Tehtävänanto (lyhennetty): Olet menestyvän KillerApp-ohjelmiston kehitystiimissä. Pomosi on juuri kuullut keskustelun globaalista ohjelmiston tuotannosta ja ehdottaa innoissaan, että KillerApp-ohjelmiston tuotanto pitäisi siirtää Intiaan. Hän pyytää sinua ajattelemaan asiaa ja kirjoittamaan lyhyen muistion ajatuksistasi. Kirjoita muistio kyseisestä aiheesta. Pohdi mahdollisia etuja ja haittoja. Essee arvosteltiin asteikolla 0-10 p. Essee oli osa Teknillisen korkeakoulun kurssin T-76.3601 Ohjelmistotuotannon perusteet suorittamista. Esseen kieli on englanti.

Essay 6 - Global Software Development

Moving our development to India would be a very challenging task. We must first think that why exactly are we going to move to India? What are the benefits of that?

Maybe the greatest benefit would be that the direct development costs will be lower. So we could maybe hire some extra developers and could get new products out quicker. When hiring new people, we could also get some new ideas and knowledge to house which could lead to new success products. Moving to offshore development might also open new doors to us (new partners) and give us valuable experience of working on global markets. If we want to become a global software company, we must do this some time in the future.

There are also very potential markets to our products in India. It is a growing country and there are clearly demand for our product. Maybe, by moving our development to India, we could also market our product there better. We should be very careful when choosing our partners - the cheapest isn't usually the best choice. One must also notice that it will take some time that the development process gets really started and we must arrange some sort of education and briefing to these developers - which takes time and money.

If we move our development to India, we must consider many challenging tasks in team work. One is communication. Time-zone differences, cultural differences and geographical distance create communication problems that must be solved first. If we move only part of our development to India, it complicates the information sharing between the people here and in India. We must create an effective communication channel with these people (e.g. on-site meetings and video conferences). Also, if moving only part of our development to India, we must be able to divide the work to reasonable modules so that there isn't big dependencies between these modules. For example software support would be a good choice to outsource but design maybe not (it depends much on other software engineering activities).

We must also create trust and friendship between these people - otherwise the quality of the work isn't maybe the best possible. We can't just expect that these people know everything and throw projects to them without any guidance. There must be some contact people here who helps when they got something to ask.

There are many things that must be first solved. Also some deeper calculations should be done when evaluating the financial benefits. The savings from lower salaries might not cover the other expenditure that come from creating a new organization structure, communication channels and other "hidden work".

I would suggest that we keep the development mainly in here but move our software support to India and see how it proceeds. After that we could re-evaluate the situation. I think it would be wise to consider also some European countries where the salaries are also low but the geographical distance wouldn't be so big, so the communication would be easier.

References:

• Maria Paasivaara. T-76.3601 Basics of Software Engineering, lecture slides 23.4.2007: Global Software Development.
• Simo Vuorinen. T-76.3601 Basics of Software Engineering, lecture slides 23.4.2007: Global Syndromes, antipatterns, and stories on offshore development.