Outsourcing Made Right: Think Big, Buy Small

Tips for outsourcing software development projects


September 17, 2008
URL:http://www.drdobbs.com/open-source/outsourcing-made-right-think-big-buy-sma/210602162

Ivar Jacobson is a father of components and component architecture, use cases, aspect-oriented software development, modern business engineering, the Unified Modeling Language and the Rational Unified Process. He can be contacted at www.ivarjacobson.com


Let's be realistic. In a column like this I can only give you a hint of what you as a buyer need to do when it comes to outsourcing software development projects. However, it is amazing how many outsourcing agreements would benefit from the basic advice I present here. But note that "basic" means that there may be exceptions.

Now, this is not easy to do. Still, this is just the basics. For large outsourcing projects such as building an enterprise wide SOA system, the required competencies are much higher.

The general advice is to split the work in smaller manageable pieces with fast deliveries. Think big, but buy small! Western companies outsourced big M$ projects to India. Japanese companies are not giving up control that easily. Their outsourcing contracts to China are in the order of $100k. Many western companies are now taking back (insourcing) their software to maintain and develop it at home. The new strategy is to insource the business critical applications, but outsource less critical software. Reflecting on this, it seems we are going back to where we were before the outsourcing frenzy started.

Again, if you don't have this competence or you cannot get it, don't even bother to outsource your software development. And, competency is not enough. You need to be smart!

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