Off Shoring

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Off Shoring

• A real life experience
• Presented by
• Steve MacPherson

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Agenda

• Hiring, Working, and Travel in India
• Providing Effective Training
• Integrating Teams
• Cultural Differences
• Selling Off Shore at Home
• How Off Shoring Can Fail

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My Background

• Ten years leading teams in QA
• Symantec
• North American Technical Team Lead (Norton
  Utilities)
• Internationalization Software Quality Engineer
  (German, Chinese, Korean, Japanese suit of
  products)
• Numetrix / J.D. Edwards / People Soft / Oracle
• Senior QA Team Lead - Supply Chain Management
• Strategic Network Optimization
• Production, Distribution Planning
• Supply Chain Business Modeler
• RBC Dexia
• Senior QA Team Lead Enterprise wide web
  applications

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The Start of the Process

• Corporate Merger mandated that 30 head count
  needed to be off shore
• 6 month window to complete goal
• Management and Staff Resistance
• Already established and effective software
  development methodology

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Hiring, Working, and Travel in India
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• Hiring process started in Toronto
• Screening
• Not many candidates with QA backgrounds
• No candidates with Business knowledge
• Interviews needed to be done over the phone

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Interview Process

• Three part process
• First interview for QA process knowledge
• Second interview for technical skills
• Third interview with panel of coworkers from
  Toronto team

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Selection Criteria

• QA knowledge
• No formal QA training, lots of programming
  training available
• QA knowledge about 10 years behind (but catching
  up)
• Communication Skills
• - Key consideration
• Technical Skills
• Abundance of skilled people

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Getting There

• Need Working Visa
• Vaccines, optional Malaria meds
• Initial cultural shock
• On call driver provided

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Bangalore

• Third most populated city in India
• Silicon Valley of India
• Electric City
• Air Conditioned City
• Retirement City
• Boom City not planned for

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The office

• Still under construction
• most construction done by hand
• Many unique Job Positions
• Sweepers
• Photo copier operator
• Safety
• No windows, One exit

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Crunch Time

• Needed to fill all positions immediately
• Needed to get bodies into seats.
• Main selection criteria became communication
  skills
• Some staff already on site and waiting for
  instruction
• No training plan

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Providing Effective Training
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Training Plan

• Six key areas of training
• Tools QA and Development tools
• Processes Our Software development methodology
• Product Our specific applications
• Business Concepts Supply Chain concepts
• Corporate Culture
• North American Culture

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Training Boot Camp

• Actively encourage and ask questions
• Break down formalities
• Note taking
• Group work to build team

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Self Documented Training

• Have class break into groups
• Assign each group area of training
• Each group documents training received
• Each group presents created training materials
  back to class following day

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Integrating Teams
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Tools

• Email
• Phone
• Video Conferencing
• Stand up meetings
• Twiki
• Introduction Video
• Paired testing Buddy
• Travel

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Effectiveness

• Email least effective
• Phone effective depending on accents
• Video Conferencing
• Most effective
• People can pick up on non verbal communication
  cues as well

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Processes

• Stand up meetings
• Ensured everyone was included
• Twiki
• Ensured shared sense of responsibility
• Paired Testing
• Backed up training
• Allowed for less formality
• Video
• Put a face to the whole process

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Cultural Differences
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Work Place Differences

• Salaries comparisons
• Was 1/7th to 1/8th now closer to ¼
• Wage gap rapidly closing due to competition
• Employee Market
• Booming with high tech companies setting up shop
• Bread winners
• Often supporting extended family

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• Not easy to change jobs
• 2 month notice required
• Difficult to get hired if not already working
• Very hierarchically structured
• Traditional management styles
• Very little outside the box thinking

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Social Differences

• Very family and marriage oriented
• Very polite
• Mostly vegetation
• Mostly Hindu
• Very business oriented

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Selling Off Shore at Home
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How can you Benefit

• Savings in costs
• Pool of resources to do mundane or repetitive
  tasks
• Group that can take over maintenance testing to
  free up QA to work on new and interesting
  functionality
• Opportunities for Travel
• Must be backed up with actions

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How Off Shoring Can Fail
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Potential Pitfalls

• Selection of wrong candidates
• Poor communication skills
• Poor or inadequate training
• Does not cover 6 key areas (Tools, QA, SDM,
  Product, Corporate and Social cultures)
• They will only be as effective as you train them
  to be
• Not enough involvement from home team
• During interview process
• During training

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• Lack of integration between teams
• Out of sight out of mind
• Working in different directions
• Assigning the wrong type of work
• Work should be explicit and detailed
• Avoid out of the box thinking
• Lack of cultural understanding
• Superior attitudes
• Built in biases

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• Infrastructure Limitations
• Access to hardware
• Network limitations, bandwidth etc
• Security Privacy Limitations
• Privacy laws
• Internal security restrictions

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Questions