You cant expect a full risk analysis in a comment on SD, or can you?

My point was, on average, off the shelf products carry less quantified risk than in-house development. Yes, there will be a time and place for both, however, most of the time it is less risky to get the work done by a company with a good portfolio in that area of industry (does not just apply with software).

Now I interpreted your reply to GP as "you should have looked at the risk" which I agree with, but what I tried to point out is that they did not inherently make a bad decision by going with another company to provide the software. Even if this was a "gut" decision it is very likely that GPs company would have arrived to the same conclusion: To outsource.

However, GPs company may not have done the subsequent risk analysis on the choice of different vendors and chose the wrong one...

I agree with you that risk is usually not taken into account and a lot of people make bad decisions and lose a lot of money. However I maintain that good managers who know the industry can make the correct "gut" decisions and save a lot of money. You can of course argue that its luck, but I prefer to call it experience and it takes skill to know how far that experience can take you and when to let an MBA analyse your risks for you.

As far as my simple brain can understand the Standard Model only covers the garage, anything outside will be breaking from the Standard Model.

So if the car is in the driveway physics is even more complicated than we thought.

Is this a good risk analysis for "billion dollar business decisions"?

Can you quantify the risk of a developer you hired in house leaving after the job is done without passing on the support documentation? Probably, maybe? Hire more than 1? How many, what's a safe number? 2? 5?

Great you have a team now. After they finish your in-house program you need to sack most of them because the job is now a "maintain" one. Can you quantify the risk of one or more of them re-creating your system and selling it to a competitor? What about leaving a back door? If its more than one person you sacked, how can you be sure who did it? What if the code appears on Source Forge? Maybe you are ok with all of the above so long as you have a system that works for you.

So now you have a system that works and users are happy (that's another risk I wont go into here). 3/5 years pass and your current PC lease program runs out and you need to replace all your worker PCs with new ones. Only one problem, the new PCs run a different version of the OS and your in house system is not compatible. Do you: A) Hire more developers to make it compatible and run the above risks all over again or B) stall the upgrade for a bit longer to delay the inevitable.

Would you like to call a friend or use 50/50?

Now you have a ton of risks involved with outsourcing or even buying something that "sort-of" fits off the shelve. But they are usually smaller than the in-house ones. Most systems started off in-house and were copied to an off the shelf system, so if you have money to burn and don't care if your code is leaked go right ahead make that billion dollar decision.

Would that not require him and 56 other richer people to become permanent residents of the moon? That sounds like something out of James Bond. I like it.

Mod parent up.

Branson is about as likeable as Bill Gates.

Did they teach you to win debates by using derogative comments in your MBA?

In the UK at least no-one is forcing anyone to give up having a life. It also depends where you are in life. IT covers a large spectrum from well paid professionals to help desk staff working off a script.

Should there be a Programmer Union and a Help Desk Union?? How about an Administrator union?

Would you like it if your union mandated a strike because help desk personnel are underplayed? How about sacked because they are outsourced from India now?

Other unions already paved the way for minimum wage and benefits, don't settle for less just because your boss wants you to create that spreadsheet in the middle of the night. You already have rights.

This doesn't sound very legal.

This is the major issue with IT because the industry moves so fast. In other walks of life you leave education, learn the trade then pass on your skills and lead the next generation.

This breaks down with IT where every generation has a new set of skills. So a lot of businesses just say "screw it" and hire a general manager with some exposure to IT rather than a guru that has been in it for years and is asking for 5 times more salary.

That and most old timers in IT don't like to manage, they like to have their own thing to administer and run a "Get off my lawn" policy.

It's one thing to do it and quite another to support it for 10 years. You also have to understand that not all companies are Software companies. You wouldn't commission Microsoft to design an oil refinery, would you?

Sore, the cost is the same for both parties, but one has no clue about how to manage the project and the other does.

So you outsource when you lack the expertise to build whatever it is and support it for the next decade. Even when a company has the knowledge to do it, support capability is a vital factor. Sure, you can hire a dev fore the same cost, but retaining them after the job is done is very hard or expensive and training support personnel is equally so (Devs are really bad at training).

Risk of a company closing down is a lot less than a student you trained up to support something for the next 10 years wanting a better job after 1 year.

Really?

Last thing I need is for some Union to tell me I need to strike or cant do overtime....

Possibly a small part. I've yet to see any student be good at a job in the first few Months. You still need to train them, so to me it doesn't matter what degree they have as long as they get through HR. I could train a Philosophy student in IT.