Internet and software projects are often executed on a fixed price & fixed date contract. The customer outsourcing the project feels ‘protected’ against delays and misunderstandings in delivery. But are you as a customer really protected or does it make …
The traditional outsourcing model uses a fixed price or SLA as a basis to manage the relationship between the people onshore and offshore. The agreement is based on result. In global staffing, the agreement is based on effort and availability. …
Last week, I was featured in a Dutch radio show on BNR about offshore outsourcing. The topic was ‘does offshoring create cost advantages?’, ‘how is the quality of offshore work?’ and ‘the do’s and don’t of offshore outsourcing’. The experts in the …
A few weeks ago, I wrote an article about oral versus written communication in offshoring. One of my clients pointed me to another interesting question: how to make an offshore programmer enthusiastic about your project, how to motivate him and get …
The past years, offshoring and nearshoring have become widespread among Western companies. Driven by the lack of skilled (IT) people in Western Europe, the high wages for IT people and the greying population, this industry is predicted to grow substantially …
Have you ever tried to move a car or some other heavy object from a dead standstill? It’s much harder to steer a car that’s barely moving than one that is already moving at a good rate of speed. Likewise, it’s hard …
In June of 2009 I published an article called ‘The Toyota Way in ICT?’. In last June’s Computable I read an article called ‘Indians defeat veterans in outsourcing’. In this article it is said that Dutch customers are happy with …
I recently heard a great presentation of Amanda Crouch, partner at Global Business Partnership Alliance .She identified 7 steps that lead to real collaboration in an outsourcing relationship. An interesting statistic that underscores the importance of ‘relationships’: 70% of performance/delivery problems have …
If we look back at the current era in about 15-20 years, will we be talking about a revolution when we talk about offshoring? Could offshoring become so ingrained in the way we do business, that it truly changes the …
During the Talk About IT event in Amsterdam on May 24th, Peter Hilton and Michael Franken shared their view on how to go about this way of managing teams and projects. Hugo Messer, organizer of Talk About IT, shortly got …
It is not easy to make offshoring work. It is not easy to work across borders, cultures and languages. If you have been involved in (managing) an offshore team, you probably had days that you were pulling out your …
I read and talk a lot about offshoring and global staffing and one discussion frequently pops up: is it good or bad to hire people from India? Does it destroy jobs in my home country? There is quite some …