NY Times article - outsourcing

[Thomas Paul]

Send Jobs to India? Some Find It's Not Always Best
Even as the prospect of high-skilled American jobs moving to low-wage countries like India ignites hot political debate, some entrepreneurs are finding that India's vaunted high-technology work force is not always as effective as advertised.
"For three years we tried all kinds of models, but nothing has worked so far," said the co-founder and chief technology officer of Storability Software in Southborough, Mass. After trying to reduce costs by contracting out software programming tasks to India, Storability brought back most of the work to the United States, where it costs four times as much, and hired more programmers here. The "depth of knowledge in the area we want to build software is not good enough" among Indian programmers, the executive said.
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/technology/28SOUR.html

[Ashok Mash]

From the article:

Bladelogic, whose client list includes General Electric and Sprint, outsourced work to India within months of going into business in 2001. But it concluded that projects it farmed out � one to install an operating system across a network, another to keep tabs on changes done to the system � could be done faster and at a lower cost in the United States.

Hmmm, I see! :roll:
Well, I guess that goes to show that there are a group of upper management there who doesn�t quite know what they are dealing with, and their poor decision (to outsource work that requires close, customer-based interactive & iterative work) is causing the projects to fail more than the distance-factor.
Outsourcing model is not suitable for certain types of work, and am sure there�s lot of �they are doing it, why not us too� decisions being taken by so called �expert steering committees� of IT firms across the world � they will fail, they will cry out loud about how bad outsourcing is, and then they will do the oldest trick in the book - rearrange/modify their projects, teams and goals to make bad decisions untraceable!

[Don Stadler]

Well, I guess that goes to show that there are a group of upper management there who doesn�t quite know what they are dealing with, and their poor decision (to outsource work that requires close, customer-based interactive & iterative work) is causing the projects to fail more than the distance-factor.

This surprises you?

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Don Stadler:
This surprises you?

Not since Y2K!
Well, I was only trying to hint against the tone of the original article (that projects fails because it was outsourced to India) by saying �projects fail mainly due be bad management decisions, including but not only because of outsourcing to India.�
[ April 28, 2004: Message edited by: Ashok Mash ]

[Don Stadler]

Originally posted by Ashok Mash:

Not since Y2K!
Well, I was only trying to hint against the tone of the original article (that projects fails because it was outsourced to India) by saying �projects fail mainly due be bad management decisions, including but not only because of outsourcing to India.�

But sometimes the decision to outsource to India is a really, really bad one. Not because of poor quality but because much of the work really needs to be close to the user to succeed.
And frankly I think a lot of the outsourcing going on now is a result of bad decisions.
There is another possible factor, organizations which failed in projects in the UK or US and are now failing in outsourced projects as well. Again no surprises....

[Thomas White]

Obviously there are plenty of well qualified programmers in India. I think one thing this article may imply is that to be economically viable, India needs to focus on its own infrastructure, develope its own companies involved in R&D, move towards first world status, improving standards of living for the general population, and becoming economic player on the world scene.
This is not to single out India. I think it implies to the world scene in general. When American CEO's run around the world looking for the cheapest programmers it might make the annual stock report look a little better but it doesn't help the American economy in the long run. Enrollment in engineering and computer science programs in the U.S. is already dropping. That means less creative minds fueling R&D in the U.S ultimately hurting our status in the world stage. Same goes for India. If you continue to rely on American corporations for your future eventually you'll get burned. They'll find cheaper programmers somewhere else. Whereas if both countries protect their internal investments we all prosper in the long term.
Thomas
[ April 28, 2004: Message edited by: Thomas White ]

[Arjun Shastry]

{
..Executives at Bladelogic, Storability and ConnecTerra declined to divulge the names of the companies they have worked with in India, saying that it might damage potential business relationships for other work in the future
}
For Storability it was WebSym Technologies in Pune. .I once went there in December,they(WebSym) said Storability doesn't have a space right now,they have acquired some space and will be building a office in next few months.But the article says it recruited 25 people and set up its own shop.

