Is offshoring buggy?
May 1st, 2007Ed Yourdon has an interesting summary on Michael Mah’s analysis of offshored software projects, where he concludes that such projects have 2.8x as many bugs as projects that are “co-located” with end-users. Mah’s study was a very interesting read because it collects data around a feeling that I have hold for quite some time now: If people speaking the same language, located in the same timezone, having a similar cultural background or at least a similar social environment, cannot communicate effectively - how can people not sharing any of the before mentioned?
Top questions to consider:
- what’s the bug rate with your offshored projects, compared to “co-located”, non-outsourced projects?
- what will you do against this trend?
- will the situation improve or worsen if you apply a waterfall, high-ceremony process to it?