[nihar]

As someone who managed off-shore projects, I think this model can be made to work only if the coding part is offshore. The design part would have to be done on-shore in a majority of cases. The problem with outsourcing design is that you may not have people who understand the business or the dynamics of the environment they are designing for.

[Webster]

So offshore projects require the Waterfall methodology to succeed? What if requirements change? The design has to change and of course the code. I think you are exactly right, but the nature of development makes offshoring problematic. I have not yet seen good software products created over seas. Usually they need lots of work in-house (rewritten). In my experience the cost savings of offshore development is really creative accounting

[nihar]

In some cases, especially if you have a good plan, you can get a very decent product out of the project, but changing requirements (especially with today's agile environments), are not conducive to off-shore development

[arethuza]

I've seen at least one company go under when their management team decided to have all the "design" done in the UK and then they shipped a lump of UML to $COUNTRY and expected a finished product back.