[Sharma Ashutosh]

No doubt about it-indians are excellent software engineers. These comapnies burnt their fingers because of misplanning and not choosing the right destination in india. Otherwise 90% of the outsourced projects are big hit.

[Ashok Mash]

Originally posted by Monu Sharma:
Otherwise 90% of the outsourced projects are big hit.

Sound rhetoric to me - especially since the average success rate of projects in the US (and in other countries) is much lesser than 90%.

[Tim Holloway]

The biggest problem with offshoring - and this really is any offshoring, not just IT - is that when the main incentive is price, management almost invariably cheaps out.
That is, if sending the work to India/China/Kenya is good, using cheaper Indian/Chinese/Kenyan workers is better, overworking, understaffing, and under-supprting them is better still, and so on and so on.
This makes the quality of offshore work look worse than it should simply because nobody can work for free as long as food and other essentials cost money and there's only so many corners you can cut before the product gets shaved into something worthless.
Anyway, I don't have any global stats, but the commonly-quoted figure for software projects in the U.S. is a failure rate of 2 out of 3.
Not very encouraging is it? My own experience has been even higher, though that's in large part because management changed directions faster than the software could be brought to market.

[Jeroen Wenting]

Originally posted by Monu Sharma:
No doubt about it-indians are excellent software engineers. These comapnies burnt their fingers because of misplanning and not choosing the right destination in india. Otherwise 90% of the outsourced projects are big hit.

That's weird. I've been involved on the sidelines with several projects that were outsourced to India and none of them worked out.
Other people I know have similar experience.
You can't keep saying that every outsourced project that fails fails because of factors outside India, that little white lie only lasts so long.
Fact is that the Indian companies I have experience with didn't understand the specifications or simply chose to ignore them and build something else instead (and then threaten us with legal action when we refuse to take delivery of a product that's clearly not what was ordered because core functionality is missing and the rest doesn't work properly).

[Arjun Shastry]

[Warren Dew]

Originally posted by Ashok Mash:
Sound rhetoric to me - especially since the average success rate of projects in the US (and in other countries) is much lesser than 90%.

A project can be a "big hit" without being a success. For example, half way through the project, execs might notice, "wow, look at all these man hours of progress we've made on the project, and we've only spent this little amount of money!" Then, if they cancel it the next day for other reasons, they can justifiably say, "good thing we didn't spend too much on it - we saved millions!" - and the project can be a big hit whether the code produced was great or stank.

[Don Stadler]

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:

That's weird. I've been involved on the sidelines with several projects that were outsourced to India and none of them worked out.
Other people I know have similar experience.
You can't keep saying that every outsourced project that fails fails because of factors outside India, that little white lie only lasts so long.

Jeroen,
I don't think there is much doubt that there are many good Indian software engineers. I also think these engineers are being largely hired by some of the big development offices being built in India by Microsoft, Sun, HP, etc. Leaving bespoke development to less experienced and/or talented people.

Originally posted by Jeroen Wenting:
Fact is that the Indian companies I have experience with didn't understand the specifications or simply chose to ignore them and build something else instead (and then threaten us with legal action when we refuse to take delivery of a product that's clearly not what was ordered because core functionality is missing and the rest doesn't work properly).

I've heard a lot of this recently. But let's be honest, it happens in the US and Europe also. I worked for a big 5 consultantcy in the UK where a data warehousing project went astray becuase the consultantcy put the cheapest people on the project rather than the best people. They 'saved' perhaps �12,000 on labor, but the inexperienced person who did the work was the direct cause of two production machines crashing and a loss of between �200,000 and �400,000. I did the cleanup on that project.

[Jeroen Wenting]

I don't deny there are good people in India, don't get me wrong.
I also don't deny there are bad people and bad practices outside of India.
I was responding to someone who stated clearly that Indians are inherently superior to others and that therefore all outsourcing projects end up as a success.
I have personally worked with some highly qualified Indians, though they were employed outside of India (working for British companies stationed in the Netherlands).
They did bring back very nice food after visiting home for vacations which they sometimes shared with us. Very nice guys