Outsourcing

The two most important concepts I came away with from this book were: 1) You should apply some logic to any outsourcing decision, and 2) You should only outsource what you understand completely today. The author presents a mathematical formula that, although complex, helps the reader to understand how to make decisions for the organization on outsourcing IS. Although there are some good principles presented early in the book, about half way through most readers will be lost by the indepth mathematical formula's. Understanding what you are outsourcing is the most important point. Most organizations today believe they can outsource IS and the problems will go away and costs can be reduced. This is not the approach one should take to outsourcing.

Es un buen texto para alguien que quiera empezar con el concepto, tiene una buena metodología y es una buena referencia. Debería tener ejemplos de casos exitosos de outsourcing

Whether you are a web developer or a company considering outsourcing, this book is a small investment you need to make. Many of the chapters focus on areas that will not change much over many years. Project disipline, forming a consensus, ensuring you have high-level support will always be needed. I am a web developer, and I would (with the singular exception of one chapter, which I felt the contributer was way, way too jaded...)highly recommend to my clients. I find knowledgable clients much easier to work with then newbies. They are far more realistic about the time, effort, and potential for reward. And the costs. The book is not the end-and-be-all, but it doesn't try to be; bottom line, it is a sober, necessary resource to turn to.

I can understand why some of the developers don't want to their clients to read this book--it points to some level of standards that developers should maintain when building Web sites. I have used the book extensively in my search for a Web developer and can say that it has helped me separate the good developers who have my business interests at heart from the bad developers. In the chapter on Web hosting I was immediately able to learn that two of the proposals that I received did not include any of the costs for hosting and maintaining my Web site. When I pushed the developers for that information much to my surprise I found their estimate actually tripled. I can see why developers don't want that sort of information out there for us clients. I agree the book could be a little less common sense and a little more hardcore outsourcing information but there's not much out there on the subject and this book is a step in the right direction.

Today, I gave this book to my corporate attorney and CPA.

Everyone believes they know what is involved in building a web site. But most mean the end product. Including our attorneys and financial advisors.

Now, everyone involved in our company knows what we do and can help our company continue its growth.

We've changed our accounting and changed our web development and hosting contracts because of this book. We've also added a Internet law firm to our mix to help our client thru the maze of issues that they may face.

Thank you JP.

This book was very useful to me. I could use it for my studies in the outsourcing market!

This book describes the feasibility and the staffing issues well. The outsoucing concepts are also well defined and can act as good guidelines.

The book has is specifically about offshore call centers, and does not cover the broader topic of "Offshore Outsourcing". My assumption from the title was that it would cover a broader and deeper level of content, but not the case. If you are specifically looking for offshore call center topics, this is a good book.

This book tells librarians to outsource. It does not deal with the pitfalls of this process sufficiently to make it worthwhile.

This "book" is really 2 articles from the July 1988 issue of Training & Development. They may be great articles for the training and development people, but they are not sufficiently generalized for the rest of us.

Overall very dissapointing. This book is essentially a 10-page white paper turned into a 98-page book with very large font. Of the 98 pages, 14 pages are the introduction describing what the book is and is not. Here is another clue - it consists of only 3 chapters.

In effect, the book offers some (by now well-known) observations on offshore outsourcing specific to India and specific to application software. Here are a few pointed out by this book: start with software maintenance work, use the savings from outsourcing to fund new initiatives, and the relationship with the outsource provider should be a partnership. The intent of the book is to be an executive's first guide to offshoring, but I seriously doubt most CIOs and CEOs will garner much of anything useful from these broad observations.

No case studies are presented. The author also introduces a new acronym "PCB" for primary cause of bungling!

On a more positive note, the author did well by explaining differnet psyches (idealist, pragmatist, and revisionist) and showed how offshore outsourcing would help in each situation. He also has a valid point regarding CMM Level 5 costing a large amount (perhaps too much?) due to its documentation and adminstrative requirements.