Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
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Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#2I can't believe he skipped over the real elephant in the offshoring room - the time difference. All of those countries have almost no overlap with any part of the United States. If we schedule an 8 AM CST meeting with India (which is super early for some of the people here), it's already 7 PM at night there, and they're completely exhausted and ready to go home. And that's _if_ you can schedule a meeting far enough in advance that somebody else hasn't already taken up that precious 8 AM spot... usually you'll have to go out later in their day, sometimes as late as 10 PM there. Which really hurts when you consider how many of them rely on public transportation... which stops running before 10 PM. I've been told that some people have ended up sleeping in the office rather than push back on a very late meeting request.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#3Really interesting and well written article. I don't think China will be an outsourcing destination for long.
In India your slowly starting to see agencies that aren't merely code factories but places where you can do actual product development. Its early days though.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#4Loved the Indian head shake video! Watch it if you can.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#5If you are offshoring a project because you can't afford local prices then the project may not be feasible at all within your limited budget, even at outsourcing rates.
If you have a limited budget, realize that means your requirements will be limited. Never select the vendor with the lowest rates. Always evaluate the actual people on the team.
The idea of line items for features is unrealistic for software development. It's X hours, days or weeks for each person, which needs to be re-evaluated every week or two.
If you don't have a good developer you trust before aside from the outsource team to look at the code on a routine basis then don't bother making the software at all. If you don't have a budget that allows for automated tests to be developed (20 percent of devs will do this automatically anyway) then cancel the project. If there is no budget for refactoring then please cancel the project.
If you plan on using thinly veiled racism to blame foreign developers for your inability to specify coherent requirements or comprehend the complexity of software development, then please cancel your outsourcing project.
If you follow this advice, 8/10 outsourcing projects would never start and everyone could spend their time on better things.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#6If you are offshoring a project because you can't afford local prices then the project may not be feasible at all within your limited budget, even at outsourcing rates. If you have a limited budget, realize that means your requirements will be limited. Never select the vendor with the lowest rates. Always evaluate the actual people on the team. The idea of line items for features is unrealistic for software developme…
8/10 of all software projects should never start. It's not just about the outsourced ones ;)
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#7I can't believe he skipped over the real elephant in the offshoring room - the time difference. All of those countries have almost no overlap with any part of the United States. If we schedule an 8 AM CST meeting with India (which is super early for some of the people here), it's already 7 PM at night there, and they're completely exhausted and ready to go home. And that's _if_ you can schedule a meeting far enough i…
Well the author is in Australia so the differences are less significant.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#8I can't believe he skipped over the real elephant in the offshoring room - the time difference. All of those countries have almost no overlap with any part of the United States. If we schedule an 8 AM CST meeting with India (which is super early for some of the people here), it's already 7 PM at night there, and they're completely exhausted and ready to go home. And that's _if_ you can schedule a meeting far enough i…
He skipped it because his experience was from being based in Australia or some such. Thus the time zone was roughly the same (or near enough).
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#9I really wish there was a neutral unit of account one could use for comparing costs etc.
Re: Lessons from Outsourcing to India, China and the Philippines
#10Loved the Indian head shake video! Watch it if you can.
I was very fortunate to have a colleague familiar with this behavioral idiom in a developer training I was giving to a team from Hyderabad. He kindly interrupted me after I kept trying to explain a concept which it seemed to me they didn't understand!