Wondered if anybody on here was involved in IT or Bespoke Software sales. The company I work for in Philadelphia is looking to expand into the UK, so we're looking for development projects.
We have a team of developers, designers and usability experts, so specific industry isn't important. In the past we have done large web applications for hospitals, chemical companies, truck rentals and sales, venue ticketing an online report authoring company. So a diverse spread of business sectors to say the least.
Projects. Our team is of a sufficient size currently, apart from a lack of sale persons, so it is up to the rest of us to try to find and pursue sales leads. With that in mind I have a lunch meeting this week and some other leads, but on the theory that you can never have enough potential leads I thought I'd give CL a go.
Forgive the cynicism Andy, but my 'read' between the lines here is that you have a team of 'techies' sitting in India waiting for Projects to develop and deliver. Personally i would give a little more info re Technology , .net, c#,Java , Business Intelligence etc. and or any platforms, as this may assist people with their understanding - it all seems a bit vague at the mo.
Ok, the team is in Philadelphia, apart from myself. We have extensive experience with .Net (mostly C#) with MSSQL, HTML/CSS, Javascript/Jquery (including whole application builds in javascript), Rails (with MySQL as the backend), as well as familiarity with various other frameworks and technologies (we have done projects utilising XSLT, as well as other Javascript technologies like DOJO, Backbone.js, etc.)
On the .Net front we also have 4 certified SiteCore developers, which is an enterprise level CMS built on .NET.
So the three main technologies we are pursuing currently are .NET or Rails on the server side and Javascript/HTML/CSS on the client side.
I hope you don't mind me asking this. As someone who works in this sector and buys such services sometimes, I am intrigued to know how you compete on price with some fairly slick operations that exist in India, China, Vietnam, Russia, East Europe etc. I would have thought your strength was being able to service local-ish customers in East Coast USA or having a particular specialism.
True, one of our benefits is being local to Philadelphia, although we are looking to build the UK team, and I am already based here, so we are looking into making that a strength here too. One of our main selling points is the strength of our design process and the usability of our solutions.
Also, having first and second hand experience with outsourcing to India, I've yet to see a project that has gone well. I don't have any experience with outsourcing to Chine or Russia, but I can foresee similar problems. The language barrier obviously exists to some extent, but the biggest issues I've experienced with projects outsourced to India is the quality of the code and the sheer amount of handholding that has to be done. The management overhead is so high that any savings quickly vanish, and if you don't micro-manage them then you don't get anything approaching satisfactory deliverables.
True, one of our benefits is being local to Philadelphia, although we are looking to build the UK team, and I am already based here, so we are looking into making that a strength here too. One of our main selling points is the strength of our design process and the usability of our solutions.
Also, having first and second hand experience with outsourcing to India, I've yet to see a project that has gone well. I don't have any experience with outsourcing to Chine or Russia, but I can foresee similar problems. The language barrier obviously exists to some extent, but the biggest issues I've experienced with projects outsourced to India is the quality of the code and the sheer amount of handholding that has to be done. The management overhead is so high that any savings quickly vanish, and if you don't micro-manage them then you don't get anything approaching satisfactory deliverables.
True, one of our benefits is being local to Philadelphia, although we are looking to build the UK team, and I am already based here, so we are looking into making that a strength here too. One of our main selling points is the strength of our design process and the usability of our solutions.
Also, having first and second hand experience with outsourcing to India, I've yet to see a project that has gone well. I don't have any experience with outsourcing to Chine or Russia, but I can foresee similar problems. The language barrier obviously exists to some extent, but the biggest issues I've experienced with projects outsourced to India is the quality of the code and the sheer amount of handholding that has to be done. The management overhead is so high that any savings quickly vanish, and if you don't micro-manage them then you don't get anything approaching satisfactory deliverables.
Ah, a common conception !
Long rant typed in bed whilst I'm very sleepy. Tried to proof read but I'll probably have to edit tomorrow
Did you mean misconception? I can only speak from experience, but in mine - it is anything but a misconception.
Having reviewed code written outsourced workers (from India primarily) - I have been truly shocked at the copy-and-paste ridden garbage that has been supplied from some companies. Not just dreadful from a maintenance point of view, or even with regards to stability - but when it comes to security I think it can be downright dangerous.
In the past 6 months alone:
-- I've had to deal with an iOS app that went bad for an education group.. At least, they were promised an iOS app but had some butchered web application sent to them - presumably for use via a framework like PhoneGap/Cordova. Would've been more acceptable if the 'app' worked; no. It consisted of syntax errors, misuse of simple/basic flow control structures and variable names just ripped out of google. End Result: Total rewrite.
-- I've discovered a SQL Injection vulnerability in a major games publisher in Asia.. browsing through a public source code repository. Googling the developers name I've also seen MySQL credentials littered in source code, personal data littered in source code and so on. Even for this Asia-based project, the development was outsourced to an external development agency.
-- Witnessed the posting of ITTs (Invitation-To-Tenders) with incorrect abbreviations... then the impending applications from outsourcers that claim to specialise in that abbreviation that doesn't exist.
I'm not saying they're all like that; and I'd like to think my views are purely anecdotal but there's so many people with the same stories that unfortunately I think it is quite a true representation as a whole.
When looking to change jobs before Christmas I began using LinkedIn more - and found myself constantly surprised by the sheer audacity of some of the discussions started by offshore developers. Nearly every discussion contained:
- An 'urgent' request to 'fix' 'their' source code for them.. - ...where the issue has been caused by copy-and-paste code which they don't understand - ...and includes, what I would deem sensitive, business logic regarding the client.
