IT Outsourcing to India? - Bargain hard and get thinkers

Planning to outsource IT project to India? - The series of blogs will help you to get some honest tips and tricks that will help you achieve success while working with IT firms in India.
For ease of communication, let me term you as 'client' 
Some queries you as the client may be going through, in your mind will be
"  How do get the offshore team balance right?  "

• While working in software services firm, i happened to work with some very sharp IT heads who does all the heavy thinking, and also with others who does the implementation with/without the big picture/detailed picture in mind. Delivery Heads of Software Services typically ensures that your project gets at-least one of such member 'thinker' in your team. If you are outsorcing work to India. Please do ensure that, you have that 'thinker'- who does the think through for your specific business needs. The best situation would be to have someone capable your client's rolls.

For a well balanced team of around 12 members, you should be looking for atleast three top notch thinkers within the offshore team, one for BA- Business Analysis(BA), Project Management (PM) and the third one other for Tech Leadership and Architecture (TA). If the project is smaller, you should be looking for a Technical Manager- who can play PM, BA and Architect role all by himself. Remember this is a hard find - but this is the crux of the team that you cannot compromise.

•  Offshore Companies typically infuse fresh graduates with few months of orientation into big projects, and bill them at the same rate as that of 3-5 years Software Engineer. The cost of such juniors will be just 5-8$ per hour, and in turn they can get billed at say $20 or more. So here is where smart clients do, they are always ready to pay premium billing rate for 'thinkers'. Billing rates for senior level 'thinkers' will be typically 30% higher. I have seen many smart clients, who bargain hard to get them. 
• If taking juniors in the team, do verify the resumes, get the interview done by your personell or by one of the 'trusted thinkers' from offshore team.

  Here is the catch-
  Offshore firms typically cannot allocate 'thinkers' full time in to your project alone.
  Thinker are fewer and are needed in all the projects being delivered for several different clients. So 'thinkers' work part time, but would end up getting billed full time for each client!