mishmashmoo

I recently had a discussion with some colleagues, some of whom have been in the industry for over 10 years and we touched on some interesting points. Off-shoring and outsourcing plays a major part in the testing and development world, simply because it’s cheaper to send the complex and time consuming tasks to a company who will promise to do it all for you and deliver it in a neat little package. And that’s exactly what you get, nothing more than a promise. Now, I don’t mean to be cynical but the experiences I’ve had have left me with a bad taste for off-shoring. Personally, I can’t control business decisions, but I wish I could influence them a little. For some reason there is this myth that off-shoring is cheaper than doing things in-house. The reality is that it actually costs the company more money and increases the risk to the organisation, if you look at the long term effects.

My definition of off-shoring is sending work to a company overseas or a company based overseas that is managed onshore or off. Outsourcing is sending work to a company in the same country. Just to set the standard, when I refer to outsourcing, I am referring to companies entirely based in Australia, whereas offshore will include the rest.

outsourcing, not so bad
There is no doubt that there are many vendors in Australia that develop and test, who do an amazing job. Specialists in Australia seem to be great, although there are ‘pretenders’ in the industry. Many reputable vendors have good quality employees. If the company is good at what it does, there is no issue with quality. However, the problem that exists is lack of ownership of code, and being a victim of your own project – as the organisation employing the vendor. Allow me to elaborate. Vendors are now holding the Trump card, if the organisation decides to go forth with a vendor; they are no longer in control of their development phase of the project. They get ’snapshots’ and daily/weekly status updates….all which include content that is filtered at the vendor’s discretion, and it’s always in the best interest of the vendor.

And then there is that ‘change request’ that costs tens of thousands of dollars. I am yet to see a project that has not had a large number of change requests, at a minimum of $20k each….ouch. So the power shifts from the customer to the supplier, and the supplier (vendor) gets a great deal. In the end, the organisation may get good software, or bad software, software that has been vigorously tested, or software that has hardly been tested…its all an unknown, and to top it off, they have to take up that 5 year support package that the vendor offers because the organisation has no in house knowledge or support….ouch yet again.

off-shoring, a step in the wrong direction
On paper, off-shoring looks like the perfect package, from a financial perspective. And in reality, when the business part of the organisation makes a ‘business decision’ it’s all about the bottom line, fair enough. It’s known that there is a large gap between business and technology, the tech-heads know their stuff and the business know what the customers want and how much they are willing to pay for it, unfortunately the two views don’t always line up, and so this is where the problem begins. If off-shoring quotes show that the organisation can save $x million per year then it has to be a good decision, right?…not exactly, what you don’t get to see is the quality you’re going to get for your money…..I call this ‘quality per dollar’.

There are so many problems with off-shoring that I can’t list them all and discuss them right now, if I were to cover them this would be an extremely long article…but let me hit the jugulars…
1. Lack of knowledge is battled by abundance of resources. A problem is solved by throwing 3 times the resources at an issue, each who know little pieces of information. They are not specialists, and although the resources may be cheaper, it doesn’t mean more of them will be able to solve a problem. Its like buying 3 flat head screwdrivers to remove a phillips head screw…
2. Knowledge and intellectual property is lost quickly. There is a high turnover in offshore staff, and you find that re-training and re-educating is a constant struggle. Once the resource(s) learns new information, they leave that company in pursuit of more money with the extra experience they have gained.
3. Time and language barriers – obvious.
4. An off-shore company has a small insight in the way the Australian business market works, how the business functions and the basic standards which are adhered to.
5. Lack of knowledge, or quality of knowledge.

In my experience I have seen a larger number of offshore ‘pretenders’ than I have skilled resources. Don’t get me wrong, skilled resources off-shore do exist, but they are few and far between.

ever increasing business demands
Why are organisations outsourcing and off-shoring more than ever before? The problem is that internal and external business demands are pushing for faster applications that do more in less time and store more data…and they must cost less. But that formula does not add up. The business wants everything to be automated in a quick and nifty little application that does it all, oh, and it has to look the part, did I mention it has to cost less? The businesses just can’t keep up with the demands, and it becomes ever so costly to have the in-house developers and testers constantly pushing out code to keep the business happy. So the solution is, to handball it to a guy over the Indian Ocean who will do it all….or one down the road at a fraction of the cost. It also removes any attached risk; the organisation can always blame the vendor if something goes horribly wrong.

off-the-shelf?
Personally, I don’t believe that out of the box packages work. That is, if they require customisation. More and more vendors are trying to sell their off-the-shelf product to large organisations advising that they can be customised to suit their needs. An off-the-shelf product is just that, off-the-shelf, and straight onto your app server. It’s been tested and marketed in that state and should have no critical defects. Once you mess with that, you’re in an ocean of trouble. So you have two possible solutions. You either change your organisation’s processes to be in line with a software package of your choice. Or you develop an application from the ground up, in-house, building it to line up with business processes. Both expensive and extremely hard to do, but in the end, if the upgrade is going make you millions of dollars of profit, and enhance your customer base, what’s the big deal in investing into your business? Why do companies think its a great thing to save 10 mil outsourcing/off-shoring that 70 mil project, which, if delivered on time and on budget would get them their 10 mil back in the blink of an eye, rather it ends up costing 90mil after they have paid 20 thou per change request during the project….and receiving it 3 months late with a high defect count.

the care factor
I may be a part of the minority of testers who actually care about the quality of an application and the state in which it’s delivered, but from what I’ve seen, its all about money, not quality. Vendors want their piece of the pie, employees want to get paid, and hardware guys want to sell the latest most expensive servers. Like in all cases there are the resources who do actually care about the customer and are concerned about their best interests, but that is a rare trait these days.

the obvious solution
Keeping the work in-house should be the number one priority. Having control over your project and code is priceless. If you cannot, keep it in the country, outsource to specialist vendors who understand what the business wants and delivers just that. Do the research and find a vendor who is known for pushing out good quality applications. Off-shoring just doesn’t work and should not even be an option. It ends up being more expensive in the long run, with constant rework because they just don’t get it right the first 3 times.
I really do feel sorry for the organisations that pay millions of dollars and receive buggy applications that just don’t meet the business needs. As a performance tester, I ensure that I deliver the highest quality and give my professional recommendation to the organisation who has hired me, I genuinely care about the organisation. If all resources had the same interests, the industry would not be in dilemma it is in now.

the crystal ball
Fortunately, more and more organisations are being burnt by off-shoring and slowly, it’s all coming back. My prediction is that the off-shoring industry will all come crashing down simply because the quality we were used to is no longer there. Organisations are becoming smarter and more aware of the importance of quality and are prepared to pay for it. You just can’t get good cheap applications, the myth, is just a myth. Let’s hope we start to see a larger number of good quality apps, on time and on budget….developed in a country who understands the business and adheres to processes, quality standards and time lines….for the sake of our business.

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