> -----Original Message----- > From: Keith Nicholas [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] > Sent: November 9, 2004 4:08 PM > To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Subject: RE: [XP] An Employee Owned XP Enterprise? > > It seems quite a number of American programmers are getting > really paranoid of losing their jobs to overseas places? > > Is this a trend? Or a fear? > > Though, with a huge failure rate reported in > http://www.computerworld.com/managementtopics/management/proje > ct/story/0,108 > 01,97283,00.html its not surprising people want to fail for > less cost somewhere else :-) > > I think a bit of a shake up in the software industry would be > good, it might make people adapt, change, and innovate a lot more.
For quite a while now I have been saying to anyone who will listen (and quite a few that won't) precisely that offshoring is simply a "cheaper way to fail". Last March at a Toronto Product Management Association meeting, I spoke on a panel of 4 offshoring proponents and 4 opponents. Even the proponents from companies that provided offshore services said that a critical success factor was constant contact with their local client. The interesting thing about the whole discussion is that the topic of domestic job loss wasn't really on people's minds - it was more quality and logistical issues. Of course, my position is that moving development across the street from the Customer is considerably less efficient than being co-located, even more so if it's moved half a world away. Extreme Programming promotes the use of smaller teams with lower overhead costs. These teams deliver high business value first, win a product that is of high quality. Our current system developed by 10 people with 5 major releases (both rich client and Web) over two years, isn't fundamentally smaller than another project at this client that has taken 4 years, $200 million, and a over a hundred people to produce. Offshore outsourcing is, IMHO, a fad. It will still be here after the fad has passed, but it won't be the first option to reduce costs. I will qualify my opinions though by saying that this is a Canadian perspective. Offshoring is occurring here, but not like in the U.S. Canada is also a beneficiary of U.S. offshoring, so we kinda keep quiet about it here! I firmly believe that agile development processes are getting closer to the "tipping point" that Mary Poppendieck described, and once they have been accepted into the mainstream and their benefits felt, offshoring will become a substantially smaller issue. This will still take some time, and people will still lose their jobs to offshoring in the meantime. However, I'm optimistic that it's a short-term phenomenon. Dave Rooney Mayford Technologies http://www.mayford.ca To Post a message, send it to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To Unsubscribe, send a blank message to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] ad-free courtesy of objectmentor.com Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/extremeprogramming/ <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
