Author Archives: Hugo Messer

How to make specifications for an outsourced project?

The traditional notion of outsourcing projects, whether it’s to a nearby firm or a team on the other side of the planet, is that you need to specify things. Many people believe that in order to outsource a project far away, they need to specify everything. And because it takes time to specify, they are reluctant to engage remote teams. Usually, the idea of outsourcing starts because of time constraints – you don’t have the people or the time to do it inside your own company. So we have a chicken and egg problem.

What 5 questions do you ask selecting a (remote) software team?Welke 5 vragen vraag jij bij het selecteren van een (remote) software team?

I’ve been pondering a question all week and need your help: what things do you want to know in order to pick the right (remote) team for your software project? This is not going to be a long blog post, rather I would like to have your views as comments, so others can learn from it. If you have a team, it would also be good to read on and reply, just imagine what your clients (would) ask.

How to overcome the risks of offshoring?

Are there any risks in offshoring? That’s the first questions that comes to my mind when people are afraid of moving work offshore. I think that many ‘risks’ are just perceived (how many things that you were afraid of in your life really happened?). I also believe that this perception can be altered and that certain steps can be taken to reduce the (perceived) risk.

Cultural differences: is offshore or nearshore easier?Culturele verschillen: is offshore of nearshore makkelijker?

When people across cultures collaborate, there’s always an influence of culture on the communication. When they’re working distributed across the globe, there are other factors that can influence communication. What I always find striking is that people assume there are ‘more’ or ‘less’ cultural differences between one country or another. I always wonder whether it’s true and whether it matters.

2 Golden Tips On How To Manage An Indian Team

I just read a very interesting blog post on managing Indian teams, written by Dutch culture trainer Frank Garten. His article starts with a phrase that I indeed have heard many times:

“People from India always deliver late, and when a project is delayed, they will never tell you but rather say everything is fine”.