Excerpt from Chapter 1: Deciding to Outsource

Whenever you see a successful business, someone once made a courageous decision. - Peter Drucker

If you are familiar with Geoffrey Moore’s book Crossing the Chasm, a veritable bible for marketing at startups in Silicon Valley, you will recognize the concepts of “early adopters” and “innovators.” These individuals are the target market for products from early-stage and largely untested startup companies.

Why do early adopters buy and adopt a new software product? It is the thrill of trying something completely new with the hope of being rewarded with a significant benefit before competitors even realize things have changed.

Which side of the chasm are you on with outsourcing? Are you one of those crazy early adopters who tried outsourcing years ago, before it became a trend? Or are you one of the “early majority” who realize that it is safe to try outsourcing now that the early adopters have pioneered the way?

Outsourcing is the key to five of six software development strategies you can employ. In this chapter we look at several situations where outsourcing makes good sense, and we uncover the reasons why. Then we identify 17 criteria that you can use to decide which strategy is best for your own situation. These are delivered as part of a decision matrix that will quickly combine your scores indicating the importance of each criterion and then will calculate the totals for each outsourcing strategy.

Suppose the results show that you should use one of the outsourcing strategies for outsourcing your software development. The next question to consider is, “Are you ready?” For the answer, you can take the online Outsourcing Readiness Test, described in more detail in Appendix B. The 20 questions on the test give you a good idea of your strengths and weaknesses when it comes to outsourcing and where you will need help to improve your chances of success.

Finally, the end of this chapter includes a description of the kinds of help available for your outsourcing decisions. A range of consultants and experts are available to help guide you through the outsourcing process.