The intial challenge was to rapidly develop and launch a prototype application that would provide a technical, business and commercial proof of concept. Arrk choose to deploy a small onshore team of mixed UK and Indian consultants to work collaboratively with Barbour ABI business people to iteratively develop the prototype. The Arrk team spent some time located at the customer site and some located at Arrk’s UK office. Arrk’s UK business analysts and technical architects worked side by side with a team of Arrk’s Indian technicians and, due to Barbour ABI’s unfamiliarity with offshore, the UK team provided the majority of the management and requirements intermediation between the customer’s business and the Indian team.

The application was developed and launched in four months providing Barbour ABI with both a validation of the proposition as well as confidence in the offshore delivery model. This provided a green light for development of a full-scale production implementation name Drillstar. For this phase, the Arrk team size was increased with the majority being located offshore. With the offshore team having developed significant business domain knowledge (and with continuing management support from Arrk UK) Barbour ABI’s business users were able to develop a direct communication channel with the offshore team to deal with things things like requirements and solution design. Over time Arrk UK’s management involvement was further reduced as Barbour ABI moved to a VODC (Virtual Offshore Development Centre) model where the offshore team is managed directly by the customer as an extension of its own in-house IT function. Arrk’s VODC model provides offshore senior delivery and quality management as standard within Arrk’s Offshore Delivery Centre, leaving the customer to focus on requirements management and strategic product direction.