There is a Russian proverb (hi Mr Reagan!) which states that a cheapskate pays twofold. I suspect that the cost of this "overseas" project could easily cost 20x the low, low sticker price.
I have old paperwork for significant shareholdings in 3 extinct companies I worked at that tried to outsource all development. Out of 6 or 7 major outsourced projects I was involved in or responsible for, only one could be classified as "successful", a couple more ended up with somewhat usable code/systems that met requirements (mainly due to them being poorly written) but which were unmaintainable and replaced within 12-18 month timeframes. The rest were all complete throwaways and represent low 7 figures worth of money completely wasted (with, perhaps, the exception that I and others learned new ways that outsourcing can go wrong and a bunch of useful war stories.)
As I see it, when (most) companies have an in house dev team, what they _actually_ have but do not understand (at senior management levels) is a Solution Architecture and System Design team, a software development team, and a QA and Test team - all of which are likely to be the same people who do not have those roles listed on any org chart or job description.
Realistically, the best you can possibly hope for is to outsource the non team lead parts of the software development, and _maybe_ some of the testing work (if your in house QA is on top of things).
The "50% cheaper" off shore dev team is, in my experience, at best capable of doing something under half of what a typical in house dev team does. Given that the management and oversight of the off shored development and testing work needs to be done in house, and cannot possibly be done in the company's best interest by the offshore devs or an outsourcing company, you are going to need to retain in house staff to do those roles - and they're going to need to be the more experienced and more senior people from your existing in house team.
Anybody who thinks "half the hourly rate" translates to "half the cost for the entire project" has clearly never done it before. At best, you are going to be able to outsource 50% of the work. So at best you can save perhaps 25% of the development costs, and that requires you to have some very good inhouse technical skill who are experienced in system design and architecture, writing unambiguous requirement docs and User Acceptance Tests, and who have seen the sort of "tricks" outsourced developers do to pass tests instead of actually writing secure stable and maintainable systems.
I have old paperwork for significant shareholdings in 3 extinct companies I worked at that tried to outsource all development. Out of 6 or 7 major outsourced projects I was involved in or responsible for, only one could be classified as "successful", a couple more ended up with somewhat usable code/systems that met requirements (mainly due to them being poorly written) but which were unmaintainable and replaced within 12-18 month timeframes. The rest were all complete throwaways and represent low 7 figures worth of money completely wasted (with, perhaps, the exception that I and others learned new ways that outsourcing can go wrong and a bunch of useful war stories.)
As I see it, when (most) companies have an in house dev team, what they _actually_ have but do not understand (at senior management levels) is a Solution Architecture and System Design team, a software development team, and a QA and Test team - all of which are likely to be the same people who do not have those roles listed on any org chart or job description.
Realistically, the best you can possibly hope for is to outsource the non team lead parts of the software development, and _maybe_ some of the testing work (if your in house QA is on top of things).
The "50% cheaper" off shore dev team is, in my experience, at best capable of doing something under half of what a typical in house dev team does. Given that the management and oversight of the off shored development and testing work needs to be done in house, and cannot possibly be done in the company's best interest by the offshore devs or an outsourcing company, you are going to need to retain in house staff to do those roles - and they're going to need to be the more experienced and more senior people from your existing in house team.
Anybody who thinks "half the hourly rate" translates to "half the cost for the entire project" has clearly never done it before. At best, you are going to be able to outsource 50% of the work. So at best you can save perhaps 25% of the development costs, and that requires you to have some very good inhouse technical skill who are experienced in system design and architecture, writing unambiguous requirement docs and User Acceptance Tests, and who have seen the sort of "tricks" outsourced developers do to pass tests instead of actually writing secure stable and maintainable systems.