To me, the most important thing that is lost in outsourcing is the friendly call or deskside chat between a curious/puzzled application programmer and a cooperative/knowledgeable systems staff person. In my applications career I have always made it a particular point to be polite and friendly with the systems staff and to cultivate their good opinion of me, since they were usually far more senior in experience and knowledge than I was. I also tried to learn from them and not make the same dumb mistake more than once (OK, maybe twice . . . :).
Outsourced systems staff means formal and tightly controlled contact procedures, prioritized question/research lists, where outsourced projects like hardware and software upgrades mean application questions and puzzles get very short shrift and low priority, if indeed they ever get answered at all. Eventually the questions are directed elsewhere (like to this list), or they just do not get answered at all because they are never asked. As a senior applications developer now I get some of the questions and puzzles from other application programmers, even from some of my peers in seniority and experience, because no one person knows it all. The loss of those informal communications channels with the systems staff is IMHO a serious loss to the corporation as well as to the individual programmers. But what do I know, I'm just a programmer, not a manager. The only time I count beans is for chile con carne. Peter -----Original Message----- From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Mark Wilson Sent: Wednesday, February 24, 2016 5:31 AM To: [email protected] Subject: Outsourcing Stories Good or Bad! I am working with a client in Europe that is being requested by his senior management team to look at outsourcing their IT systems, including their system z platform. Would anyone be willing to share any war stories of their experiences with Outsourcing good or bad? Offline from the list via email or for anyone attending Share in Texas willing to have a coffee/beer and discuss face to face. Mark -- This message and any attachments are intended only for the use of the addressee and may contain information that is privileged and confidential. If the reader of the message is not the intended recipient or an authorized representative of the intended recipient, you are hereby notified that any dissemination of this communication is strictly prohibited. If you have received this communication in error, please notify us immediately by e-mail and delete the message and any attachments from your system. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
