This is a discussion close to me as I helped establish a big user experience business practice for Satyam Computers which is a large software engineering company with most of the business from offshore.
I agree both in philosophy and experience with Dave's points that first and foremost it about being able to build great experiences. The off-shoring component has to be a part of the 'solution' building, in other words should bring advantages of multiple locations into the solution. In our case we identified certain tasks where we could add value by the team in another location - for instance interacting with more users within India which otherwise the budget did not allow, or tasks where we can get representative users - for instance in case of accessibility we did extensive suer testing in India. Then there are other tasks where business context was there but much less - for instance event management tool, and last the things that were more repetitive like maintaining pattern library etc. We did not participate in many award contests, but the Intranet for one of our clients was recognized as one of the top 10 by NNGroup. Nothing in even the above mentioned tasks was every done 100% in another location, it was more about playing by the strengths, having the right skills in right places, and cost was a by product. The other significant advantage was time to market with teams working in different timezones. Needless to say it took a long time to establish a process that works, but preciously because the goal was to ensure excellence as Dave puts it. Cheers Alok jain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=34390 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [EMAIL PROTECTED] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