More often than not, if the project was for a web based product there would be SQL Injection vulnerabilities littered around their examples.. because, surprise surprise, they're using technologies or methodologies that were obsolete years ago.
Also, most of the time if you saw something like 'I'm a junior developer' (paraphrasing mind) - you could click on to their profile (at least with LinkedIn Premium or whatever it is) and they would claim to having been a developer for x years and being some form of 'guru'. All of them claimed to have MSc/MTech degrees yet reading their questions it was clear that hadn't even one iota of understanding regarding basic logic, flow control or syntax - let alone algorithmic or security topics.
Now? I'm happy to be working for an agency at the moment that only does greenfield projects and has all development done in-house or using a local freelancer w/ references and portfolio. No more trying to decipher illegible comments, finding identical code on google, fixing bugs that should never exist and so on.
Furthermore, the truth be told, I don't even partake in LinkedIn discussions now - as I actually found it depressing and frustrating to read some of the nonsense posted on them. It may be good to 'network' - but not if it just pisses you off with how pointless your job really is.
Conclusion - if you want to outsource a project then yes, ideally you need to micro-manage and.. - Ask for unit tests (good practice + also allows you to see at a glance whether things are implemented correctly) - Try and get access to a version control repository (i.e Git) and check what they're actually doing and look for tell-tale signs of copy/pasting - Have a good quality code review at milestones/pre-launch - Ensure you have good communications.. (-very difficult-)
So, yes - you need all the skills to be able to manage a development team, and an external party that can review the quality of the code... What was the benefit of outsourcing again?
Comments
Personally i would give a little more info re Technology , .net, c#,Java , Business Intelligence etc. and or any platforms, as this may assist people with their understanding - it all seems a bit vague at the mo.
On the .Net front we also have 4 certified SiteCore developers, which is an enterprise level CMS built on .NET.
So the three main technologies we are pursuing currently are .NET or Rails on the server side and Javascript/HTML/CSS on the client side.
http://www.tammantech.com/
Also, having first and second hand experience with outsourcing to India, I've yet to see a project that has gone well. I don't have any experience with outsourcing to Chine or Russia, but I can foresee similar problems. The language barrier obviously exists to some extent, but the biggest issues I've experienced with projects outsourced to India is the quality of the code and the sheer amount of handholding that has to be done. The management overhead is so high that any savings quickly vanish, and if you don't micro-manage them then you don't get anything approaching satisfactory deliverables.
Did you mean misconception? I can only speak from experience, but in mine - it is anything but a misconception.
Having reviewed code written outsourced workers (from India primarily) - I have been truly shocked at the copy-and-paste ridden garbage that has been supplied from some companies. Not just dreadful from a maintenance point of view, or even with regards to stability - but when it comes to security I think it can be downright dangerous.
In the past 6 months alone:
-- I've had to deal with an iOS app that went bad for an education group.. At least, they were promised an iOS app but had some butchered web application sent to them - presumably for use via a framework like PhoneGap/Cordova. Would've been more acceptable if the 'app' worked; no. It consisted of syntax errors, misuse of simple/basic flow control structures and variable names just ripped out of google. End Result: Total rewrite.
-- I've discovered a SQL Injection vulnerability in a major games publisher in Asia.. browsing through a public source code repository. Googling the developers name I've also seen MySQL credentials littered in source code, personal data littered in source code and so on. Even for this Asia-based project, the development was outsourced to an external development agency.
-- Witnessed the posting of ITTs (Invitation-To-Tenders) with incorrect abbreviations... then the impending applications from outsourcers that claim to specialise in that abbreviation that doesn't exist.
I'm not saying they're all like that; and I'd like to think my views are purely anecdotal but there's so many people with the same stories that unfortunately I think it is quite a true representation as a whole.
When looking to change jobs before Christmas I began using LinkedIn more - and found myself constantly surprised by the sheer audacity of some of the discussions started by offshore developers. Nearly every discussion contained:
- An 'urgent' request to 'fix' 'their' source code for them..
- ...where the issue has been caused by copy-and-paste code which they don't understand
- ...and includes, what I would deem sensitive, business logic regarding the client.
More often than not, if the project was for a web based product there would be SQL Injection vulnerabilities littered around their examples.. because, surprise surprise, they're using technologies or methodologies that were obsolete years ago.
Also, most of the time if you saw something like 'I'm a junior developer' (paraphrasing mind) - you could click on to their profile (at least with LinkedIn Premium or whatever it is) and they would claim to having been a developer for x years and being some form of 'guru'. All of them claimed to have MSc/MTech degrees yet reading their questions it was clear that hadn't even one iota of understanding regarding basic logic, flow control or syntax - let alone algorithmic or security topics.
Now? I'm happy to be working for an agency at the moment that only does greenfield projects and has all development done in-house or using a local freelancer w/ references and portfolio. No more trying to decipher illegible comments, finding identical code on google, fixing bugs that should never exist and so on.
Furthermore, the truth be told, I don't even partake in LinkedIn discussions now - as I actually found it depressing and frustrating to read some of the nonsense posted on them. It may be good to 'network' - but not if it just pisses you off with how pointless your job really is.
Conclusion - if you want to outsource a project then yes, ideally you need to micro-manage and..
- Ask for unit tests (good practice + also allows you to see at a glance whether things are implemented correctly)
- Try and get access to a version control repository (i.e Git) and check what they're actually doing and look for tell-tale signs of copy/pasting
- Have a good quality code review at milestones/pre-launch
- Ensure you have good communications.. (-very difficult-)
So, yes - you need all the skills to be able to manage a development team, and an external party that can review the quality of the code... What was the benefit of outsourcing again?