Indian Development Teams

[threaded]

Has anyone had a successful implementation using an outsourced Indian dev team?

Not to my knowledge, but don't knock it mate, I make loadsa money going in with a team, starting from scratch for a client who is by now desperate.

[shelby68]

when will companies realize there are no savings to be had?

Some already are, a Friend of mine worked for a major insurance company who are now trying to reverse engineer 5 years of battling with off shore madness and bring it all to the UK.

[Lucifer Box]

Not to my knowledge, but don't knock it mate, I make loadsa money going in with a team, starting from scratch for a client who is by now desperate.

Threaded is right. Where there are cock-ups, there's highly paid work to be had.

[Ardesco]

Sounds pretty much par for the course.

You have to remember that in their culture saying you can't do it means you lose face, but saying you can do it and then dragging it out is seen as totally acceptable and you don't lose face.

Secondly they are not brought up to question their instructions, they just do it which results in lots of stupid errors getting put into the code because they won't come and ask if their understanding is correct (as again this would be a loss of face).

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......

My most infuriating memory of working with an Indian dev was one guy who wrote a client program that was supposed to connect to a server on the LAN and download a test package, and then run it. It didn't work and he came down to show see what the problem was. It took two hours of him hcking about with config files and changing bits to get the program to download the file and load it up and even then it was locking up after about 2 mins. He then stood up and said see it works, not a defect and tried to walk out of the room..... Suffice to say he got a rather frosty reception and was back in India two weeks later

[NotAllThere]

One large company nearby have decided that they're not going to have any more on-site developers; everything will be in India. It was bad enough dealing with the piss-poor specs when the developers were in the next room. I've pencilled into my diary to be ready towards the end of 2009 to pick up the pieces.

[Troll]

Some already are, a Friend of mine worked for a major insurance company who are now trying to reverse engineer 5 years of battling with off shore madness and bring it all to the UK.

Can you name?

[NotAllThere]

Can you name?

Of course he can't. He has no friends.

[Churchill]

So whats the deal with Indian Development teams. Just had a project go two months over, which was interesting considering it was a six week project.

Not allowed to talk directly to the developers, have to go through the manager, who doesnt manage. Everything is sequential.

Went to a meeting and there were 20 people in it, of which only two spoke. Why?!?! WHY?!?

The whole thing was literal, no thought placed into anything, if it looked wrong, they programmed it wrong, when I questioned it, the team would say, well it looked wrong but thats what the BRD says, so we did it that way!!!!

Arggahhhhh!!

Has anyone had a successful implementation using an outsourced Indian dev team?

This is why you never, ever, ever trust the bastards with one of your projects!

[Marina]

One large company nearby have decided that they're not going to have any more on-site developers; everything will be in India. It was bad enough dealing with the piss-poor specs when the developers were in the next room. I've pencilled into my diary to be ready towards the end of 2009 to pick up the pieces.

Barclays in Poole perchance?

[threaded]

Barclays in Poole perchance?

Ditto, I'm even thinking along the lines of going short on them too.