outsourced it project to india

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IBCL-PMI - Project Management & Outsourcing Seminar use only

Outsourced IT project to IndiaLessons learned from a customer point of view

Alain MAQUET, PMP

Program Manager

Luxembourg – Wednesday, 9th February 2011

© 2011 Threon | All rights reservedwww.threon.com


Agenda

The project actors Project objectives and context Why outsourcing to India and to ITC Infotech Global assessment of the project

Scope / Time / Cost / Quality balance Quality of deliverables

• Technical • Functional & non-functional

Respect of timeframe Communications

Lessons learned Personal conclusions … in 25 minutes



Actors

Champ Cargosystems (Luxembourg)– CCS is the market leader in providing integrated software solutions

to air cargo carriers …– Headquartered in Luxembourg and with offices in London, Zurich

and Atlanta

ITC Infotech (Bangalore - India / London)– ITC Infotech, a global IT services company, is a fully-owned

subsidiary of ITC Limited, the US$ 6 billion diversified conglomerate.

– Headquartered in Bangalore, India, with subsidiaries in UK and USA

Launch customer of the application (Luxembourg) not named

Independent project manager (Luxembourg) Alain Maquet 3



Project objectives Business : Complete Champ’s solutions portfolio

Technical :Deliver to Champ “Weight & Balance Application R1.0”

• In time and budget• Complete application code• Online documentation• Stand alone and server based deployments

Positioning : The application must be on a top list versus competition

• Fully graphical• Easy to use (drag and drop)• Fully integrated with Cargo IMP messaging

Project objectives & Context…

4



Project objectives & Context…

Context (April 2008) Legacy solution for 747-400 on Excel 2003 not to be migrated

• While workstations are being migrated to new Excel 2007 Previous experience with outsourcing development to India

• Challenged New Boeing 747-8F announced for Sept. 2009

• Handbook with structural details not published by Boeing

5



Why ITC Infotech

… why would you outsource to India ?

6



Why ITC Infotech

Technical qualifications A core team of highly qualified

people

Expertise in the industry (Transportation / Air cargo) Team leaders have recognized experience within air cargo industry

Capacity to respond quickly to “any” need of resource The 25 to 40 people of the team have 1800+ colleagues

Quality certification ISO 900x & CMMI level 5 processes

Price Fixed price agreement and commitment from very early in the

negotiation 7



Global assessment of the project

Scope / Time / Cost / Quality balance SRS, HLD, LLD required extended period Scope « understood » was delivered on time and with the required

technical quality Complete « expected » scope delivered during warranty period

within agreed delay and technical quality

Cost : fixed price + 3.5% change requests

8




Quality of deliverables Technical

• Source code : well documented, clean, following good standards…• Documentation : complete

Functional and non functional• All functions in SRS have been delivered… after re-alignment of scope

understanding (detected in acceptance)• But only basic behaviors have been considered … following exactly the

scenarios described in SRS (no projection to misleading users)• Screen ergonomy had to be reviewed locally (with launch customer)

9




Respect of timeframe No flexibility on schedule… until Boeing delays announcement Timeframe always respected Timeframe vs. risks

10




Communications British English, Indian English, Luxemburgish English….

• Not always easy to understand each other• Written documents were the “safer” approach … but could never be as

complete as required for a perfect adaptation to the project Body language misunderstanding Time zones’ differences left only a few hours for common

free slots… but is very convenientfor being productive !

Demultiplication of security policies makes file / code exchangedifficult

11



Lessons learned

Communication is key for local project…… and is vital to outsourced project Every single detail cannot be written and communication

channels must be defined to allow controlled information flows

Consider partial re-location of teams Adapt travel budget Share common repository from

the beginning of the project

Fixed price contract aretoo restrictive towardscope adaptations

12



Personal conclusions

Very confident to consider again outsourcing to India for any new medium / large size software development

Will take time at the beginning to define / set-up communication channels and communications’ systems

Will have different approaches between functional and non-functional requirements… for the later one : will consider re-location

Really enjoyed the project

13

Your executive Partner in achievingProject Management Excellence

www.threon.com


Thank you

…and special thanks to Champ Cargosystems

[email protected]

outsourced it project to india

Documents

outsourcing development

achievingproject management

itc infotechglobal assessment

india challengednew

application luxembourgnot

air cargo carriers

weight balance application

air cargo industry capacity