Beware of outsourcing sotware development

[rsn 135]

They do at my firm. And we're not that small a company.

Always, or occasionally? I listed above situations where I could see why this might happen occasionally. If the answer is always though, that would seem to be counterproductive. The developers need to focus on developing - I personally would not like to be constantly ripped away from my development tasks to deal with a customer unless there was a serious fire to put out. Again, in the 2 situations I listed above, at least semi-regular customer contact is probably unavoidable. Project managers and customer support exist to deal with the customer and communicate with developers internally.

[scandal 951]

Always, or occasionally? I listed above situations where I could see why this might happen occasionally. If the answer is always though, that would seem to be counterproductive. The developers need to focus on developing - I personally would not like to be constantly ripped away from my development tasks to deal with a customer unless there was a serious fire to put out. Again, in the 2 situations I listed above, at least semi-regular customer contact is probably unavoidable. Project managers and customer support exist to deal with the customer and communicate with developers internally.

Always.

I should point out that our customers are all internal users. We don't have external customers, so it's not a conventional ISV shop.

Our developers don't find it counterproductive at all. The feedback cycle between users & developers is extremely rapid, and we get enhancements done much more quickly than I've ever seen happen when I worked at ISVs.

[rsn 135]

Always.

I should point out that our customers are all internal users. We don't have external customers, so it's not a conventional ISV shop.

Our developers don't find it counterproductive at all. The feedback cycle between users & developers is extremely rapid, and we get enhancements done much more quickly than I've ever seen happen when I worked at ISVs.

It's good that it seems to work in one instance when the customers are internal, but I can assure you it would not work at a company like ours with many external customers from all over the world. Developers would be spend all of their time acknowledging the squeaky wheels. In that case we would end up creating a product that was good for the loudest customer and possibly no one else. It's the project manager's job to survey all current and future customers to come up with an appropriate feature set and CSes job to address problems the customer may have as well as get the basics from them (logs, detail description of problem, etc) after attempting to fix the problem using common solutions. This definitely gives the developers more time to do their jobs, at least where I work.

[NickD 203]

Also legal considerations to consider with contracting out of the country, while we have our laws involving non-disclosure agreements, copyright or patent protection, a contract in a foreign country with their own laws do not have to abide by ours.

It's totally unfair the way our US Patent and Copyright offices work in this country, any foreigner can come in and apply for a US patent or copyright, but no reciprocal agreement exists between China and Japan. Impossible for a US guy to get a patent in those countries, had one pending in Japan for over ten years and went broke having to use a Japanese patent attorney. Same thing with TI and their invention of the integrated circuit, that patent application went over 30 years without being approve until the Japanese courts ruled it obsolete, but sure in the hell copied our technology and even exported tons of IC's into this country.

For every US company patent issued in the USA, their is at least a hundred such patents that were issued to the Japanese, but not one US patent was honored in Japan. This is even more reason why I feel our leaders of this country are traitors and should be treated as such.

Pretty well known that China only purchased one copy of Windows, even MS is helpless in this respect.

[rsn 135]

Also legal considerations to consider with contracting out of the country, while we have our laws involving non-disclosure agreements, copyright or patent protection, a contract in a foreign country with their own laws do not have to abide by ours.

It's totally unfair the way our US Patent and Copyright offices work in this country, any foreigner can come in and apply for a US patent or copyright, but no reciprocal agreement exists between China and Japan. Impossible for a US guy to get a patent in those countries, had one pending in Japan for over ten years and went broke having to use a Japanese patent attorney. Same thing with TI and their invention of the integrated circuit, that patent application went over 30 years without being approve until the Japanese courts ruled it obsolete, but sure in the hell copied our technology and even exported tons of IC's into this country.

For every US company patent issued in the USA, their is at least a hundred such patents that were issued to the Japanese, but not one US patent was honored in Japan. This is even more reason why I feel our leaders of this country are traitors and should be treated as such.

Pretty well known that China only purchased one copy of Windows, even MS is helpless in this respect.

Regarding the NDAs, this is something I was just talking with my colleagues about recently. I totally agree. When outsourcing to, for example, China, good luck enforcing any NDA/non-compete agreement after the outsourced developers take the training they've received and spin off their own competing company.

Edited December 23, 2009 by rsn

[DEDixon 39]

as long as the developer coded to the requirements (exactly), can't blame the developer whether in the USA or India.

[rsn 135]

as long as the developer coded to the requirements (exactly), can't blame the developer whether in the USA or India.

Not necessarily. "Coding to requirements" is not all there is to writing good code. Code could serve the intended purpose as far as the customer is concerned but also be terrible code at the same time. Such code could be poorly written making it difficult to maintain. In fact, maintainable code is extremely important as it makes fixing or adjusting the code later (when requirements change or new features needed to be added) much easier. Your point of view on this topic is shared by some execs who go down this road, only to find out the hard way that there is more to good software than what the customer initially sees.

Edited December 23, 2009 by rsn

[DEDixon 39]

our outsourcers actually have company email accounts and phone numbers, they are very integrated almost to the point we don't consider them outsourcers.

messy code, hard to maintain code, because of the power of today's systems still works. trouble with coding is that there are many ways to code to the same end. maybe the issue isn't with the developer, however poor internal coding standards for all?

companies that outsource should at least be CCM level 3 certified. if they are not, they are asking for trouble.

[rsn 135]

our outsourcers actually have company email accounts and phone numbers, they are very integrated almost to the point we don't consider them outsourcers.

messy code, hard to maintain code, because of the power of today's systems still works. trouble with coding is that there are many ways to code to the same end. maybe the issue isn't with the developer, however poor internal coding standards for all?

companies that outsource should at least be CCM level 3 certified. if they are not, they are asking for trouble.

I agree with much of what you have said. Coding standards are important, but someone also has to enforce those standards. In my experience, outsourced code is usually lower quality when compared to domestic code. This means that more domestic oversight is required to ensure that standards are being followed and nothing "unpleasant" makes its way into the code coming from the outsourced developers. I'll admit I don't know much about CCM certification (or anything for that matter) but I still wonder if NDA and non-compete agreements signed by overseas developers would hold any water if they were violated in some foreign countries. It just sounds like a risky proposition to me on many fronts.

[DEDixon 39]

the basics of CMM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capability_Ma...del_Integration

there are 5 levels, i have heard that intel is level 5 certified.

multinational companies, when dealing with code that the public uses should do all that they can to get to level 5, for code that is internal (internal websites, internal reports), level 3 is as far as it should go.

it takes forever to get things to production under level 3 standards, i can't imagine level 5.