The story is almost always the same:

“I just need an app that can do X and Y.” or ” I can sketch out what it should do and send that right over.” or “This product is simple; it shouldn’t take too long to develop, right?”

Wrong. Your product is your business. You don’t need to “just develop a quick app”; you need to nurture a product-based business, a process that requires commitment and time.

Simplicity and elegance are usually the result of patient iteration. If you’re looking for an easy path to success, Monsoon is probably the wrong partner for you.

However, (offshore) software development has institutionalized non-iterative ways of doing things. You CAN come up with a definitive requirements document that CAN be turned into a definitive design document that CAN be turned into perfect code, which in turn makes users ecstatic! Couldn’t be further from the truth.

Definitely. But how do you organize a successful, iterative process with an offshore team? Time & geography are the obvious challenges. But, the problem goes much deeper than that. It is about mindset. And, although your business development guy won’t admit it, his offshore team doesn’t have it.

Most offshore developers have never really been included in a brainstorming session or a scoping process – their job is about one thing: take requirements and churn out code. Now, we need them to learn to iterate. They haven’t even spent time scoping!

Successful iteration isn’t about reworking your code 14 times a month. When most offshore firms talk about iteration, what they really mean is that their project managers are going to rewrite requirements over and over again, guiding their developers through a series of protracted, stressful waterfall processes until everyone loses their mind.

14 waterfalls don’t make a river. They just make a lot of noise.

When we first started embracing iterative development 4 years ago, it just meant that we didn’t sleep. We would work with the client during the day, stay up with our team to communicate scope at night, and then get up early to synch everyone up and ‘iterate’ in the morning. Think that’s scalable? Ask my wife.

No, true iteration requires a reworking of the entire offshoring process. More on this soon.

Nandan Nilekani can’t find enough talent over at Infosys. No one can. Employees are jumping from one firm to another, taking incremental raises and leaving projects half-done.

A Bangalore tech firm currently has a “trespassers will be recruited” sign on their front window.

The sign is hilarious. The global lack of talent? Not funny.

Somini Sengupta (my vote for NY Times MVP) tells us more in today’s paper:

As its technology companies soar to the outsourcing skies, India is bumping up against an improbable challenge. In a country once regarded as a bottomless well of low-cost, ready-to-work, English-speaking engineers, a shortage looms.

Here in San Francisco, we like to recite surveys about the poor education children receive in the US.

Many students are unable to name our Vice President. Or tell us whether Saddam or Osama were responsible for 9/11. Or, even when 9/11 happened.

Those of us who are Indian often talk about this with a sense of pride. Indian education is just far superior, we think to ourselves.

Think again:

A study commissioned by a trade group, the National Association of Software and Service Companies, or Nasscom, found only one in four engineering graduates to be employable. The rest were deficient in the required technical skills, fluency in English or ability to work in a team or deliver basic oral presentations.

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Over and over again, panelists emphasized a shift in priority from cost to quality.

Vendors who have not improved quality are starting to lose big, regardless of how low their costs are.

But, I wish they would be more clear. I’ll say this once.

In 9 out of 10 cases, corporations offshore to save money.

Unless you are dealing with a severe onshore talent deficiency (i.e. Symbian development for mobile phones), this is the sole motivational factor. Don’t tell me that there is another reason that drives the move to offshore IT work.

The recent shift in priorities does not change the underlying motivation. If a company only cared about quality, it would hire talent in-house or outsource locally, where work can be managed more directly. The only exception to this is when the talent pool doesn’t yet exist domestically.