Beware! Outsourcing can bring your quality, and ability to complete tasks down
Sure the numbers look good for development when you look at a 3:1 ratio of cost, but is it really?
This article is a real world experience with trying to outsource development to India.
So your managment gets wind that they can hire 3 programmers offshore at the same cost as one developer in house. The put together a proposal and submit it to upper management because they are pressured to cut costs for the new year. Here are some experiences that were encountered while trying to meet the needs of Countrywide Financial upper managements request. And of course, in Sept 2008, Countrywide went belly up and was aquired by Bank of America.
Here is the summary of what was experienced.
- Candidate Falsifying - Finding a qualified candidate was difficult and can lead to falsifying resumes
- Network Access - Providing VPN access, no problem in the States, but there were always reasons why there were connection issues from India
- Training - No matter how easy we made it, the project just wasn't comprehended quickly.
- Workload - Productivity is worse than a 3:1 ratio on what you are receiving in return
- Communication - with broken english, and little to no technical experience, communication is a real problem for completing tasks.
- Time Difference - because you are communicating on the otherside of the world, your overlapping time is little, thus days lost
- Dependability - it can be very difficult to depend on changes because there are so many reasons why something didn't work
- Turnover - Most offshore contractors don't have experience, but as soon as they get some they go somewhere else.
- Regression test - After months of trying to get some productivity, offshore candidates were made regression testers.
Candidate Falsifying- First, you have to hire contractors at some offshore facility. In our case, upper management forced us to use a small company that really didn't have any resources (analysts, development, or QA personnel). Resume's we looked at all seemed to be the same, a few college courses with Microsoft courses, and little to no experience in any of the areas we were looking at in Analysts, Development or QA. After a period of looking at resumes for about 4 weeks, everyone was frustrated because no hiring had occured. The offshore started asking us what we were looking for specifically.
As weeks went on, we continued to reject resumes because the candidates they were passing us were not even close to what we were looking for. But, upper management kept pressing us to start hiring offshore personnel. Suddenly, resumes started coming with the exact experience we were looking for. In addition to the suspicion of false resume's, when we started phone interviewing, the candidates were being coached, as we heard voices in the background giving what appeared to be answers to the candidate. There is no way to be certain, but we were bothered by this type of integrity. It was explained to our management who swept it under the table.
Network Access -After finding a "decent" candidate to hire the logistics of how to get that person "access" to the network became another delay. I believe the infrastructure was perpared for adding offshore users, as they were given secure VPN access just as you would an american employee. But, there always seemed to be excuses, and complete days lost, because of the connection "dropping". For each offshore person we hired, we gave them their own machine to connect to, but there where problems that "suddenly" go away due to the pressure we put on them. In our case, it took close to a month before our first candidate was able to connect. Each day became another day lost, as you try to communicate via email. Even with a round the clock support center here in the states, the candidate still had reasons why they couldn't connect. One of the problems was the only access to the internet by these offshore companies was a 56k modem, and it was not really reliable, and extremely slow for any kind of productivity.
Training - OMG - Although our large project was well documented, it was very difficult to train candidates. Because of the lack of American business experience, and the communication difference/problem, it was very difficult for the candidate to understand what the project was intended for. This is not a slam on intelligence, as all of our candidates were very bright, it was more of a cultural difference in the work place.
Workload - Upper managment in most companies don't really understand the burden of a development manager to get tasks completed with offshore personnel. The burden really falls on the manager of the project trying to get completed, or the development leads to get tasks completed. When an analyst, developer, or QA person is in your office, you can manage the workload pretty easily. Offshore workloads are very difficult to management because there can be unexpected problems, connection, communications, builds, integration, etc., that can really delay you. In our case, we had to give all projects that did not any critical time elements, and gave plenty of time for integration in order to make it work. As a development manager or lead, be prepared for an ulcer.
Communication - This one was very difficult to overcome. Most offshore candidates will speak english to some degree, but the communication can be very frustrating very quickly. In our case, we had to promote and pay someone more money offshore, strictly because his communication skills were better than other candidates working on the project. This is another burden placed on the Managers and Leads in your office that have to deal with this day to day issue.
Time Difference - India is 12 1/2 hrs ahead of businesses in California. Imagine that, you either need to call India at 8-9pm or your India candidate has to prepared to take calls at 8-9pm their time. Regardless, the company picks up costs whether here or there for after hours work. But, the most difficult part, besides cordinating this conference, we found that in order to be productive we had to have more and more of these conferences. Again, and added expense, and burden on your manager or project leaders.
Dependability - Upper management wants to see that offshore is working, they don't really care about how difficult it is to be successful, they really don't care. With the problems of connectivity, communication, time difference, etc., we found that we were continually giving excuses why offshore could not complete the tasks that were on a tight deadline like our office development. The project managers quickly took offshore off any critical path items. This put the burden back into the local office because there were things we just could not give offshore that required to be completed. Offshore candidates take the project as serious as those here in the office, but there were always reasons why a build could not be completed in the deadline given. We just could not depend on the group producing.
Turnover - Your offshore staff may be able to spin up faster than ours were able to, but in our case we had another curve thrown at us. Once our development candidates were starting to produce with minor tasks over the course of 6-9 months, the candidates want more money. They will apply to other offshore agencies or they are trying to get sponsored from an American company to come work onshore. We didn't have much attrition onshore, but if we did, the offshore candidates looked at this as an opportunity to request more money per hour or they would walk. I just didn't like that at all, so in most cases, we let them walk, but then we were back to square one.
Regression testing - After months of working with offshore, looking for Analysts, Development and QA personnel, we found that the most productivity was found by giving these candidates regression tasks. We would have them look for differences between version of software that was being produced in the office in the states. Upper management just wanted to show they had more staff with less money being spent. The reality was the onshore staff ended up taking the burden of the additional tasks, and the offshore talent was left to looking for differences between build versions. The people who were affected the most were the managers and project leads from the onshore staff. In most cases, upper management has no idea about these problems/issues, but they are real and when asked, I always tell my peers that it just isn't worth the cost.