Global software engineering, implying both internal and outsourced development, is a fast-growing scenario within industry; the growth rates in some sectors are more than 20% per year. However, half of all offshoring activities are cancelled within the first 2 years, at tremendous unanticipated cost to the organization. This book will provide a more balanced framework for planning global development, covering topics such as managing people in distributed sites, managing a project across locations, mitigating the risk of offshoring, processes for global development, practical outsourcing guidelines, collaboration, and communication. Drawing on the author’s vast experience, it shares best practices and survival strategies from projects of various types and sizes that involve different continents and diverse cultures.
Book Details:
- Author: Christof Ebert
- ISBN: 9780470636190
- Year Published: 2012
- Pages: 368
- BISAC: BUS102000, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS/Outsourcing
About the Book and Topic:
Global software engineering, implying both internal and outsourced development, is a fast-growing scenario within industry; the growth rates in some sectors are more than 20% per year. However, half of all offshoring activities are cancelled within the first 2 years, at tremendous unanticipated cost to the organization. This book will provide a more balanced framework for planning global development, covering topics such as managing people in distributed sites, managing a project across locations, mitigating the risk of offshoring, processes for global development, practical outsourcing guidelines, collaboration, and communication. Drawing on the author’s vast experience, it shares best practices and survival strategies from projects of various types and sizes that involve different continents and diverse cultures.
Engineering software by means of cooperation across international borders and even from city to city can sometimes save costs, but it also involves many potentially costly risks beyond the simple cost of labor. Working in a geographically dispersed project means overhead for planning and managing people, language and cultural barriers, and tensions between engineers afraid of losing their jobs and training their much cheaper counterparts.
Is not strictly about “outsourcing,” which doesn’t have a great reputation at present, but rather about being successful in any kind of development where the personnel is geographically distributed. Unique approach: treats outsourcing as a complex “ecosystem.” Contains tons of practical hints and concrete “how to do it better” advice. Supported by concrete examples/case studies/perspectives from contributors well-known in the industry and sample questions/scenarios for students, both in the text and online. Geniunely international scope of content, considerations, and contributing offers.
About the Author
Christof Ebert, Ph.D., is managing director and partner at Vector Consulting Services. He is helping clients worldwide to improve technical product development and to manage organizational changes. Prior to working at Vector, he held engineering and management positions for fifteen years in telecommunication, IT, and transportation. As a business consultant, author of several books, lecturer at the University of Stuttgart, and public speaker, he has influenced numerous companies with his results-driven contributions. A senior member and distinguished visitor of IEEE, he authored several books including his most recent book Software Measurement published by Springer in 2007. Dr. Ebert serves on editorial boards of several scientific journals, is as a frequent keynote speaker, teaches at the University of Stuttgart, and is an SEI authorized CMMI Instructor. He chairs the steering board of the IEEE Int. Conf. on Global Software Engineering.