Near-shore

Definition

Placing work in a country close enough to share most of your working day, usually within one to three time zones. For European buyers that typically means Eastern Europe, North Africa, or the Eastern Mediterranean. The defining feature is overlap, not distance in kilometres.

Why it matters

Near-shore costs more per hour than far-shore and buys you same-day iteration. That trade is worth making for work that changes as it is built, and not worth making for well-specified batch work. Deciding which kind of work you have is the whole question.