Why are contract outsourcing and offshore development failing to deliver the
expected benefit of lower costs and increased end-user satisfaction to
enterprise software development users? It seems that lower rates per hour and
better management of human resources are not enough to overcome the problems
associated with the central issue of lack of engineering discipline. In most
other industries, real cost savings matched with increased productivity that
translate into fundamentally lower production costs have been the result of
process and manufacturing reengineering, not simply of lowering labor input
costs. The cost of building a car has actually declined in real dollars over
the last 20 years, even as average hourly pay has increased. By and large,
this has not been t... (more)