There’s an excellent book by David Ropiek and George Gray called Risk, which explores the perceptions and realities of what we should and shouldn’t worry about. Of course, the overwhelming conclusion is that our fears are misplaced, and we should really worry about our broccoli intake, not snakes, spiders and plane crashes. But we�re human, and snakes, spiders and plane crashes are viscerally more frightening than heart disease.
This got me thinking about the outsourcing debate. The natural instinct is to fear outsourcing. After all, outsourcing is the export of business processes. And if you believe the pundits, this is nothing short of pure evil — the “giant sucking sound” and the wholesale export of jobs. Like snakes, spiders and plane crashes, this is scary stuff.
But should outsourcing be feared?
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India is a land of great contrasts and extremes. Driving through Delhi reveals the two sides of India: The unbounded future of a bright, vibrant country with vision and promise, and the starkly different reality of the desperately poor. For an outsider, India is an intense experience; you’re constantly bombarded by hope and hopelessness. At once, you see the future while being reminded of the past—and the deep contrasts of the present.
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Contrary to conventional belief that complex processes should be kept onshore, software development is rapidly gaining favor as an outsource candidate. This according to a
new study by Duke University and Booz Allen Hamilton. But as the pattern of offshoring moves from low- to high-end work, the challenges faced by management shifts from dealing with political and cultural issues to more operational issues like retaining managerial control and gaining operational efficiency. When high-end functions are sent offshore, they're put at significant risk. Offshoring introduces new physical, temporal, cultural, communication and organizational barriers that can wreak havok on software development. But properly conceived and executed metrics programs can help organizations reclaim the visibility and control they lose when projects exit their four walls.
This is the thesis of a new whitepaper by 6th Sense, "
Managing Success in Offshore Software Development: A Framework for Reclaiming Visibility and Control." This paper lends perspective on the challenges faced in offshore software development and provides a context for considering a metrics program as a risk management foundation for your offshore projects. Metrics matter whether you're an organization sending your projects offshore or an outsourcer seeking new ways to differentiate and win customer loyality. After all, you can't manage what you can't measure. And management matters more than ever when your high-end processes leave the building.
This next set of responses comes from Flat World panelist Tom Koulopolous, founder of Delphi Group, managing director of Perot Systems Innovation Labs, and author of Smartsourcing.
- How do you measure the effects of virtual distance in flat world software development?
- Metrics are one thing but what about the actual practicalities of managing a globally distributed software development (particularly given the observations on non-verbal communication etc)?
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The online panel discussion, "Building Software in a Flat World," stimulated a tremendous number of questions from the audience. Some were answered as part of the panel discussion. Others that we could not cover will be answered right here, front and center, for all eyes to see. This first set of questions are answered by 6th Sense Analytics co-founder and CEO, Greg Burnell.
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