Khuram

The true lies of profitable losses

When you are so content with yourself, that you just hired a bunch of programmers in India or Pakistan at the rate of about 50 pence an hour, and they think its great!

Having an ethnic background from the Indo-Pak region, i thought to myself that i’d jump local ship early and hop across the continents over to Pakistan and source some talented programmers.

So in the latter part of 2002, this is exactly what i did. I read an article in Computer Weekly about how the government in Pakistan was facilitating outside investors greatly, and that there was a huge investment and great focus in this area.

The good
Everyone was desperate to work, so finding programmers was easy. Finding office space wasnt overly difficult either. I had a small team setup within approximately 7 days. We got along well, spoke the same native language, and there was plenty of enthusiasm taking to the office air.

I came back to the UK, wrote some specifications for a few internal projects and luckily was handed two projects by new clients. My combined expenditure for a team of 3 with an office was approx £600/month.
The equivalent of this in the UK would cost me approximately, £4500. So i was in effect, saving a colossal £3900 a month.

This meant i could afford to quote lower prices to customers, while still maintaining good profit margins and hopefully had enough resources to work on internal projects.

Well that was all the good news, and that really is it in this saga, because what i learned in the months that followed was its not just about the short term math.

The bad
I’m not a software developer myself, though i am familiar with basic software development principles and i am aware of the different platforms, languages and development environments. I wouldnt be lost at a developers conference, but i’d probably get pretty bored, pretty quick.

This lack of development knowledge, meant i was not able to assess development time for projects and had to rely on estimates back from my developers.

That made me a little too co-dependent.

And let that be a lesson to us all in management positions in IT. Never let your staff ‘blag’ you. Know you’re game. It will only come back you and bite you in the derriere later!

Anyhow.  There were also problems, such as the fact that Pakistan’s internet access is controlled through a central proxy server which monitors outbound activity. Some standard secure ports were blocked, which took me more than 50% of my working time to realise and then took even more time, to track the right people in getting these ports opened so my guys could do the work upload the code to the lab and production servers that i had setup here in the UK.

Holidays in Pakistan were aplenty which meant the team were taking off at least 2 working days a month with the excuse that it was a public holiday. There was plenty of “load shedding” problems. (These are power cuts that take place throughout the day to deal with power overload) . Pakistan , is after all a developing country.

It was difficult to keep a general eye on the staff from day to day, as the project manager, (myself) was in the UK, and not with them in the office.

The test servers were also in the UK, as there was no technical staff available to maintain development servers locally in Pakistan. (no one had quite the skill set), which had its obvious effect on testing.

I had to learn to deal with these issues, and both of the external projects were late as a result, which didnt fair to well with my clients. Luckily, i did have a very good relationship with them from prior projects and that gave me some leverage some what. Either way, i didnt like to be put (even if its by my own doing) in such a situation, and certainly it could have been better. I was not expecting a gamble.

The ugly
Fortunately, i did manage to deploy the two projects in the end, and not too late, and the client relationship remained unaffacted, luckily. *wipes forehead*.

But what i experienced in between, and what i learned was actually not too pleasant.

It was very difficult to set boundaries with the staff, as they constantly felt the need to further personalise the working relationship. Not only did this make me uncomfortable as it was completely unnecessary, but its not good for the working environment.  It seems to be standard working culture abroad. I dont think it would work well in the UK for sure!

We had a number of problems with both systems after delivery, and after i had closed operations down in Pakistan. I wasnt frightened of challenges, i came to the conclusion that the ‘time wasnt right’. We didnt lose money on the contracts, but nor did we make as much as we were supposed to.

I had to hire developers locally to fix the problems in the School Booking System, and the Removals software system.

The developer that i handed the project too, said that the coding was extremely poor. I realised quite quickly that these problems would not have presented themselves had i not outsourced the project offshore.

We recently re-wrote the Resource Booking System, and managed to put it together in 25% of the time using .Net as the first version was done in PHP. We like .Net because its more scalable, and also working with Microsoft SQL server offers us many small advantages, which is a combination are very attractive.

What i learned
I think the lessons learned and the conclusions i formed could have gone one of two distinct ways depending on the mindset.

I didnt profit from my venture, and it left a bit of a bad taste in my  mouth, but i didnt make a loss either.

Some time after closed down the Pakistan operation, i met someone locally who had come from India and was working as part of a large team at HSBC, developing in Java. He told me he had come over for 6 weeks for training, to get to know the business, and to learn new ways of working as well as to improve his skill set.

In recent times, i’ve also seen Microsoft do a reasonably decent job of their outsourced call centres, and as much as i hate Indian Call centres, (i dont hate indians, i dont like the fact they cant understand what i am saying, or understand my problem), 3G seem to have done a pretty good job in making their setup reasonably transparent.

I think it comes down to the fact that, with a proper infrastructure in place, where good project management is present not only locally but also overseas, and where there is a greater emphasis in making sure the developers truly understand the business context, outsourcing operations can really pay off.

I think the larger companies can profit from these ventures, because they reap the financial rewards over time. Initially the investement in training, infrastrcuture and so on, can actually be quite costly.

For me personally, and for us at XS-PRO, i think we have learned our lessons, and are not deterred but at some point will look once again abroad, but this time building upon our experience and taking up on informed judgements.

The lack of understanding with regards to business context is just one part of the problem with developers abroad, the other part is helping them to understand how their work fits into the grander scheme of things.

All in all, it can and does work.

Did i scare ya?