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Managing a Global Programming Team?
cwimmer asks: "I work for a technology company in the United States who survived the economic slowdown by trimming fat where necessary. Unfortunately, it seems that my small programming team must've looked like mostly fat to management: it has been trimmed from a high of 5 to the current 2. We have been given a very large programming project that we estimated would take 4 coders (the size of the team at the time) 6 months to deliver. I have been given deep pockets with regard to moving some or all of the project to an offshore partner, and I can probably get 4 or 5 programmers in India. Does anyone have any pointers on managing a team of programmers on the other side of the world?"
Perhaps you could use those deep pockets to hire back the 2 fired programmers? 2 programmers you can actually talk to and design with are probably as productive, if not more, than 4 you can't communicate well with.
But, as has been pointed out here already, there are thousands and thousands of US developers out of work, which makes it a buyer's market. To put it into perspective, a top-gun Russian developer is going to charge 25/hr. I am certain that you can find a comparable US developer right now to do it for approximately the same; plus or minus 10% or so. It's amazing, but even software developers like to pay their mortgage... ;-)
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SCO is weenies
Gator is Spyware
Microsoft is thugs
Budget for a lot of travel on short notice. You will need "face time." Expect the trave to exceed what you will save in salary for such a small project. If you are hiring 20 or 20 programmers you might see a real savings if it comes out right. Also, plan on switching your US team to the graveyard shift so you can have enless phone calls with them. Been there, done that.
As a programmer whose company is thinking of hiring help from a local company that uses Russian programmers, I'd say: don't do it. The amount of complications possible by far outweighs the advantages (cheap!) in my opinion.. Like: -You've got your working program. But hey! there are two major bugs in it..but the offshore team is too busy with some other job, or are not reachable for some other reason. -From experience, everything you buy that is cheap at first, might turn out te be quite expensive later. I'd say, that might as well be true for hiring programmerskills. You're gonna need people to communicate to those programmers, even if they speak english or not. That person will cost money as well, unless you're willing to give up 70% of your own time to integrate, test, debug etc. the code you're getting from them. -Losing control! What you don't make, you cannot control easily..i.e.: you can check the code itself, but not how it was manufactured, or what kind of design decisions were made. I'm sure other /. will have better stories on why you should / should not do this..Basically, I'm just saying: don't make this complicated. If you need more manpower, try looking around in your own country first.
My 2 cents..
While I havent done it myself, I worked with others that have, and seen success and catastrophe. Whatever you do, don't hire somebody who is going to hedge the truth about progress. Ive seen projects completely cave in when the found out that their oversees components were months behind schedule, but the managers lied and said everything was going great. Remember they may not have the same American get-it-done attitude you have.
Also, make sure they have the same scheduling paradigm you have; for some reason a lot of people think that estimating a schedule means padding by tenfold, others think it means come up with the shortest conceivable timeline to please the boss.
Why should the nationality matter to me? All I want is the optimal price/skill ratio. I couldn't give a fuck if you're from bumfuck Somalia if your code is good, you finish it on time and don't ask for too much pay. Isn't that's what the free market system is all about anyway?
Canada has highly talented and educated programmers. Many of them, like myself, back from stints in the Bay area.
The price is right. Typical rates for Canadian consultants are 10 - 20% discount on US rates and then discount a dollar that only worth $0.65 US. No time zone issues or language barriers. Frankly, I don't understand why a US company would consider going anywhere else.
- Tune in next time for.. a clever sig.
I run a online game development business (www.murpe.com) where most of my development and support team are found all around the world (England, India, Russia, Japan), so we had to look at a common place for having meetings and discussions. There are times my adminitrative staff cannot connect to our online games (due to firewall restricts on telnet), so using web interfaces was an option we considered.
Since we are primary an linux-run development business, we found that using phpBB's (www.phpBB.com) web board system we could keep things private and moderated, then we also utilized a few web based project management suites (you can find these through freshmeat.net easier) for delegating tasks and having a calender available to everyone for upcoming milestone meetings and what not. Overall, the web boards/suites allow us near real-time interaction for discussing issues and for working on other problems when they arise.
-- M
Artificial intelligence is no match for natural stupidity.
So why should we answer this guys question, Its just helping him fire us!! Let him go to indias version of slashdot and ask THEM!
I'm sorry but I'm not stupid enough to help my boss figure out how to replace me.
This is why I'm so against globalism, this kinda thing will happen all the time as globalism becomes standard.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Having done several of these, as your first project, with deep pockets and a compressed do date, you are going to have problems. Major, miss the date, lose your job type problems if you attempt to remote source it.
