Question re Technical Outsourcing of HR System Support
Posted April 7th, 2008 by Yvan
I’ve been approached about a Technical Outsourcing project and was wondering if anyone out there has had experience with Technical outsourcing? Good, Bad or Indifferent, I like to know about it and any suggestions you might have for avoiding potential pitfalls. Thanks J
I've been through it twice... my 2 cents
One of the companies I worked for tried (with different providers) outsourcing a part of the technical process twice. Maintenance and day-to-day support was kept both times as a task for the local team; projects were outsourced: the functional specifications were written by the local team, writing the technical specs and the development was done off-shore.
Twice the off-shore model was stopped after being operational for a few months. Mainly because of 2 reasons:
This lead to frustration of the local team members who felt that they could do the job faster (not especially better :-) ). Although they provided clear specifications the result was not as expected: e.g. it is not encouraging if the first test made, returns a non-expected result.
How might these projects have been a success after all?
Looking back at these outsource projects, I feel that if we have had a more structural approach to on-shore development (going from 'How do I document a project?' to 'What standards are used during development?'), chances of success might have been bigger.
As these standards don't exist in writing (they are transferred to new local team members orally) it is very difficult to integrate an off-shore team.
Working with a one point contact on-shore as well as off-shore might have improved the result also. If all questions/issues are handled by the same 2 people, the working relationship improves between these 2 people and they can filter out any difficulties that one team might be having with the other. Downside of this solution is that a project stands/fails with the availability of these contacts.