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 You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/cfcdev@cfczone.org
You are subscribed to cfcdev. To unsubscribe, please follow the instructions at http://www.cfczone.org/listserv.cfm CFCDev is supported by: Katapult Media, Inc. We are cool code geeks looking for fun projects to rock! www.katapultmedia.com An archive of the CFCDev list is available at www.mail-archive.com/cfcdev@cfczone.org
