hughk's Journal: After the cowboys, try the indians...

I have been spending the last year working with a very prominent development and services company, with which my client has the misfortune to be contractually connected.

These guys have screwed up so badly, that there more communications across ten yards than the 4300 miles to India. This was probably not helped by the presence of two billable 'overhead' persons for every doer.

Unfortunately, we can't really directly manage the developers as their is no direct governance. Any issues have to be escalated up to the holy trinity before it can come down on them.

However, the developers don't help either. Most are so heavily siloed that it is impossible to get things fixed unless the right person is in. Not very sustainable and in the end, a poor strategy because it increases time to enhance or repair.

Their greatest sin is poor quality. The developers claim they are being blamed for channged business requirements. However the business at no point "required" exceptions, but we get plenty of those for free. It is the repairing of them that costs.

The issues with the quality have led to extremely late delivery and a massive downturn with our relationship with the business. We have had to excise defect ridden functionality to the point where the app is barely usable.

This has gone so badly that I'm now in India talking to vendors. Could they screw up as badly? After dealing with the GM of systems development and support, well "things can only get better"!