12 Steps to Beat Your Service-Provider Addiction 71
eastbayted writes "It starts off simply enough: Your company signs on an outside firm to help you finish an important app dev project on deadline. But then they convince you they can be of service in getting other work done at your company, and you agree. Before you know it, your organization has become far too dependent on this team of outsiders on whom you're wasting a ton of money and perhaps not getting much in the way of a return. InfoWorld has devised a 12-step program 'that can help wean you off unhealthy dependencies on service providers, consultants, and outsourcers — without having to check into the Betty Ford Clinic or make a tearful confession on Oprah.'"
Printer (and reader) friendly: (Score:5, Informative)
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On a personal note. I can do without the Betty Ford clinic but damnd if I'm going to give up my moment in the sun with Oprah.
Use strategic open sourcing (Score:2, Insightful)
For many larger organisations, a straight-forward way to create a competitive market for services is to either open-source major systems, use existing open source applications (which is still difficult), or mandate that any new custom software must be open sourced.
For g
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Re:Use strategic open sourcing (Score:4, Insightful)
What matters is splitting projects and applications into small understandable modules which well defined and well documented API and make them operate on well defined data flows which are as open and easy to understand as possible.
From there on a module can be thrown out, replaced and modified at will at any particular moment with minimal fuss. Similarly, any vendor which has become too pushy can be shown the door and replaced with an alternative one.
Further onto this the first person to manage "easy" object persistence (like the Open Source Prevayler) should be quartered, skinned, boiled and the remains hanged at down. It is essential for the long term health of a module for it to store the data in a format that is understandable and accessible by third parties and not just itself. Prevayler (and the similar commercial frameworks) break this to bits. In fact it is possibly the best example for an Open Source lock-in tool I can think of.
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What would you prefer? That your organisation ran on a closed-source product with all these problems, or an open source one with the same problems? There is a huge difference, because:
1. The simple act of publishing software as open source (especially if it starts like that) involves a wider audience which raises q
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I could have consultants make code that is open sourced but I STILL have to train up my own staff (who is busy maintaining servers, help desk, other applications, etc) to be familiar. You get locke
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Like most things, incompetence is to blame. (Score:4, Insightful)
This comes through incompetence - it is too easy to hire outside help, and not setup an exit strategy (you listening, bush and blair?), when you don't understand the problem and won't ask for help. It is easier to get outside help than realise what you will need in the long term, and start hiring people. Oh, but when you need a new secretary, that gets done within the week.
Too many non-IT (and I am sure this happens in other departments) people are put in to manage IT infrastructure, and because they have in the past, feel the need to be making the important decisions. This is what happens.
And hire someone like IBM, and you will never get rid of them.
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If people could do it themselves, they would (Score:5, Insightful)
Step 5. Seek out expertise. Yes, that's a good reason to bring in external people. You don't have the skills in house and it's not cost/time effective to hire or train your own staff.
Step 8. Hire knowledge you need. Sounds pretty much like step 5 to me.
As for step 12: Give yourself over to a higher power -- your employees.
So, who's going to do their jobs while they "work side by side with the consultants"? Oh, I know. let's get more consultants in.
This article looks like it was written by the very people you're trying to get rid of. They can give you pretty prsentations and high-level bullet points. However, when you look under the covers at the substance. it all disappears.
Use consultants when you have an extraordinary need, if you really have to.
Better to have them do the mundane stuff, and train you own people to do the cutting edge, interesting, high-value work....... Assuming they're good enough.
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Re:If people could do it themselves, they would (Score:4, Insightful)
In general organisations that have trouble getting rid of consultants are really really bad.
I have been working on a six month project for two years now and we (as the consultants) are trying to find an acceptable exit strategy for ourselves. But due to staff turnover and limitations of our scope to design (XP/Win2003 infrastructure implementation) work only , we cannot get them over the edge in terms of operations procedures so that they can run with the deployment to 1000 sites.
It is frustrating because we know we don't need to be there and we are losing good personnel because they are not being challenged as they continually need to hand hold the existing and new company staff.
Why companies DO outsource (Score:2)
One thing I don't see mentioned in the comments so far is mention of a very popular reason that companies decide to outsource. It's related to Step 5: seek expertise. Companies outsource because they do not want to be in the IT business! It may make a lot of sense to outsource some or all of IT so that you can focus on the bottom-line: your product or service. You can treat IT like a utility. How many companies run their own power pl
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Understand why (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Understand why (Score:5, Interesting)
I used to work for a company that was taken over by an asset stripping industrial conglomerate, to make sure they got the best return for their money they sent in consultants for every department. Sadly, in the engineering department we used lots of fancy computers running non-industry standard programs. So, when the consultant came to look he had no idea what the system actually was doing or what it was capable of. His recommendation was to shift to industry standards, including AutoCad, which the company did despite my best efforts. The company lost its competitive edge as soon as the standard software was put in. I had 2 of the existing suppliers (one the main application provider, the other the hardware/os support company) they both submitted very similar suggestions for the way forward. The application provider, obviously, had a vested interest. The support company had no vested interest as they expected to continue to provide support regardless of the direction chosen.
