Comments on: Hidden costs of offshore software development

By: D Money

D Money — Fri, 25 Apr 2008 09:02:41 +0000

hi,
Good knowledge.Nicely explained

By: Heine

Heine — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 22:58:42 +0000

I will agree with this article whole heartily. Having experienced this first hand, offshore development is more like Offshort development. Teams of people over there seem to over engineer everything. Give the example of the following product:

1 Small Bus
Color: Yellow
Decks: 1
Wheels: 4
Passengers : 30
Seatbelts: Yes
Emergency Exit: Yes

Send this requirement to India and you get this:

1 large overly complicated bus
Color: Well is depends on which hue and saturation you want.

Decks: A minimum of 1, however due to the necessity of the potential overload of the bus they built 5 levels on top of the first level without any stabilizers to hold it up.

Wheels: They determined that they needed 8 wheels to drive the bus. 4 was just not enough, so they created 4 extra wheels to handle any “unknowns” in the road.

Passengers: Since the original requirement was 30, they figured in 6 months the bus might hold 300 people, so they build the extra decks (see above) as well as compacted the space between each row to hold more passengers per deck.

Seatbelts: Yes, but each belt will hold 5 people versus 1, for more efficiency and it will be cheaper.

Emergency Exit: This was wrapped in exception handling which did nothing but stream out stupid data which has nothing to do with the bus itself, and is only there for show. The door does not even work.

The point here:

Don’t use offshore.

By: What a crab is this?

What a crab is this? — Fri, 23 Nov 2007 09:47:58 +0000

ohh….internet is full of s..t like this…
some usefless article..i spent around 3 mins
waste of 3 mins + 1 min(this posting)

By: TechMount » Archive » Daily Friction #297

TechMount » Archive » Daily Friction #297 — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 09:37:23 +0000

[...] Hidden costs of offshore software development – Having led a distributed team in India and two time zones of the US, I can tell you that its not all cake. Some of the problems we came across ranged from the typical cultural differences to actual management issues within the Indian company. [...]

By: Shankara Narayanan

Shankara Narayanan — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 14:25:36 +0000

Hi,
I have some thoughts on this on my blog. Do check it out. I had success in running some offshore projects. The success factor depends on various different aspects as you might be aware. But some of the points what you have told is true and I personally in my experience have come across the same situations and have also overcome the same. If you need more information – you can definitely contact me on my personal email id.

Your screening process for your offshore team should definitely be reconsidered.

By: Thomas

Thomas — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 03:06:10 +0000

Seriously I am not kidding thats what happened. And you are right on the money in regards to the screening process. After it was all said and done we came to a similar conclusion. The company was a wholly owned subsidiary of ours and unforunately the people doing all the screening were VB6 / ASP coders, not .NET. Thanks for your comments.

By: Adel

Adel — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 02:16:17 +0000

India is dying… the culture is so diverse between US and India you should try off shoring as it will of course benefit you specially on the long run, but choose to offshore to a less distant country, will much alike culture and people easier to adopt your needs.

i encourage you to look for development partners in Egypt… you can contact me for that

also truth to be said your experience for the most part is extreme come on.. from 20 dev / 2.5 month vs. 5 devs / 2 weeks

you should consider more efficient screening process.