As I reflect on our circumstances in the US and the boon for offshore development I must wonder why.  Yes cost is a consideration.  I have heard more than once that it is more than just cost though.   The quality suffers unless lead by a very strong PM or Executive.  So why is the US offshoring at alarming rates?  IBM has moved thousands of jobs offshore, Microsoft has done the same and on any job interview or contract that you compete for you are competing against both H1B and offshore companies.

Please forgive my frankness here but this is just my opinion.  We are short sighted.  We are so trying to make a profit in this time of economic crisis that we are settling for less and less quality just to get it cheaper.  There are a number of very excellent companies and people offshore, please don't misunderstand.  The challenge is that we go after the cheapest price and forget all of the quality controls that we have required for years.  So is there any wonder that our applications are more fragile than ever?

Let's bring work back to the US and get that money flowing in our economy again.  The quality we require is sitting on unemployment looking/begging for work.

What is America going to be in the next 10 years?  With the outflow of jobs going everywhere else and the crashing economy and the predatory government taxation; what are we going to be?

We can’t be a bedroom community because no one will be able to afford to live here.  There won’t be any jobs to pay for anything and huge numbers of people are going into bankruptcy and financial ruin.

I am not a doomsayer or pessimist at all I am just trying to figure out what our government thinks when they tax us to death and all of our companies give our jobs away.  100’s of thousands of jobs have left our country in the past few years and now everyone is starting to worry about it?

I am interested in your thoughts.

I have been running oursourcing arrangements over the past few years and one thing that continues to nag me is; What is wrong with outsourcing?  I mean why is outsourcing not living up to the hype and promise of it?  Nearly every company that I have worked with considers their outsourcing arrangement a failure.  Sure we have a a number of project level successes but they generally see the overall relationship as a failure.

The factors that have contributed to this view of outsourcing are:

1. Lack of savings
2. Poor delivery quality
3. Too much rework / lack of efficiency
4. Lack of Accountability

I have taken a good look at some of the successes and some of the failures in the companies that I have worked with to try to understand why these things are happening.

Lack of Savings

The problem here comes from the fundamental differences in the business philosophy between the American businessmen and the Indian outsourcer.  The American businessman will generally charge a bit more per hour but not charge for all of the hours spent on a project as a gesture.  The Indian businessman will charge a lower price for services but expects to be paid for every hour.  This sets up a problem in perception; each believing that they are doing a good thing but each receiving an entirely different message.

The american believes that they are being taken advantage of or that the bill is being padded because there is no discounting on the bill.  The Indian businessman believes that their work is not being valued because the client desires a discount.  This situation sets up animosity between the two companies.

Poor Delivery

Almost every single technical director that I have worked with complain about the quality of the delivery of the outsourcer.  Common complaints are, "they don't understand the business problem" and "they are good coders but they simply don't think about the problem they are trying to solve".  I believe that both sides of the business relationship have some culpability here.  Many times the requirements are not clear enough to provide the developers with proper direction and focus.  Other times the requirements are clear but the developers just don't read the documentation or don't understand what they are suppose to be doing.

Rework / Lack of Accountability

One of the biggest problems that executives have told me that they experience is a lack of accountability.  Most of the executives say that when they have outsourced relationships they are constantly frustrated by statements like "we will fix that" or "yes I understand".  Now on the surface these seem to be quite reasonable responses. When you apply them to the context of a problem in the delivery quality and the fact that 99% of American businessmen expect their service provider to make things right but the outsourcer generally will not offer compensation for problems.

What can we do to realize the promise of outsourcing relationships?

I believe that it falls to the Outsourcing Engagement Manager to assure that each of these problems are addressed early and often in the project.  I have been able to realize more and more success in the use of outsouring by addressing these situations and assuring consistent communication through governance.

JD

I never cease to be amazed at some of the new talent that is out there in application development.  These guys are excellent at what they do and generally know their stuff.  It is amazing to me that they don't give us old guys any respect for paving the way for them.  I mean really would they have OOP if we hadn't mastered programming in 8k of memory?  Would they even begin to understand what ASM code is?

Hey I am not knocking these guys they are super sharp when it comes to OO and very specific programming technologies but give us old guys a little bit of credit for paving the road.  Let me tell you it was bumpy very bumpy back before Bill and MS gave us the cool tools we have today.  Today you have objects to pass around or read and write but we had byte and offset to manipulate.  So please young men and women be nice to an old programmer for they probably spilled a lot of blood giving you the tools you have today.

 JD.

Well it looks like we have had a bit of trouble with the ol blog.  But we are back up and running with a fresh install.  Unfortunately someone was asleep at the wheel and didn't do the back ups for the Blog.  Yes they are now looking for new opportunities.  Not really!  Everyone has their days and it turned their attention to the quality of their work.  So I view it as a win for all of us.

Thanks for your patience.

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