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> From: nayanikay -at- yahoo -dot- com [mailto:nayanikay -at- yahoo -dot- com]
> Subject: Re: outsourcing technical communication
> While there are justifiable apprehensions and concerns
> regarding coordination and management, the outsourcing model
> works pretty well
Says you. I have now worked at three companies that used outsourcing to
offshore companies (mostly in India). All three have suffered missed
deadlines, poor communication, phonelines that are constantly busy
overseas leading to additional miscommunication and inefficiency, having
to work bizarre hours in order to "meet" by teleconference with offshore
workers, and several other frustrations, irritations, and generally good
reasons to forget about pushing work offshore to save a few bucks. It's
not as if we don't have enough unemployed programmers and tech writers
right here. The company I presently work for is a good case in point. We
have an offshore project that has missed deadline after deadline, has
been a constant source of frustration, and the QA people mutter under
their breath about the drop-off in quality of work at home vs offshore.
Clearly, the offshore people are capable, but managing an offshore
project is a major additional level of administrative hell and cultural
chaos that we're not "global" enough to tackle at this juncture. Maybe
someday, when jets can fly to Bombay from Toronto in 2 hours, we'll have
cracked that problem. For now, though, it's a BIG problem. They are TOO
remote and too divorced from the day-to-day developmental issues at
home.
> I was part of a team that operated on the
> offshore business model, and we did a very good job of
> helping maintain the VW website.
I'm sure your project was successful, but I have yet to work on or with
one that has been a success. And I don't see the value in wasting time
and customer loyalty on missed release dates, questionable quality
control (not because it's necessarily inherently poor, but because we
have no direct oversight of the project under development), and reducing
the markets for our own products by not employing the people who might
buy them. Henry Ford had it right when he made his cars affordable
enough so that his own workers could buy them --- we seem to be
forgetting our own history. Inferred in the Henry Ford anecdote is the
fact that his workers had JOBS that made buying the cars possible.
> A T1 line and two 8-hour
> shifts that ensured working hours between offshore and onsite
> overlapped plugged any potential communication gaps.
We've got that, too, but our communications gaps are HUGE. Consider that
you're not only farming out your work to contractors, but remote
contractors who are thousands of miles away, and who have poor
electronic infrastructure (as evidenced by our own experience with it
--- constantly unavailable phonelines prevent teleconferencing, network
connections that are frequently broken, etc.). So not only do you have
to deal with the disconnect of the contractor vs the full-timer, but you
have the cultural disconnect that affects communication, the fact that
the work is not under your nose to keep an eye on it, the minutiae that
enters into daily work that requires training or wasting time with the
offshore project manager at your head office (if you even have one of
their pm's here) because they don't understand a process that has become
standard practice in your office or in your market niche. Even the
difference in English for tech comm is an issue. Docs written in India
tend not to have standard US English, and some docs that I have seen
were of a lower standard than I'd consider acceptable.
Having said all of this, I have no doubt that there are examples of
successful offshore arrangements. But...
> As for
> technical writing, given good communication facilities, the
> only other issue would be as mentioned by others, would be
> language. There are quite a few with "good" English too-it's
> just a Q of a little luck and a lot of networking to find
> them.
... When luck has to enter into it to find good contractors overseas,
I'd say that that's a proposition most companies can't afford.
> As for the benefits, one very glaring advantage is the
> cost.
As Geoff pointed out, you have to be careful of false economies.
> But don't get me wrong. I am not saying that Indian
> skills are cheap- this is only relative.
But are you saying that North American skills are expensive? Or too
expensive? I think that companies that sell products primarily in one
market would obviously benefit from hiring people from that market to
create the products for that market. That seems like common sense... If
nobody can afford to buy the product, what good is it?
TTFN.
Tom
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