The Changing Face Of Offshore Programming
Category Software Development
I ran across an online article in BusinessWeek titled The Changing Face Of Offshore Programming. It's a look at the "other side" of the offshore programming debate. The author, Christopher Kenton, has been involved in many offshoring projects and pops the bubble about all the cost savings that are hyped in these agreements. While the pure labor cost is often less, there are more costs involved in project management and potential litigation costs on an international basis. He also writes about how you need to have strong processes in place to manage a project before you embark on offshore outsourcing. Otherwise, you'll quickly find yourself in a morass of uncontrolled development.
A very good read, and worth passing along to management who might be considering it...
I ran across an online article in BusinessWeek titled The Changing Face Of Offshore Programming. It's a look at the "other side" of the offshore programming debate. The author, Christopher Kenton, has been involved in many offshoring projects and pops the bubble about all the cost savings that are hyped in these agreements. While the pure labor cost is often less, there are more costs involved in project management and potential litigation costs on an international basis. He also writes about how you need to have strong processes in place to manage a project before you embark on offshore outsourcing. Otherwise, you'll quickly find yourself in a morass of uncontrolled development.
A very good read, and worth passing along to management who might be considering it...
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Comments
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Survival list:
1) If the project size justifies it, the best you can do is to put an project manager to your outsourcing partner
2) Apply the Spolsky test (http://www.joelonsoftware.com )
3) Insist on running a version control server under your control and have nightly builds
4) Get EARLY prototypes of your interfaces
5) Test, Test, Test
Posted by Stephan H. Wissel At 06:45:48 On 08/01/2004 | - Website - |