Offshore Outsourcing Risks
t is a well known fact that the offshore outsourcing (or any type of outsourcing for that matter) carries known and unknown risks. The important thing is to find out if your provider is aware of these risks and has a plan to either mitigate it or eliminate it altogether. In this post, I will share some of known risks related to offshore outsourcing. Risk One: Requirement Misunderstanding - Many times it happens that the requirements get written in a hurry to get the project started as soon as possible.
This is okay if the project is being done inhouse. However if it being outsourced, it becomes a risk. If the specifications are not written properly or are incomplete or enough details are not provided, the project will have problems on various fronts such as Project Understanding - what needs to be done and delivered, Project Planning - putting together firm dates for delivery, Change Controls - lots of change control will be generated later on in the project life cycle, which could obviously delay the project as well as increase the cost.
Per the study conducted by Engineering Institute, not enough understanding or the clarity around the customer requirements is one of the top reasons on why software projects fail or get delayed. In order to mitigate this risk, make sure that your provider has gone through the requirement understanding phase before starting the coding phase.
The requirement understanding phase should have multiple rounds of discussion with all the involved parties to fully understand and document their requirements in the Software Specification Documents. This phase is independent of technology selected for the project. The provider should also prepare the HTML mock-ups which is an excellent way to capture the application flow.
These mock-ups should reused during the coding phase for embedding the application method calls. Requirements Development: The Requirements Development phase is about gathering the needs of the customer and translate into requirements specification of what the system must do. Requirements Development consists of three related activities:
1. Gathering User Requirements, which is accomplished by interviewing the potential users about the system they want, building the interactive prototypes, writing the Requirement Specification documents.
2. Analyzing Requirements, which is about determining the acceptability, implement ability, and testability.
3. Inspecting Requirements, which is accomplished by discussing the proposed requirement in detail. The goal is to identify the issues and errors related to the requirements ambiguities or discrepancies.
The deliverable from this phase is a detailed requirments document which should get jointly reviewed and signed off. Your company's project manager or designated contact will need to review the status of any deliverables as well as any testing done, and be available to communicate frequently with the vendor project manager.
Most project problems occur to infrequent or poor communication between the firm outsourcing, and the vendor. But the "no news is good news" approach is rarely true; in fact, the opposite will often occur. One of the easiest ways to reduce this risk, and to catch problems early on, is to initiate frequent communication, with regular times specified for project reviews.
Differences in development methodology can occur, if one firm prefers an RUP approach with exacting specifications, while another firm prefers agile methodologies. One firm may have a preferred tool in place for source code control, or for coding standards, or for testing builds. These issues can often be worked out by communicating the reason for each approach, and then choosing a consistent methodology.
Most frequently, you will ask the offshore team to adopt your in-house methodologies, but you may be surprised to discover that they have methodologies or tools that equal yours, especially if they have significant experience in a technology. This is where teamwork, and communication between the project and development team managers is critical.
Related to methodologies are evaluating how the firm being outsourced to handles sudden requests for large volumes or rapid delivery. Check on how flexible and scalable your vendor is, and whether they have processes in place for hiring additional staff as required for larger projects.
This includes having sufficient project management staff in place to ensure adequate monitoring and communication with your firm. Ask them: "What is the smallest project you have worked on? The largest project?" to help determine whether they can scale to meet your needs. You will also want to check references for projects that are similar to yours.
Original source was found at http://www.bestsyndication.com/?q=122707_offshore_outsourcing.htm
Perl 5.10
Organization Perl Foundation has informed on release of the new version of the dynamic programming language PERL which has received an index 5.10.
A number of essential innovations and improvements are included in structure PERL 5.10. Developers, in particular, allocate improvements in regular expressions, and also the advanced mechanism of support UTF-8. Besides there was a "clever" operator of search of conformity, the interpreter, a subsystem of delivery of error messages and the mechanism of distribution of memory have been modified. At last, the structure of updating PERL with an index 5.10 included some opportunities of language PERL 6 developed since 2000.
