Experiences & best practices on nearshoring, offshoring & global IT staffing

The impact of offshoring on your business

I recently published an article on the famous Dutch IT magazine ‘Computable‘. In response to this article, I received some questions from Reza Sarshar of interaccess. The questions are interesting and I want to address all of them in this article. 

1. What is the utility of offshoring?

There are many benefits for companies engaging offshore resources. The extent to which each applies to your company depends on whether you set up your own offshore office, work with a supplier based on fixed price/SLA, hire dedicated people from a supplier or work with freelancers. In general the benefits are (and please add to this if I missed something): Continue reading →

What tools do you use for managing global teams?

Managing global teams requires a solid structure and the right (software) tools. I often get the question what tools we use in our company. I am always surprised when I show someone our project management tool, what impression it makes on them. To me, it seems common sense to have such tool, but for people without experience in offshoring, this is not so common at all. 

The goal of using tools is to maximize structure. Software development is complex. Human behavior is complex. The tools should make the software development structured. And they should help the people involved to show behavior that leads to the desired results. This second element is the biggest challenge. Software development is a creative process, not factory work. So we need creativity from people and at the same time, we expect them to behave in a specific way.  

So what tools/ingredients do you need you to facilitate global team collaboration?  Continue reading →

How software developers can overcome Cross-Cultural Communication mistakes in IT offshoring?

The IT talent pool available in India is highly skilled. These educated IT professionals are good English speakers. They should always try to go that extra mile in cross-cultural communication to understand customer’s needs when working in an IT offshore project.

All offshore IT projects begin with a transfer of knowledge. This activity between stakeholders and developers is not always easy because the Indian developers have been trained in the Indian educational system. The Indian educational system, though imparting superb technical training, misses the mark on communication and soft skills. How can developers and stakeholders overcome this? Continue reading →

Managing Agile Projects

project-management-page23-thumb.jpg (298×211)More and more organizations are adopting Agile ways of working. The descriptions of Agile methods give much guidance on how to work agile on the team level. They describe the practices and support the set-up of Agile teams. But there is limited information on changes that are needed in projects to introduce and manage Agile teams. Setting the right project environment is crucial for Agile to succeed. This article provides solutions that help to create and manage Agile projects. 

Difficulties implementing Agile in Project Management

Some of the problems that organizations have that implement Agile in their projects have to do with:

  • Fitting agile teams into the existing project management organization
  • Communication between and synchronization of Agile (project) teams
  • Managing and reporting agile progress in projects  Continue reading →

What is the secret to success in offshoring?

As with anything in the world, there is no holy grail to make something work. In offshoring, there are many factors that influence the success of your projects. But I believe that there are 2 things that determine the success to a very large degree.

1. The people

Last week, I spoke to an American customer, a startup from Nashville that worked with an Indian team for several months. He told me that they have a joke in the office that the names of the people they work with don’t change, but the people do. Continue reading →

Why choose an offshore colleague instead of a local employee?

When speaking to software companies in Europe, I often get to hear ‘we want to have people in our office’. This is something I fully understand. Having people in your own office makes it easier for organization than having people in another building or another country. What then, are the reasons to hire an offshore team?

A. Finding the right people

One of the biggest challenges for software companies today is finding the right programmers. In Europe, there is a big shortage of IT people. And the IT companies are all looking to hire the brightest minds. In the years to come, the shortage will become bigger because the population gets grey and very few people do a technical education.  Continue reading →

Mobile strategy event: an app for your business?

Last week, Bridge organized Talk About IT for the 6th time, in cooperation with Efactor. Over 60 people visited Boom Chicago in Amsterdam. The event was a success, with an open and positive atmosphere and much relevant exchange of experiences. A short report, written by one of the panel-members: Michiel Gaasterland of Storywise.

The theme of this edition was ‘What is your mobile strategy?’The attendees were mostly independent entrepreneurs and SME business leaders. Despite my years as brand director for Commodore International Corp, I’m not a mobile specialist. So I was there to help us explore how businesses could fit mobile into their overall marketing 2.0 strategy. Continue reading →