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 …
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People who engage in offshoring, have a natural, human inclination to ‘just start communicating’. My experience has made me think a lot about the most effective way of communicating in an offshoring context. If you are involved in managing an …
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Offshore initiatives offer many benefits, particularly on the financial side, and also come with several risks. As with any major initiative, developing a plan to mitigate the risks is essential. A source of risk that is seldom considered, however, is …
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A friend sent me this Dilbert illustration; I had to study it several times to conclude what’s the main message to me. You could interpret it in many ways; for me it drives home one thing: the success of offshoring depends on people, not on ‘bestshore, nearshore, rightshore, offshore or farshore’. The offshoring industry has come up with many confusing definitions to describe a simple thing: hiring people from another country to do a project or (parts of) a process. (For an interesting thought article on terminology, read this article of Gavin Bowden-Hall).
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The common way of organizing software projects in most software firms is (or was) the waterfall method. Most firms don’t choose this process deliberately, but grow into it, because it’s a natural human way to get organized. It has its …
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