Offshore productivity: developers
Why is offshore developer’s productivity so much lower than one from your local employees? You would expect that for positions that require high communication overhead or for those tightly linked to...
View ArticleNot yet ready for China
I love travel and visit new places, even if that’s on a business trip. Needless to say that living “5 to 7” lifestyle (by 5 am Monday you are on a plane to the client and ~7 pm on Friday are back on...
View ArticleTop outsourcing risks
Putting development of your product or any other aspect of technology in the hands of a third party is certainly a risky proposition. To properly mitigate the risks of outsourcing one needs to...
View ArticleProtecting Data and IP when Outsourcing Offshore
Securing data when working with offshore is a well known yet a very challenging task. It’s especially serious if your company deals with financial or private data, such as ePHI (electronic protected...
View ArticlePros and Cons of doing business in China
From 30,000’ view Pros and Cons of giving your outsourcing business to China could be summarized as Pros Comparatively low rates Low attrition rates Large pool of talent in many areas Superb work...
View ArticleS/W Development Outsourcing: China vs. India
A few months ago I went through a vendor selection process for a technology company in SF Bay Area. The goal was to find a vendor that would become a long-term partner / a part of a local development...
View ArticleVendor Selection in China
This post is a summary of vendor selection trip to China made for a purpose of s/w outsourcing initiative for a midsized product company. The main focus of the trip was “profiling” of the vendors that...
View ArticleOffshore Destinations: Russia
I was born in Moscow, USSR and the word “Russia” in my mind associates with a large empire of 15 republics. Things since than have changed dramatically and referring to some of the parts of ex-USSR as...
View ArticlePros and Cons of Outsourcing QA
I saw a question on LinkedIn early this morning on a topic I was planning to cover “Pros and Cons of QA Outsourcing” – I jumped to the answer and typed up an answer while on BART, ironically it turned...
View ArticlePros and Cons of Outsourcing to India
India offers the most developed, experienced and sophisticated outsourcing community. No surprise – embedded advantage of ESL, huge supply of IT talent, and low standards of living made it a top...
View ArticlePros & Cons of Outsourcing to Latin America
Latin America offers one of the best options for nearshore outsourcing for the USA and Canada. It also offers great resources for Spanish localization projects getting increasing important in the...
View ArticleTop 10 Reasons NOT to Outsource
Remi Vespa suggested an interesting topic in his 10 reasons NOT to outsource; while I agree with most of the points he made, my top 10 would be somewhat different: 1. No reasons to outsource. Let me...
View ArticleThe Darkest Side of Outsourcing
While writing a post on a topic of personnel impact of the offshore outsourcing I had to go through a rather unpleasant exercise – I had to terminate one of my employees. Termination is never fun, it...
View ArticleBasics of Non-verbal Communications
I started talking about body language and non-verbal communications (commonly referred as NVL) a while ago kicking off the discussion with a picture of consummate liar. NVL is a general topic that...
View ArticleForce Majeure
Force Majeure (French for “superior force”), is a common clause in contracts which essentially frees both parties from liability or obligation when an extraordinary event or circumstance beyond the...
View ArticleInvisibility Cloak of MSA
A Master Service Agreement (MSA) is intended to create a contractual framework for relationships between parties involved. Unfortunately way too often MSAs are used to protect intentional incompliance...
View ArticleToo Much of Good Thing
A few days ago starting from a comment to my post I found a very interesting discussion of metrics on 360° Vendor Management. In his post Tony covered a few golden rules that are important to consider...
View ArticleMicrosoft and Plurk outsourcing debacle
If your goals are not achievable you can use them as targets. Sounds like a strange proposition? Well, look at Microsoft – everyone and their brother love to use it as a target of hate, criticism, etc....
View ArticleSearch for SEO Experts
Search for SEO under Hire professional in eLance returns about 12,000 results, search under Projects returns about 600. So it’s roughly 20 providers per SEO project. Similar stats are on Guru, oDesk,...
View Article“Outsource it!” is now in beta
A couple days ago my first full size book went into beta and is now available at the publisher website – http://pragprog.com/book/nkout/outsource-it. I feel very happy and relieved that the book is...
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