It is necessary to notice, that to language PERL (in abbreviated form from Practical Extraction and Report Language) one and a half weeks ago it was executed twenty years. Authorship PERL belongs to the programmer of company Unisys Larri Uoll; its primary purpose was creation of universal language by means of which it would be easier to cope with the text information. First version PERL was issued on December, 18th, 1987
To load updating language PERL 5.10 it is possible from .
Development Software Supports SOA/Web Services/Mash-ups
Compuware Corporation announced the availability of the Compuware Uniface 9.2 Application Platform Suite. This version enables IT organizations to accelerate the development and deployment of enterprise applications by extending multi- channel support to mobile devices. Uniface 9.2 also introduces extensive support for service oriented architecture and web services technologies.
With the introduction of this version, Uniface 9.2 becomes one of the development tools that can deploy applications on virtually any platform, from the mainframe to mobile devices. The Uniface Multi-channel deployment platform also provides support for Windows Vista and mobile devices. The new Uniface Mobile capability supports Microsoft Windows Mobile and provides for connection via the leading wireless technologies.
"The world of mobility and enterprise applications has been almost completely separated, but these areas are beginning to converge at the architectural, application development (AD) and user interaction levels," said William Clark, Research VP, Gartner in Gartner's Blog entry, "Making the Leap to Services and Embracing the New Enterprise Architecture," June 1, 2007. "Mobile applications pose a unique set of challenges for IT departments, and these must be considered along with Web-centric AD strategies so IT can choose the right architectures that match user requirements, device capability and network availability."
Uniface 9.2 includes new and integrated versions of the entire Uniface Application Platform Suite (APS) including Uniface, Uniface Web Application Server and Uniface Flow. The Uniface Portal capability in the Uniface Web Application Server simplifies how documents, database reports and enterprise applications are made available to employees and customers using the web-based interface. Uniface Flow is Compuware's premier tool for modeling, integration and management of business processes.
With enhanced support for web services and service oriented architecture, Uniface supports the production and consumption of web services for enterprise applications. This support includes XML Schema, Soap and WSDL. Uniface 9.2 will communicate with any standards-compliant web service is WS-I compliant and supports complex communication, modeling and validation methods. Uniface 9.2 speeds the development of portal-based applications and enables customers to develop their own composite business services using mash-up capabilities.
"Today's IT organizations want to rapidly develop enterprise applications and deploy those applications on a wide variety of platforms from mobile to the mainframe," said Aad van Schetsen, Vice President of Uniface Solutions at Compuware Corporation. "Compuware Uniface 9.2 will help our customers to leverage the benefits of service oriented architecture and mobile technologies to develop new and modernize existing applications."
The Compuware Uniface APS is a productive, reusable and proven platform for developing composite applications. Uniface provides open connectivity to help integrate and extend legacy applications, while supporting a wide range of emerging technologies and innovations. IT organizations benefit from ease of implementation, immediate ROI and reduced risk. To learn more about Compuware Uniface please visit www.compuware.com/uniface.
Google develops the new editor for web-pages
Company Google prepares for new on-line service under name Google Sites, the web-pages intended for editing.
As informs Your Search Advisor referring to the presentation lead by company Google in Ann Arbore (Michigan), development of firm JotSpot will be put in a basis of service Google Sites. We shall remind, that Google has got company JotSpot in the autumn of the last year. JotSpot specializes on development of software for creation and the publication of Wiki-pages (from Hawaiian wikiwiki - is "very fast"). Technology Wiki allows to make editing of contents through a web-interface, instantly to create references to other clauses (as existing, and on planned) and so on.
Google already offers users system Google Page Creator for editing a web-pages. This service is represented by the visual editor HTML constructed on the basis of technology AJAX and combined with a free-of-charge hosting. The new service Google Sites possessing expanded functionality, should replace service Google Page Creator. By means of Google Sites a web-developers, among other, intranetwork portals and the multiuser environments can create. Google Sites also will give to developers of a control facility projects.
Exact date of start of service Google Sites is not specified. Presumably, the service will earn in following year and will be a part of a set of on-line office appendices Google Apps.