StarBase SoftWare is a software company based in Aurora, Ontario offering solutions to the aviation industry. They had developed DOS-based pilot record-keeping system known as the Flight Operations Administrator (FOA), which was doing extremely well in the market. StarBase was continuously expanding the functionality of the software and wanted to make it into a world-class product.

StarBase SoftWare wanted to migrate this in-house application software to internet-based technology in order to extend its reach worldwide. They wanted to give a new look and a new vision to the FOA software. They wanted to use the latest technology to produce a world-class product for the aviation industry. Due to lack of technical expertise within the organization, StarBase was looking for a long-term software partner who had the technical expertise to re-build the software. Besides that it was also important for them that the offshore partner was competent enough to maintain and enhance the product over a long period of time.

StarBase wanted to outsource work to reduce costs and at the same time retain control over the new version. Since they were dealing with product development, they envisaged the need of a dedicated team that could support the product actively even after the development was over. Cost savings and knowledge retention were their major concerns.

Solution
eDynamic offered their Dedicated Seat Model for offshore software development to StarBase in order to meet the current challenge. Under this model, StarBase hired seats/developers in India who would work dedicatedly on the FOA software. The work was executed in 2 phases:
(a) Phase I Product Development Phase
(b) Phase II Maintenance and Support Phase
This model helped StarBase to develop FOA software as per their requirements. The dedicated team in India worked along with the StarBase team in Ontario to develop the software.

During the product development phase, StarBase had 2 dedicated developers in India who worked under the guidance of a local non-dedicated Project Manager to develop the software from scratch. These developers were carefully chosen to match the skill-set required for the development of the FOA software. This model for offshore software development worked perfectly for StarBase where status reports were sent in weekly by the offshore team. During some phases of the project, even daily reports were sent in as per the requirements.
eDynamic followed its processes for quality control during development. A formal change control procedure was established and followed both during the development and the support phase that helped in proper management of the project, thus ensuring timely delivery.

An online support module was in-built into the FOA software that ensured that all support requests/changes came in directly to the eDynamic team during the support phase. StarBase as well as their customers could report these problems directly to the eDynamic team.

The team structure for the dedicated developers in India during both the phases is as shown in the diagram below.

As seen in the diagram above, the team was scaled down as per requirements, during the support phase in order to save costs and resources.

Results
StarBase used eDynamics Dedicated Seat Model for offshore software development effectively to develop the FOA product. They were able to use skilled developers based in India for development. Their development costs were reduced drastically by outsourcing work rather than hiring local resources. The product was delivered on time and StarBase was able to sell the product to various clients. eDynamic still supports the product even after 2 years of development and continues to enhance the software.