hughk's Journal: New terminology....

We have the word Downsizing which means to get rid of all the people that do but leaving management who are now in a quandary because they don't have anyone working for them.

Nevermind, this leads us to the solution: The word Outsourcing now which means essentially sending work to be done elsewhere for the price of a cleaner here. Then we have the word Upskilling which means that our offshore result has actually provided us with cleaners and we now want programmers which will cost us more and take longer. Finally because the project has ran out of time and money, we have the word Descoping which means agreeing that "being taken to the cleaners" by the offshore company is now accepted with the realisation that the solution doesn't meet the original requirements.

Offshoring works, however only within certain parameters. On a recent project with which I have had the pleasure of being involved, the offshore resource being provided by one of the big consulting companies produced about 46% of what was expected and about 34% was tested according to their own standards. In common with many outsourcing projects, we have been told that the project will succeed no matter what. The business remains blissfully unaware of the problems and in the end will have no option but to accept what has been given to them. In the end, the quality issues will be addressed by Deskilling and Outsourcing of the entire test process.

Note that outsourcing can work, however, you must expect senior staff to spend a large amount of time supervising the projects and training the staff. Unfortunately, as the offshore staff become more skilled they want to improve their income standard so they move around. Expect at least a 50% staff turnover. Then there are communications issues. Even if the offshore staff are working on-site, straight-forward concepts may need considerable explanation. Pure coders are few and far between these days and any kind of analyst/programmer must have an overview of the process that is being implemented.

The last point is that your business processes become embedded in the code. If you are lucky, the code may match the documentation, but it only starts this way. After successfully outsourcing and offshoring your operation you may find that the only people who know your business processes aren't working for you but for someone else.

At this point it becomes advisable to close up shop and move offshore yourself.

When there is more process sitting outside the company, the business is likely to follow!