Friday, September 07, 2007
India Outsourcing and Software Development
When you combine the need for software development and rate arbitrage, you end up with a repeatable process of leveraging warm bodies...
Over time there have been a variety of anecdotal phrases that we know are back-testable and yet we choose to ignore them. You have probably heard the phrase that one out of twenty programmers produces twenty times the software compared to the average programmer.
Bruce Webster in 1996 also concluded that half of these programmers could be terminated without any software projects missing deadlines. It makes me curious why Americans who outsource, haven't yet put strategies in place around this notion. I have yet to run across any Fortune enterprise where one of the characteristics for going down the path of outsourcing wasn't rate arbitrage. Consider the fact that if rate arbitrage was the primary driver and with world economics rapidly removing this factor, the only thing left is to figure out how to increasingly cut the head count of your offshore development staff.
On another note, I haven't ran across a single IT executive who believes in outsourcing that had a prior military background. Maybe us American's should not only consider the need for Strong Technical Leadership but also where one's allegiances reside. After all, if you are more interested in seeing someone else succeed over your own team, then there is no hope for you to ever be a real leader...
| | View blog reactionsOver time there have been a variety of anecdotal phrases that we know are back-testable and yet we choose to ignore them. You have probably heard the phrase that one out of twenty programmers produces twenty times the software compared to the average programmer.
Bruce Webster in 1996 also concluded that half of these programmers could be terminated without any software projects missing deadlines. It makes me curious why Americans who outsource, haven't yet put strategies in place around this notion. I have yet to run across any Fortune enterprise where one of the characteristics for going down the path of outsourcing wasn't rate arbitrage. Consider the fact that if rate arbitrage was the primary driver and with world economics rapidly removing this factor, the only thing left is to figure out how to increasingly cut the head count of your offshore development staff.
On another note, I haven't ran across a single IT executive who believes in outsourcing that had a prior military background. Maybe us American's should not only consider the need for Strong Technical Leadership but also where one's allegiances reside. After all, if you are more interested in seeing someone else succeed over your own team, then there is no hope for you to ever be a real leader...
