RBS 'Computer Glitch'

[EternalOptimist]

We now buy telephone exchanges from China.

'Nuff said.



If push comes to shove don't expect them to work very well any more.

So what you are saying is that if we go to war with China over Hong Kong, my phone will stop working, If India joins in on their side, the bank will stop pestering me, and then if the Yanks join them , the mrs TomTom will stop gibbering at me

can we start next monday please ?

[Bunk]

No. Skill and experience makes it a high priced commodity... 90% of the population will never ever get IT or technology. Even if we moved every work shy slacker off benefits and into IT there would still only be the same number of employable people with a clue about what they are doing...

We have a generation of kids that are coming up that think that computer literate means using word... We will still have the same percentage of IT guys when my son starts work (another 10 years or more)

That's a bit hopeful isn't it? Most of them think updating their status on Facebook counts as programming.

[bobspud]

I was speaking to some of the people I work with about this subject and the management of the company also had the idea of outsourcing some work to far off places. The outsourcing companies came in, did their spiel which went down quite well but when it came to the nitty gritty they decided against it. Basically their staff here would have to show the outsourcer's staff everything and how to do it and in the end decided that it would be quicker and cheaper to do it themselves. Another story concerns a major German bank who also decided to outsource it's datacenter to another company. After a couple of months it was decided that the outsourcer was not fullfilling their obligations and the contract was pulled. In the end they did it themselves cheaper. Maybe UK companies should not follow the American model, which is now proving wrong, but the European model which is proving right.

It's convincing directors/CTO's & CIO's that they can build the teams to do this properly without the likes of Cap and Accenture to screw them... I pointed this out to a client last year over a beer. I hope he makes the right choice next time...
He had 6 contractors on his team facing up to my team (most of them were also contract staff) we all worked together so that he could then pay several million to the outsourcing co to run it for them. if bob and co were not there he could have kept the services of 15 top notch guys and ran the service at a quater of the costs...

[Mich the Tester]

It's convincing directors/CTO's & CIO's that they can build the teams to do this properly without the likes of Cap and Accenture to screw them... I pointed this out to a client last year over a beer. I hope he makes the right choice next time...
He had 6 contractors on his team facing up to my team (most of them were also contract staff) we all worked together so that he could then pay several million to the outsourcing co to run it for them. if bob and co were not there he could have kept the services of 15 top notch guys and ran the service at a quater of the costs...

One problem is that CTOs and CIOs who worked their way up the corporate ladder following working practices from 20 years ago (development by waterfall, manual scripted testing, ISO procedures etc etc) just think that they can get the same thing done cheaper somewhere else. They are either not aware of new, agile approaches or are suspicious of newfangled approaches. As well, middle managers tend to hate agile approaches as they basically reduce their role to acting as easily replaceable lackies for the dev teams, so they'll advise senior management against it. You have people running IT who either never wrote a line of code or last wrote one in the late 80s or early 90s; they simply can' t be expected to appreciate how much things have changed. You also see massive projects failing with the help of Accidenture, Logicack and Crap Gemini, where a clientco's smaller competitor might be two guys in a shed with a laptop hammering together a webshop in a day. I hate the phrase 'paradigm shift', but that's what has happened and many senior managers are way behind the times.

You don't need layers and layers of middle managers, quality systems anal cysts, 'competence centres', corporate 'centres of excellence' and so on any more, but middle management's self preservation combined with senior management being out of touch and in some industries, government regulations that amount to paper tiger politics are all holding IT back, and I suspect many other industries too.

[Scoobos]

Good post that man - Can't give rep yet

[bless 'em all]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Mich the Tester again.

Mind you, the corporates you've identified have kept me going for 6 years now.

Part of the problem is their clients use documentation and the labourious, plan - document - script - test as the ultimate paper trail of cover-arse. They're willing to pay the overheads on that approach.

I seen changes which required ALMOST zero effort to test, if the tester could just 'do it', taken through workshops and test design meetings for months before beeing over-tested and flogged to death to 'prove' the change is correct.

Should changes be made? Yes.

Will they? No. Because 'managers' don't want to have two skilled testers in their org chart. They want 'teams' of non-descript semi-skilled IT bods going through the motions.

[eek]

Mind you, the corporates you've identified have kept me going for 6 years now.

Part of the problem is their clients use documentation and the labourious, plan - document - script - test as the ultimate paper trail of cover-arse. They're willing to pay the overheads on that approach.

I seen changes which required ALMOST zero effort to test, if the tester could just 'do it', taken through workshops and test design meetings for months before beeing over-tested and flogged to death to 'prove' the change is correct.

Should changes be made? Yes.

Will they? No. Because 'managers' don't want to have two skilled testers in their org chart. They want 'teams' of non-descript semi-skilled IT bods going through the motions.

or they don't know the difference.

worse they don't want to pay clueful people the price that clueful people expect and demand.

[Sysman]

<cough>

cunning plan.

<cough>

Death Race 2000?

With a few adjustments to the rules...

[Sysman]

One thought that crossed my mind was security.
I dont means getting your card ripped off, I mean National security. How easy is it for the Indian/whomever spooks to get hold of some rather valuable information ?

That's a good point and it has been made before. National Security also includes telecomms. Where is the UK in that regard with offshoring?

[Sysman]

We now buy telephone exchanges from China.

'Nuff said.



If push comes to shove don't expect them to work very well any more.

I nearly mentioned that in my reply to EO about National Security.

According to a mate who was a telephone engineer when I were but a lad, every telephone exchange had a black box that could be pulled to disable the lot and stop it falling into enemy hands in the case of an invasion.