I presented my own findings and pointed out several flaws in the consultants report, I also presented the reports from the 2 other companies. The only thing I was asked about the reports was who had authorised the spend on the additional reports and when I said they had been provided for no charge, I was told the company had spent thousands on the consultant and for that reason would be going ahead with his suggestions. I resigned at that point.
In case you are interested, the consultants suggestions were implimented in full at great cost and since the old systems were decommissioned the productivity of the company has dropped, which has had the obvious outcome of reducing it in size to about 10% the size it was when I left.
On a plus note, the consultant made me move into a much more enjoyable and profitable job.
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This is one of the most common reasons I have heard for going ahead with a consultants recommendations. "if we don't, the money's been wasted".
Never mind that the consultant cost (maybe) 5 grand, and the recommendations cost five hundred to implement. One of the perverse outcomes is that the more your consultant charges, the more likely their recommendations are to be accepted.
Wor
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Major projects are often started by one person who got this job by leaving the last one just before his identical project came to fruition and as this project is about to come to fruition he has found another higher paid job to do exactly thing on.
These people often say what (they think) is needed, it usually includes lots of buzz words, and charge a fortune to handle it all only to run away before completion when it becomes apparent it wont
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The consulting trap (Score:2)
Why do companies hire consultants? Most of the time, it's because they don't have the skills in house to develop a project. Getting a consultancy firm in is often easier and quicker than trying to hire all the developers you need. Also, it's easier to adapt the number of consultants than to manage your own IT staff when the team size varies.
On the other hand, as long as the consultants are there, the company does not acquire the skills needed to take over the project. Shuffling around consultants is stil
Oprah = Good time (Score:2, Funny)
But on a positive note, a trip to Oprah could result in an iPod, a digital camera, or a sighting of a crazed Tom Cruise.
Dr. Phil on the otherhand is just an ass.
I'm one such! (Score:2)
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In one example, the statement remains the same each month, except for an 8 line message that will say that "It's summer - snakes are out...". Our customer pays us (who pay our supplier) for a programming change. I recommended that the message be recorded in a text file, so tha
Hey!! (Score:3, Interesting)
Incidentally I would think a large percentage of slashdot readers are in outsourcing.
Depends (Re:Hey!!) (Score:2)
For example, Progressive Enterprises (which is now owned by Woolworths Australia) outsource their employee payment processing to a company, rather than having a dedicated staff for the job, they have a fixed cost with the company who provi
EDS & CSC are gonna LOVE this /. article (not) (Score:2, Interesting)
but there are more students studying IT, hopefully to take jobs
in SA Gov't, to help position itself in an EDS-free place, "any
day now"...
A EDS-story has been cirulating in recent years:
The Adelaide Crows (Aussie Footy Team) needed a web site, &
EDS (reportedly) won the contract, after submitting a bid
which estimated it would take 4+ weeks and cost Au$ 32,000.
In fact, the project took just 2 weeks... Too bad
Re:EDS & CSC are gonna LOVE this /. article (n (Score:2, Interesting)
EDS has a lot of "grease" to offer, or so we suppose...
It may not even be like that. Consider your average consumer, who is boldly manipulated by any marketing agency who can buy air time. Now consider what happens when you take the top people from that agency and put them in the room with an executive. It's like a pack of dogs on fresh meat.
A friend of a friend mine worked for a few years hot-shot company t
Re:EDS & CSC are gonna LOVE this /. article (n (Score:1)
Of course you can. Just depends on the government position. For instance, the guy that delegated his job to review the contracts to the lower level bureaucrats who ended up not doing the job well.
Outsourcing Done Wrong.......Sigh (Score:5, Interesting)
This part of the article I always worry about:
You must roll out a major enterprise app on a tight deadline and you don't have the bodies to pull it off. So you borrow some money from next year's budget and hire a global services firm to help.
This never works - ever. Managers of IT projects who don't know much about IT seem to have this incredibly bizarre idea that IT people, programmers and analysts are all interchangeable. You can drop someone from a project two months away from the deadline, bring someone else in who knows nothing about what's going on and the new person will instantly hit the ground running. They also do it again, and again, and again and again. They also equate getting bodies on the project directly with getting it done faster. If something is late and obviously a complete mess it instantly becomes a resource problem. Not that I like calling 'people' 'resources'.
I've seen it time and again. Company gets an outsourcing company and consultants in to develop a system because they don't have the people or the expertise. Said company has no real idea what the requirements are in terms that they can get over to the consultants, they have no real idea exactly what they want these consultants to do and the whole thing becomes a mess with the outsourcing company, quite rightly, creaming off whatever money they can because of the ignorance and lack of clarity from the main company. The company then starts to bitch and whine about the 'leech' outsourcer and the relationship deteriorates. Rinse and repeat the process for the next outsourcing company.
