Indian Development Teams

[sasguru]

I'm dead against off-shoring. Not from any IT point of view but because I'm against the hollowing out of the middle class in Western countries for the short-term gain of large corporations. The resulting loss of key skills will not be easily fixed.
But I'm also enough of a realist to see there's not much I can do about it. In that case perhaps a lucrative niche exists in the interface between business and their offshoring partners - for some this will be technical, fixing resulting errors, for others this will be project management.

[MarillionFan]

Finally this mentality means that testing is generally speaking positive path testing only, and they ignore errors that they find that are not on their test scripts! (If it isn't on the test script it isn't an error...).

I have gone to defect meeting with Indian teams before when they were trying to get defects ignored because the defect had been found through ad-hoc testing and not by going through one of our test scripts. In the end the only way to get them to accept the defects without them losing face was to create a new test script to specifically reproduce the bug......

Alas, this is what I have discovered the hard way. So it's a reporting solutiont thats being built, so to help these guys out I designed a dynamic Excel pivot table which could be changed to that they could see different dimensions, measures etc. This was my Use case and I said make sure it matches this. The data I gave them was for 07Q4. The BRD told them the scope was 2006 to the present(all quarters)

So eventually all the stuff matched for the combinations, then on the 1st Jan the whole thing fell over. They had f-cking hardcoded the year and quarter across the whole system in about 100 different places !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a month and they've only just figured it out

FFS!!!!!!

[oracleslave]

I'm dead against off-shoring. Not from any IT point of view but because I'm against the hollowing out of the middle class in Western countries for the short-term gain of large corporations. The resulting loss of key skills will not be easily fixed.

Whilst I agree with the above it does seem to fly in the face of fundamental economic principles. i.e free trade and unrestricted labour movement should increase the wealth of the world on the whole and any measures put in place against this reduce it. Jobs have been going offshore for decades, whether it be the manufacture of cheap goods in China or as is now fashionable call center's in India. In theory as these jobs are being done in the most cost effective place this should allow money to be reinvested locally. Whether this results in you and me being better off well...

[beaker]

Alas, this is what I have discovered the hard way. So it's a reporting solutiont thats being built, so to help these guys out I designed a dynamic Excel pivot table which could be changed to that they could see different dimensions, measures etc. This was my Use case and I said make sure it matches this. The data I gave them was for 07Q4. The BRD told them the scope was 2006 to the present(all quarters)

So eventually all the stuff matched for the combinations, then on the 1st Jan the whole thing fell over. They had f-cking hardcoded the year and quarter across the whole system in about 100 different places !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

It's been a month and they've only just figured it out

FFS!!!!!!

Oh yes, I forgot "they hardcoded everything" in my rant. Thanks for reminding me

[NotAllThere]

There is wealth of information and intelligence about how the business/company works embedded in the code of the applications. When you use in-house capability , you can ensure that there are people who understand how the systems work - not just what the functionality is, but how that functionality is achieved, without which it is almost impossible to build stable enhancements.

When you outsource, you've bled that knowledge into the sand and it's a very expensive process to rebuild it.

That's why I'm against outsourcing, never mind off-shoring. The only IT related work that can be outsourced safely, is that which is actually generic between companies. But business applications? Forget it!

[sasguru]

Whilst I agree with the above it does seem to fly in the face of fundamental economic principles. i.e free trade and unrestricted labour movement should increase the wealth of the world on the whole and any measures put in place against this reduce it. Jobs have been going offshore for decades, whether it be the manufacture of cheap goods in China or as is now fashionable call center's in India. In theory as these jobs are being done in the most cost effective place this should allow money to be reinvested locally. Whether this results in you and me being better off well...

Yes in theory the savings should be invested locally. But that's thinking with the big long-term future of a society/country in mind. Corporates don't "think" like that - they're driven my next quarters earnings to please their shareholders and frankly they'll invest their money anywhere where the returns are greatest.
There is a fundamental disjoint between the aims of large corporations and the societies in which they originally had their roots.
To make things even more complicated, I agree that long term, spreading wealth round the world is a good thing. In the interim there will be a lot of pain and dislocation.

[MarillionFan]

There is wealth of information and intelligence about how the business/company works embedded in the code of the applications. When you use in-house capability , you can ensure that there are people who understand how the systems work - not just what the functionality is, but how that functionality is achieved, without which it is almost impossible to build stable enhancements.

Well this is the issue. The team is in-house, but they have filled it with Indian contractors, headed by an indian contractor who reports to an indian project manager is who is permanent.

[oracleslave]

Yes in theory the savings should be invested locally. But that's thinking with the big long-term future of a society/country in mind. Corporates don't "think" like that - they're driven my next quarters earnings to please their shareholders and frankly they'll invest their money anywhere where the returns are greatest.
There is a fundamental disjoint between the aims of large corporations and the societies in which they originally had their roots.
To make things even more complicated, I agree that long term, spreading wealth round the world is a good thing. In the interim there will be a lot of pain and dislocation.

Agreed re corporates. It requires a constant juggling act on behalf of government/policy makers to ensure that the hardships it causes are dealt with. Whilst the potential and real gains from trade are significant it is unfortunately the resulting problems that are often overlooked. Some options to alleviate the problem such as re-training workers in affected areas, assist those displaced to find alternate jobs, ensure strong labour laws to empower workers in negotiations when their jobs are moved overseas etc can all be put in place. Too much protectionism on the other hand increases costs so it is a constant trade-off with no easy answer unfortunately imo. There will always be winners and losers, winners are likely to be Corporations that can reduce their HR overhead as well as Shareholders but also consumers who can cheaper products! Losers will obviously be lost employee jobs, skills etc.

[AtW]

I'm dead against off-shoring. Not from any IT point of view but because I'm against the hollowing out of the middle class in Western countries for the short-term gain of large corporations. The resulting loss of key skills will not be easily fixed.

Yet you work in the City, hippocrate

[sasguru]

Yet you work in the City, hippocrate

hippocrates

Thanks atw, it's not often that you compliment me.
Unfortunately I can't reciprocate as your post is gloriously stupid.