understands that reliability is the key theme for any product development initiative. Like the
product, the process and methodologies followed for product development also need to be reliable
ones. StarSmart is built on experience of delivering more than 1600 product releases over last 15
years for more than 80 ISVs, by using more than 3500 man years of cumulative effort. Most of these
product releases have been delivered within 95% of budgeted time and cost, and with very high
quality.

Tool Driven
With the focus on productivity, efficiency, smooth communication, and easy manageability, BSI has
designed this framework in such a way that it leverages many proprietary and open source tools in
the area of requirements management, design, code review & reporting, integrated build &
deployment, test automation & reporting, knowledge management, and project management.
Usages of tools bring standardization and result in consistent deliverables. These tools also help to
tailor the product development process to suit requirements of different ISV.

Best Practices followed in StarSmart

 Creating Bonding among team members

A few approaches followed are:

 Core members of the proposed distributed team work along with the core team on
the initial iterations (around 6 to 8 weeks).
 Team members from a distributed team travel to the customer/core team location
on a rotational basis and work along with them on a few iterations.
 Team leads meet at critical junctures like release planning.

These approaches facilitate better interactions (as they are face to face), fosters trust, and a
good sense of customer context. Also there is a alignment to practices and standards
followed by core team.

 Use of common tools for collaboration and process

In a distributed agile development model, it is important to leverage common tools, reports,
and formats for effective communication across teams. Use of a common Wiki, Instant
Messengers, and Video Conferencing has proved successful in communicating across teams.
Online tools are used for the processes followed as it enables all stakeholders across teams
to have access to the status at any given point of time.
 Smart Reporting
Daily status meetings (which follow a defined format) among the team leads accomplishes
the following:

 Communication of work done by the team in a day.

 Communication of any roadblocks (if any) faced by a team.
 Communication of the work to be carried out on the following day.

These meetings and reports are called smart meeting and smart reports as they also have
the basic characteristics of StarSmart, and are simple to interpret, based on product feature,
effort, timeline & defect metrics, agile as offer flexibility in conduct, content, and
representation, reliable as represents true picture of the engagement with complete
transparency & tool based.

 Configuration Management
Defining the right configuration management processes & practices is critical in a distributed
development model. The following processes are following as part of StarSmart
configuration management:

 Use Continuous Integration

 Centralized Build Server
 Common Build Environment.
 Use of a Unit Test framework.
 Integrated development environment
 Automated builds

 Protecting IPR
BSI is aware that IP is a core to any product, and is most valuable asset for an ISV. BSI takes
different administrative, physical, and cultural measure to ensure that that customer’s IPR is
not compromised. As part of StarSmart engagement framework, BSI ensures that NDA is
signed with each individual member of the distributed team to safeguard IP, provide separate
and secured working enclosure if required, even provide a separate physical & network
access system dedicated to the team.
 Requirements Management
In StarSmart framework, a business analyst in the distributed team can represent the
customer/business and clarify doubts raised by developers of the distributed team, if
required. The analyst communicates with the customer regularly to clearly understand the
modules being worked on by the distributed team.
Benefits of StarSmart
Cost savings, though a major result, is not the only benefit of distributed product development
initiative. ISVs can get a tremendous competitive advantage by leveraging benefits from BSI’s
innovative distributed product development framework. Following are the benefits that come out as
a result of a successful implementation of StarSmart framework.

Higher return on R&D investment

StarSmart framework can not only reduce development cost, but it also can enhance productivity of
the engineering team by leveraging improved product development processes, technologies,
improve program management, and best practices form different successful product development
initiatives. Because StarSmart offers lower development cost, ISVs can stretch their R&D budget
further – which enables packing more power to their product in the form of enhanced feature list.

Shorter Revenue Realization Cycle

StarSmart can help reduce time to market with the usage of additional skilled resources and ready
to use accelerators. This helps the ISV to reach market faster and protect/create competitive
advantage. Hence, StarSmart helps companies shorten their revenue realization cycle, which means
they can achieve more with less capital or invest the free resources in growth related initiatives.

Flexible Scale

The product development is characterized by staffing peaks and troughs. Managing this variation of
utilization becomes a challenge for in-house R&D departments. This always results in either lower
utilization (higher cost) or non availability of skilled resourced when required most. But in a
distributed product development scenario, managing the ebb and flow of resources becomes the
responsibility of BSI. Hence, StarSmart provides a much needed degree of flexibility to the client
Organization, and allows them to focus on product management & marketing.

Conclusion
BSI believes that ISVs are the growth engine of the IT industry. With the innovation they bring in,
ISVs change the face of the technology adoption in every few years. The current recessionary
situation is opening up new strategic opportunities for ISV industry for next round of consolidation
and growth. The ability to adopt new conditions, effectively handle new challenges, and levering
new opportunities will make an ISV a market leader. Distributed product engineering model will
become a part of core strategy for any ISV going forward. At this juncture, BSI, with its long
experience as Product Engineering Service provider and with the help of its innovative StarSmart
framework, is well suited for helping ISVs in achieving their strategic goal and bringing a competitive
advantage.
\

About Blue Star Infotech

Blue Star Infotech (BSI) helps global mid market enterprises derive measurable business outcomes through the
use of IT. BSI partners with its clients to understand the business pain points, arrive at the appropriate IT led
interventions and manage successful implementation. Using its deep understanding of the mid market
segment, and drawing upon its long standing track record in creating IT solutions, BSI is able to deliver
affordable and relevant solutions through client-friendly flexible engagement models.

Blue Star Infotech’s dual expertise in building software products for industry-leading Independent Software
Vendors and IT solutions for enterprises provides it with an unique advantage to cross-leverage experiences
in creating solutions for enterprises- both custom and products – across domains and technology platforms.

Blue Star Infotech has been ranked 12th amongst the top fifteen global R&D Service
providers by Zinnov Management Consulting Pvt. Ltd, in a first-of-its-kind ranking of the Top
Global Outsourced Product Development service providers across geographies such as India,
China and Eastern Europe.

Blue Star Infotech has ongoing partnerships with more than 80 technology companies in different product vertical markets
that include Travel & Hospitality, Healthcare, Mobility, and Enterprise ISVs. Over the last 15 years, Blue Star Infotech has
served more than 200 technology companies by helping them to gain momentum in their product journey and has helped
them make over 1,600 software product releases to its customers.

BSI, an ISO & CMMi certified company, also has technology partnerships with companies like Microsoft,
Oracle, Hewlett Packard, SAS, Kentico, Sitecore, Platform Lab, and member of HTNG.

In addition, BSI is backed by the reputed Blue Star Group, ranked among Asia’s best sub billion businesses by
Forbes.

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