The article can be summed up thus. Fire the useless people in your company and employ good people who can define requirements well, and consequently, can lay it on the line to outside consultants exactly what they want. The consultants will then actually be much happier, because they will know what it is they've got to do - something they probably haven't had much of
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This never works - ever.
I disagree. I've seen it work. The reason it hardly ever works is because (a) managers wait too long before adding staff or (b) they don't add enough staff.
If you have a project that's running behind schedule and you want to add people to catch up, you first have to realize that the new people will be a huge drain on your existing staff's time. Very high-quality people will be less of a drain, and they'll get up to speed faster, but they'll also cost more, generally. Even th
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thus proving the ultimate point of Brook's Law: Adding developers to a late software project will only make it later
Depends on your definition of "late". If your definition of late is calendar-based, we succeeded. If it's budget-based, we failed. In our case, the execs cared about the calendar. I mentioned at the beginning of my post that you shouldn't try this if the budget is a concern, because the only way to skirt Brooks' law is by spending lots and lots of money.
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This is an example of, as a coworker who had just bailed, once told me "M
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Managers of IT projects who don't know much about IT seem to have this incredibly bizarre idea that IT people, programmers and analysts are all interchangeable. You can drop someone from a project two months away from the deadline, bring someone else in who knows nothing about what's going on and the new person will instantly hit the ground running. They also do it again, and again, and again and again. They also equate getting bodies on the project directly with getting it done faster. If something is lat
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From the consultant's side of things (Score:5, Insightful)
1. Never ending project. This one usually seems pretty straight forward and then management keeps extending. When those extensions are because they see the value of me doing more, that's fine. But more often than not, it's because they can't get their own staff to pick up the new challenge. Typically that's a result of under staffing.
2. Scope creep. Essentially I'm brought in for something small, and groups are constantly adding on more tasks. When this is combined with the "never ending project" above, I basically become entrenched. I don't mind if it's interesting work, but all too often, after the first few months, I'm doing things that won't apply to any other customer and have stop growing. When I'm on a project like this for 3 times the original duration, I tend to get antsy and weight the cost to the relationship of not signing the next contract to extend. If the work stays interesting, I'm happy to be paid consulting rates for full time employment.
3. The right way. Not many people successfully do this. The thing these customers have had in common is that the staff wasn't overworked and were truly interesting in learning what I was doing and taking over. Also, the work I'm doing typically involves drawing from experience at my previous clients and vendor training. Any extensions are usually to do something above and beyond the original contract, and not to maintain what I've developed.
It's not a bad thing to be at a customer forever if you are always doing something new and doing it faster and therefore cheaper than their internal staff could have done. It's bad when they keep you there to maintain their environment, and it's bad for both the customer and for the consultant, the good consultants at least.
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Yep. I've been doing consulting and contract work for nearly a decade, and it's in everybody's interest for me to move on regularly. Once you get used to it, the nice part is being able
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government consulting (Score:1, Informative)
They are under pressure to cut staff and currently most non-DOD (in the US) organizations are feeling a serious crunch. Once they hire someone, it is near to impossible to fire them, hence they acrue a large amount of dead wood. Their hiring process takes months and sometimes years. This is compounded by budget cycles, hiring restrictions, quotas, background checks, and clearances.
For many of these organizations, it is MUCH easier and faster to get a "beltway bandit" to
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Oregon Department of Transportation is begining to resemble that remark. Luckily we're trying not to in IT- and failing greatly, we had a 26% turnover when you include the consultants, for 2005.
Having said that- ODOT came under fire in the 1990s as the largest state agency. It's people who don't want to pay taxes who are driving this boondoggle, under the assumption th
Service Provider Addiction? (Score:2)
I can't be the only one who had to read the story and say "oooooooh".
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Same old Same old (Score:1)
I like the turn of phrase "far too dependant" coupled with "wasting a ton of ...". Perhaps its just me but if you are dependant on something how can you be wasting something else on it? Dependant means you MUST have it, therefore you can't waste anything else to get it. Sort of like wasting time breathing air with oxygen in it.
Companies use consultants for a variety of purposes:
Overheard in our consultants' dev meeting (Score:1)
The Author's Never Met Wally (Score:1)
FTFA: So instead of hiring a contract programmer, you could use Primavera for Services to identify in-house developers who haven't got a lot on their plates, Seka says. In that way, you could gradually transfer work from an outside source to an inside one, without abruptly ending the relationship with your outsourcer.
Except that "in-house developers who haven't got a lot on their plates" are also generally the ones who are unmotivated, lazy, and much prefer to hide in the cracks while collecting their pa
Four words... (Score:2)
Are there really companies out there who bring in consultants and don't write formal requirements (INCLUDING training your staff to take BACK the project at the end) and don't rack that they're getting what the hell they paid for?
Personally I don't think these places need a 12-step plan to save them, they need to die off naturally and let those who know how to manage their resources get the business.
Something stinks of "free Gov'mint money" in this article... defense co