| The paper serves as a guideline for IT managers | | | | - The business is very dynamic and requirements are |
| planning to move development offshore. The issues | | | | never really frozen |
| discussed are from an outsourcer’s perspective. | | | | - Technical challenges are demanding |
| The focus is more on time and money (T&M) | | | | - The organizations are less structured in their |
| engagements as compared to fixed price (FP), | | | | functioning |
| because in FP there is little control of the outsourcer. | | | | - Information/documentation is typically not easily |
| The points discussed are based on the author’s | | | | available or shared |
| experience in the investment banking (IB) or capital | | | | Offshoring |
| markets IT industry but should be applicable to other | | | | Outsourcing has probably always been the simple part, |
| verticals. The paper isn’t about the merits of | | | | people have been doing it for years and the |
| offshore outsourcing. | | | | organizational systems are designed for it. But when it |
| The various sections in the paper are IB IT industry | | | | comes to offshoring there is reluctance in managers to |
| traits, FP and T&M engagement definitions, typical | | | | do it. Some of the common fears or questions which |
| notions on offshoring, issues observed in offshoring | | | | managers have in offshoring their work are: |
| and suggested remedies, traditional vendor | | | | 1. How do I manage team members so far away? |
| management department activities, recommended | | | | Managers still feel it would be an overhead to plan and |
| approaches to offshore-onsite team structuring, | | | | track work being done by team members far away. |
| offshore-onsite project execution and reducing vendor | | | | 2. My requirements keep changing so how do I |
| dependency tips. | | | | delegate work? In the IB industry in many key areas |
| There are some traits of the IB IT sector which has | | | | the requirements are always in a flux and the time to |
| made outsourced offshoring more challenging than | | | | market is very less. This does pose a challenge in |
| others like supply-chain, retail and insurance. They are: | | | | segregating large and independent chunks of work. |
| - Cost isn’t a very big factor in IT projects | | | | |