Outsourcing is not really a good solution for the majority of programming
work, and more companies are getting wise to that.  What is presented as a
cheap panacea to resolving death-march projects is really just another money
pit.  Most executives respond to sales pitches and that is a prime reason
why there has been as much outsourcing as we've seen.  However, a few
factors are going to prevent outsourcing from ever reaching the plague level
we've all been worried about for so long:

1.  Companies outsource because they believe it will be cheaper to do so
than to manage their own technology.  In a few small cases where a COTS
solution will address a business need, this may in fact work (think
manufacturing companies).  The majority of businesses in the United States
are service-oriented, and service industries benefit from using technology
to differentiate themselves (there are numerous published studies on this,
just Google it).  If you agree with my premise, then you must agree that
businesses operating in service-oriented verticals are not in a good
position to benefit from a COTS product, unless they spend big bucks
optimizing it, in which case you have paid a vendor to develop a system that
can then be sold to a competitor - no way.  Not all companies are wise to
this and the ones that are not will go under eventually.

2.  Wages in popular outsourcing countries are going up at an exponential
rate.  Already, an experienced developer in India can earn 1/3 to 1/2 of a
typical U.S. salary for a person of comparable experience and skill.  While
it is true that you can throw green Indian engineers at a project (they make
very little), we all know what kind of results you can expect in that
scenario, and it is precisely the reason why so many companies have had
horrible outsourcing experiences.  If you attempt to assemble an Indian team
of developers to do the work of an American team, you will spend 1/3 to 1/2
as much just in salaries, and that doesn't consider the logistical cost of
arranging your business according to their best practices (which you will
have to do in order to outsource successfully).

3.  The majority of U.S. companies are not at a CMM level where they can
profitably outsource projects.  Most projects in the U.S. do not fail
because the programmers are bad or because they are too expensive.  They
fail because the required processes to successfully develop software are not
in place.  The capability maturity model exists for this purpose and I will
bet that very few of us have ever worked in an organization that even knew
what its CMM was, much less was able to boast a high enough rating to do
business with the "top" Indian outsourcers without major cost penalties due
to lack of compliance with CMM practices.  The first thing companies must do
is learn how to define project requirements and how to manage those
projects; if you think it's hard getting good results from an American team
that understands your culture and language natively when you deal with them
face-to-face, I don't think you can truly appreciate the world of pain you
are asking for by shipping the work overseas to an unknown set of
circumstances.

In my opinion there are numerous other reasons why the types of outsourcing
projects feared by American technology workers are unlikely to pose a real
threat.  Having said that, if I am wrong, I don't think that a PMP
certification saves you, either.  If you can successfully outsource
programming, you can successfully outsource project management, as well.

Just my 2 cents.

Eric


On 5/24/07, Brent Nicholas <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

I hate to be the guy to drag in the dead horse to kick...

But I thought I'd bring this up for discussion and wonder what other
people are seeing out there. Personally I think all programming will 'die'
in the US from outsourcing, so getting a PMP degree might be the smart thing
for any programmer.

CF haters need not reply.

*5. ColdFusion*
This once-popular Web programming language -- released in the mid-1990s by
Allaire Corp. (which was later purchased by Macromedia Inc., which itself
was acquired by Adobe Systems Inc.) -- has since been superseded by other
development platforms, including Microsoft Corp.'s Active Server Pages and
.Net, as well as Java, Ruby on Rails, Python, PHP and other open-source
languages.

Posted at:

http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do?command=viewArticleBasic&articleId=9020942&pageNumber=2

Brent Nicholas -
"There, I guess King George will be able to read *that*!"
 - John Hancock






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