« The Good Guys| Main | Killer Bot Support Line »

Reasons Off-Shore Deals Go Bust

| | Comments (0)

Helen Huntley of Gartner Inc. released a study recently that had the top five reasons off-shore deals go bust. While Ms. Huntley seems like a great person for this analysis, her reasoning that "poor planning" is the cause of all this failure seems a little too trite. It's like saying the World Trade Center fell because it wasn't built to stand the impact of a airliner. It's a true statement, for certain, but doesn't illuminate the real issues, in my opinion.

The five reasons that InfoWorld list as the causes are:

  • Unrealized Cost Savings

  • Loss of Productivity

  • Poor commitment and Communications

  • Cultural Differences

  • Lack of Offshore Expertise and Readiness
  • I would suggest that this seems like a muddy list of symptoms and causes, all at various levels of the organization. "Unrealized Cost Savings" is obviously a symptom, not a cause, and it's a symptom at the upper management levels. "Cultural Differences" is a cause, but it's insufficiently worded to provide actionable information.

    I'm really not trying to plug the MAT here, but they could have done a similar study using ITIL, CMM, and PMBOK and given us a lot better information, especially for the $95 they're charging for the full article. I don't know about you, but I read this feeling like I had gathered a little good information, but nothing meaty enough to take into my practice and use. Gartner (and Huntley too) does a great job with these things. I hope the next story I see from them will be an improvement.

    Leave a comment

    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Daniel published on June 24, 2005 2:57 PM.

    The Good Guys was the previous entry in this blog.

    Killer Bot Support Line is the next entry in this blog.

    Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

    Powered by Movable Type 4.23-en
    Daniel Markham