Offshoring isn’t for brownfield apps

We’ve heard it from a lot of our clients. “We thought it would be faster and cheaper to outsource, but every change caused something else to break.”

When a brownfield app lands offshore, it’s often met with good technical capability but poor situational awareness. Teams try to help but without insight into the app’s history or business logic, and even small tweaks trigger knock-on issues.

 – Tightly coupled systems make updates harder to isolate

 – Legacy code and old tooling create steep learning curves

 – Missing documentation leads to guesswork, rework and risk

These apps need real, targeted care. Not assumptions.

“We lost hours every day just waiting for replies. It felt like we were managing the project full time.”

While greenfield projects can survive time zone differences, brownfield recovery often can’t. When you’re trying to triage issues, waiting twelve hours for a reply turns little bugs into larger blockers. In turn, those blockers turn into chaos. For instance:

 – Time lags slow feedback loops

 – Cultural and language gaps create misalignment

 – Lack of business context leads to work that misses the mark

When you’re firefighting app instability, the last thing you need is communication friction.

“We ended up with a codebase no one wanted to touch. Testing took twice as long.”

Brownfield projects demand structure, and offshore setups can lose it fast. In many of our clients who tried offshoring before coming to us, the experiences were similarly difficult. Usually along the lines of: 

 – Inconsistent code practices fragmenting their foundation

 – Delays in communication slowing bug fixes

 – Changes made in siloes negatively impacting testing

These issues quietly add more technical debt than they remove, eroding stability at the time when, frankly, you need it most.

Offshoring introduces risk, especially when you’re already managing a fragile app. IP, data privacy and regulatory compliance become harder to track and enforce. Often, app owners don’t realise how exposed they are until a compliance audit flags it.

In offshored brownfield development, the issues span across:

 – Data passing through weaker protection jurisdictions

 – GDPR, HIPAA or SOC2 requirements being overlooked

 – Ownership and legal responsibility becoming harder to prove

Unfortunately, these aren’t just theoretical risks, they’re real revenue-impacting liabilities.

Sure, offshore rates might be lower, but the total cost of ownership typically paints a different picture. All too often, development projects go over budget, saving on the initial rates, but spending more on fixes, delays and management. The last things you need are:

 – Extra time spent aligning teams and managing work

 – Rework caused by misinterpretation or lack of domain knowledge

 – Extended timelines that delay recovery or go-to-market plans

Because, you didn’t hire help to add stress! You hired it to solve a problem. But in brownfield work, cutting corners adds complexity.

It’s easy to believe that more developers means faster progress, we get it. But brownfield apps aren’t solved by scale – they’re solved by experience, investigation and methodical clean-up. Without the right approach, you’ll just end up debugging someone else’s debug.

So what’s the alternative?

Simply put, brownfield recovery is forensic. You need partners who start by understanding, not just building.

A hybrid approach can work, but only when done carefully. Here’s what we recommend:

 – Keep context-heavy work onshore or nearshore

 – Use offshore support only for well-defined, low-risk tasks

 – Standardise tooling, documentation and communication from day one

And before anything else, get clarity on what you’re working with.

You can’t afford surprises at this stage. Book an audit before you make a decision. Our Indiespring audit will flag your blind spots and show you what’s really going on, before a bigger problem finds you first.

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