Software Development Offshore – Custom Development vs Integration

In discussions with many firms we often end up starting with conversations about what should I look to offshore first.  Should it be a big project, small project, development, support, legacy, and so on. Software development falls into largely two areas – custom development

Data Warehousing Alternatives on Ownership – Organizational Structure

So last week I started a stream of posts that was going to discuss the various alternatives to sourcing strategy. Before we get started though, I wanted to do some level-setting on a variety of fronts.  Today, let’s talk about organizational structure in support of Data War

Outsourcers Up for Some Change

So this week there has been a lot of talk boiling up now that officially some changes are in play: EDS – looking to buy 52% of mPhasis (Bloomberg article), this is a fairly minor deal, but a great opportunity for synergy for both organizations.  EDS’ size and presence

CoffeeCAST – #7 – Project Management Discussion

Welcome to the 7th Episode of Coffee Conversations with Stephen Hayward of Project X. It’s the first Tuesday of April, we all made it through April fools day.  Today I have with me Mark Dymond, Director of Application Services at IBM who is responsible for one of their largest C

Data Warehousing Alternatives on Ownership

Over the past 6 months, Project X has been involved in evaluating and setting benchmarks on alternatives to implementing Enterprise Data Warehousing.  In every case that we have been involved, the classic outsourcing and technology influenced have been available and impacted the

Software Development Productivity

Project X was invited into a conversation last week with some senior folks at various organizations on the topic of software develpoment productivity.  First, thank you Mark for including Project X in the conversation.  It has sparked some interesting debate of which I would

SLA or Transaction Pricing

In a previous post we discussed Fixed Price vs Time and Materials today I would like to add two other options to the discussion. Service Level Agreements and Transaction Based Model. In a Service Level Agreement (SLA) or sometimes referred to as service level objectives, you are desig

CoffeeCAST – #3 – Outsourcing with Steve Schaefer

This is the Third of Episode of Coffee Conversations with Stephen Hayward of Project X. Today we will be talking with Steve Schaefer where we will cover: Fundamentals from a vendor point of view Objectives Information and Business Process Outsourcing Outsourcing as a tool, not the obj

GM’s New Outsourcing – Did it Get the Value?

Back on December 15th I wrote about having read about GM’s new strategy (blog).  Well the verdict came out on Feb. 2nd see the Business Week article – GM’s Landmark in IT Outsourcing.  I am not sure what to think about this… The actual contracts are n

Sourcing Outside of the Box – Story 2

Over the past two years I have seen two very interesting outsourcing initiatives in the Financial Services sector. The first over a year ago was when one division outsourced their development work to another group within the organization.  This was not just a case of moving his d