The business environment has become extremely competitive while the pace at which businesses have to change has increased. This is resulting in tremendous pressure on IT organizations. In addition to managing the complexity and integration of older and newer technologies, IT organizations are expected to manage reduced turnaround times for new applications with reduced budgets. The price of failure to deliver high quality application on time and on budget has never been higher.
Traditionally IT organizations relied on internal software developers to ensure high quality applications. As media pundits question whether IT matters, business decision makers have looked to cost cutting in the IT budget, with less value placed on large application development efforts. With advances in network connectivity worldwide, IT organizations can now take advantage of cheaper labour from offshore development companies. But this is not always a silver bullet. Differences in culture, varying approaches to development, knowledge transfer and other issues can lead to unexpected failures and cost and schedule overruns in offshore development projects. Neither using internal development staff, nor blindly sending development work offshore is the answer.
