I’m an American developer, I work for a small company, I don’t have enough developers to help move a big project faster. What do I do?
I outsource it, whether it is in the US or in Poland.
Outsourcing has given many companies the edge they need to complete, imagine, one doesn’t have a whole crew of developers on the payroll, one can have a project manager and maybe a small handful of developers (depending on what the company does) and then for things that are time consuming but simple (boring long work) one can outsource that bit and make the whole operation more productive.
Some of the routine coding is truly a waste of highly skilled developers time. It’s almost as bad as developing a custom control and taking a week to do it, when you already found a $50 USD control that does exact what you want and more.
Many know me in the past to be very anti-outsourcing, now I see its benefit and do not fear it anymore. I’ve used several resources including www.rentacoder.com for my projects. Here is what I learned.
If it requires a bunch of R/D to develop the control/component/screen/whatever, you are best not to outsource it. My experience is that few want to take the time to learn some special technology just for this one project, many stick with the broad technologies available. So if it’s boring and it’s just doing hundreds of stored procedures or data entry screens, then you have an excellent project for outsourcing. These require little thought and are pretty straight lined as to exactly what you want and what you expect.
You might ask why I sound so negative about more complex narrow technology work being outsourced. Well I have had my share of projects that just couldn’t find developers for and/or failed. When I did they (the outsourced developer) were more costly then if we just built it ourselves when we had time. The other thing I noticed is that when the project was complex, I would get more 1st world country citizens actually bid on the project. Of course this brought the projects costs way up, but it confirms what I have noticed in the market.
What is it that I noticed? It’s that if you stay on the edge and a few steps ahead you can make it in this world of outsourcing; this might change as the future bumps along but so far this seems to be a fair statement. I’m sure many would disagree, but so far as a small company dealing with others in the world from India to Poland and even Russia, I can say that one really has to define exactly what one wants and it can’t be too edgy either.
Thanks to outsourcing we are further ahead then where we would be now, also thanks to outsourcing we got a nifty new logo (www.connectblocks.com), yea the site needs work, we are working on that and moving things around, so check back in a few weeks.
Why am I even blogging about this? Well some of it is out of frustration and some is out of revelation and even more is out of education. Now lets not pigeon hole all outsourced developers, I believe many just don’t have the same resources as US developers and hence my revelation, though I have met some really sharp guys in several countries that are just flooded with work and they are very edgy (not in the too much caffeine sense). I personally wonder how this compares to US workers. I see such little representation of US workers at most of the outsource project sites, that it’s very hard to tell. Does this mean they don’t need to go to such services as much as others? Does this mean they don’t realize they can be outsource material too? Are they even aware?
Whatever the reasons, I have found my balance as to what works and doesn’t work with outsourcing bits of projects. Though I’m sure it’s very much different with much larger companies and I bet it’s a whole lot different when the entire project is outsourced (though if one is to believe the numbers, projects that are totally outsourced have a larger number of failure then projects that are managed and shared in the states).
Here are some interesting links:
http://www.ebstrategy.com/Outsourcing/cases/failures.htm http://www.enterblog.com/200310190649.html
I also know of a company that is building an accounting software project, the entire project is being outsourced, though they have been trying to release for the past 2 years, always something new has to be added before release. It tends to make me wonder if the outsourced company isn’t milking it for all it’s worth, coming up with new ideas and reworking things every now and then, all for the sole reason to keep the cash flowing in. Once the product is released they could start on the next version but what if the product flops? That’s the risk, so I can see why one feels the need to milk it before it’s released to the public.
So I say to everyone that deals with one to one developers (us small guys dealing with small guys), take it easy and when you find some good outsourced resources (regardless of where they are), take care of them, give them more then they ask, you won’t regret it.
I’ll end this here with a farewell and happy father’s day to all.