I've implemented off-shore teams for North American companies three times successfully, and what we learned is that engaging an off-shore team is really an inve

I've implemented off-shore teams for North American companies three times successfully, and what we learned is that engaging an off-shore team is really an investment that takes time, money & manpower to pay off. Many companies don't fully account for the true cost of outsourcing as it impacts your business processes for your on-shore team. Case in point, we engaged a team in India, started with 2 engineers, and within 3 months (of a complex platform) they were producing in alignment with the current code base. A year later, that team had grown to 6 including 2 QA, and they were basically running the show with guidance from the senior developers / managers / customer service / product owners. Part of the on-boarding process was sending reps over to their India office to embed and work with them for a couple weeks and understand their working environment, challenges and hear their ideas for improvements to the whole process. My cousin has a 50-person team in India (dislcaimer: I'm of Indian heritage) producing mostly mobile apps these days and in the early days his apps were of poor quality -- looking at his latest efforts, his team has really progressed and are producing decent apps with nice UI/UX and functionality. This process has occurred over the course of 6+ years. In my observations re: raw creativity and talent, Indian developers do lag behind their Eastern European/Russian and now South American rivals... part of that is the cultural. i.e. unwilling to take risks. My exposure has been small (less than 100 devs from all over the country) However, you can guide them to be productive and follow the right processes to success & scale.