Oversea outsourcing has problems beyond the traditional remote support. I have and continue to be a strong proponent of remote support. You get the benefit of hiring expertise that may not want to locate near you. For example, I work remotely for clients where the cost of living is easily three times what I pay here. And they do not offer three times the compensation. It sounds like that is what you are after. A win-win.
Here are just some of the issues:
- Time zones are more than inconvenient. If a question does not get answered by 8 a.m. , it will sit until the next day. Picking up the phone sounds easy, but will not be. How many issues can pile up before the communication is complete or they stop asking and just begin assuming? Who gets to call meetings and who attends? As the person leading the project, are you ready to work day and night? Team, status, and planning meetings need to be held with everyone so when?
- Code is not code. Simply put, cultural differences create issues in code. If you wish to own the code when you are done, both parties need to understand what is acceptable standards and what will happen with code that needs to be reworked (do you still pay while they rewrite it?). Standards for names, fields, tables, access types, how and what type of inheritance is allowed, etc. Assuming they will be coding in English (yes, you do need to make it a requirement), unless you all agree (or they have worked extensively in the US), someone will be rewriting the code. Or you will need to look at it like generated code. It does the job, but you never want to maintain it.
- Cultures different. As Americans, we tend to be naive in the assumption of cultural neutrality. And while many organizations do their best to be neutral, language continues to be a barrier. Consider how difficult it can be to understand someone with a varied US dialect. Add the phone, email, and 5,000 miles and a simple statement "You wish the account number removed, no?" takes on a whole new meaning. My unscientific number of 30 -40% redundant communication will work to minimize these types of issues.
Some companies put an American in charge from your side. You work through them and they make sure the details get hammered out with the team. This helps a little, but sounds a lot better than it works in practice. I was approached by a company to have mine work as that front. I passed when I saw the only difference was I would now have all the issues the client had, plus my own.
- What if it fails? This is the one that can be a stickler. Suppose you are being told that your project is on schedule and all the areas are coming together. The status reports look good and the code is getting delivered right up to the point everything stops. What are you going to do? While this problem exists in many contractor type arrangements, these folks are overseas in a country where use of the legal system is unknown. I hate to say it, but at least here you can sue someone if for nothing else but to get the code that was created.
At this point, I foresee a number of people reaching for the "reply - he's a bigot button." Hardly. These are business decisions and people make them from the cost/benefit. Often the price appears cheaper, because the assumption is made that given any programmer "X" they will generate lines of code "Y" and the result will be the same. That is not the case and is simple as the difference between hiring a person out of school and one with 10 years experience. The both know C++ so the results will be the same, correct?
Finally, consider the current economy. You did not say where you are, but I am willing to bet you could get the project staffed locally (or even US remote) for less TCO than you think. If they insist you use off shore help, then research carefully and find out the number of oversea projects done by the firm managed from the US. Of that total, how many were on time and on budget when complete. Then contact those customers and get their input. If their references are not glowing consider what the unhappy customers would be saying.
You may be the one that kicks the trend. However, I would be careful about putting your career on the line for it.
We (my partner and I) have 20 programmers that work for our very own foreign-owned company in Vietnam.
:-)
Our guys are *good*. They're smart, constantly learning new things and are quite dedicated. At need, they willingly work late hours for special projects and accelerated deadlines.
But one thing that makes our projects work so well is that we think of it (as another poster said) as a **long** commute. One of us is there for about two weeks every month. Houston to Saigon averages about $1000-1100 per flight. It is a *required* business expense for us.
And it's a two-way commute: we're very anxious to get individual staff members over here as soon as we can (lots of visa problems thus far). Not only do we want to get them property indoctrinated with US business practices (!) but we want to show them that a Houston summer is at *least* as unpleasant as one in Saigon.
I'd like to send a big "Fuck You" to your company.
Simple question. Why? America has done more than any other to usher in the era of glabal markets and global business. Someone in India offers the service for less cost, then I say all credit to them. America delegates almost all manual labour to the far east - where are your clothes made? Now they are handing out contracts for skilled work, and because many asian contries have excellent numerate education they are kicking ass. The same will happen in russia when it gets in gear.
The Indian guys we shipped in at $ORK[-2]were a fuck of a lot better than me, and as good as most of the rest of the group. Bear in mind that this was in a research group where the average PhD count was still above one despite two secretaries and a student on work placement. These guys are for the most part _good++_. I don't know where your degree is from, but they probably have two. And cost half as much. Put yourself in the position of the manager - If the project is reasonably atomic and QC isn't going to be a problem then shipping out contracts is a no-brainer.
now watch _this_ get modded to shit.
"The new wave is not value-added; it's garbage-subtracted" - Esther Dyson, Dec 1994