One of these practices is churning out effective requirement specifications well and on time.

Most mid-tier software companies operate with very little documentation including requirement specifications. This is understandable. When the team is collocated, the need for documentation is minimal, especially when the team has deep knowledge of the software product.

But when you wish to leverage an offshore outsourcing relationship, absence of documentation becomes a bottleneck. Lack of documented requirements increases the chances that development resources misunderstand the requirements, causing costly rewrites of code. So how does one put in an efficient Requirements Gathering and Documentation process in place that is a catalyst for quickly outsourcing projects?

1. Use a hybrid onsite/offshore model for the first few projects
   For the first few projects, bring a senior business analyst or technical lead onsite. Let him or her work with your Product Manager and Architect(s) to document the requirements. Without this person onsite, your team would spend valuable time and effort writing requirements. Secondly, a person from the offshore organization better understands how to prepare the requirements for his or her organization and is able to translate spoken requirements to documents faster.
   
   
2. Invest in the right skills
   Like it or not, there is often a temptation to hire a bunch of programmers without investing in a more expensive PM or business analyst resource. Without well crafted requirements, the programmers end up waiting for work and this has a direct impact on overall cost and productivity. A skilled analyst ensures that requirements are understandable, complete, and ready for implementation.
   Typically a 1:4 rule of thumb works well. To feed requirements to four programmers there needs to be at least one full time analyst on the project.
   
   
3. Use the just-in-time approach
   Requirements written several months in advance stand the risk of obsolescence in a continuously upgrading product. With new features being released, the impact on already written requirements is not understood. They simply end up becoming shelf-ware.
   
   Requirements need to be written for consumption within the next four weeks. That is when they stay relevant and useful. So, having a person actively prioritizing requirements and elaborating them goes a long way in delivering business benefits in an offshore model.
   
   

Companies that invest time and effort in planning for requirements documentation are able to leverage an outsourced team much better and achieve much higher ROI from the relationship.