The Total Cost of Engagement (TCE) evaluates the total expenditures of outsourcing projects. In addition to the hourly rates of engineering talent you must consider the cost of additional management overhead, travel costs, the painful cost of staff turnover, and a certain amount of productivity loss due to the distance and degraded communications. Most of these costs are directly related to the separation in time between teams.

The overall cost of nearshore engagements is equivalent or lower than offshore because of the efficiencies brought about by working in close proximity to the US and in the same time zone. To determine if outsourcing software development to Mexico is right for your orgnaization, see the Benefits of Outsourcing IT to Mexico.

We have created an interactive TCE Calculator to help you estimate the costs of an engagement. It is better to consider all costs up front and not have surprises later.