Outsourcing and Risks.Outsourced Software Products - Essay Example

? Outsourcing and Risks Table of Contents Introduction 3 2.Issues in Software Maintenance 4 3.Remedies 6 4.Conclusion 8 5.References 8 Introduction Whether small or large, software development companies have started to embrace the practice of outsourcing the production of software in any phase of its lifecycle. Outsourcing is a process of one company seeking the services of another for carrying out its processes. Companies generally opt for outsourcing to reduce production costs (i.e. outsource to a company that would develop the software in less cost), to access skilled labor force and knowledge expertise (i.e. when the in house employees do not have the essential domain knowledge and skills required for development and teaching costs would be too high and time consuming), to achieve on-time marketing (i.e. when the company cannot meet a deadline within the available time and resources) or to level workload (i.e. when the company cannot complete all tasks as per schedule). Although the service providing organizations offer outsourcing companies with opportunities towards stability, there are some basic challenges and risk involved in the various kinds of outsourcing means. When any of these services are taken from a company within the same geographical region, it refers to as domestic or onboard outsourcing; when acquired from neighbouring countries that are aware of the cultural status of outsourcing company, it is called near-shore outsourcing and when the services are acquired from beyond national boundaries, it attributes to global or off-shore outsourcing. This document discusses a major common issue associated with these outsourcing means i.e. the maintenance of outsourced software. 2. Issues in Software Maintenance Software maintenance is usually the longest and most demanding phase in the software lifecycle model. New releases and upgrades make software outdated in no time. Therefore, software companies invest considerable resources in keeping the software in line with customers’ requirements even after the software is launched (Ahmed, 2006). For software maintenance, a company has two options; either to maintain it in-house which could induce a technical overhead or outsource the maintenance which imposes managerial overhead. Whether in-house or outsourced, when the various components of software are outsourced for development, the maintenance activities such as bug fixing, code maintenance, upgrades, hardware/software compatibility, testing, etc. becomes challenging. This is because the outsourced software could either be of fundamentally low quality or the associated documentation could be incomplete or poor. As a result of this, the contractor may have to invest extra budget in in-house maintenance of the developed product. For instance, a team would have to be arranged to reverse engineer the finished product and extract the missing details in the documentation or attain its better comprehension. In case of upgrades, its effects in the working of various components would have to be retested. Or the contractor could avoid the hassle and outsource the maintenance task by paying some extra. Both ways the objective of outsourcing which is to save cost is somewhat compromised in the maintenance (Earl, 1996). Secondly, if various components of the software are outsourced to different parties then in case any problem is found in the software product, none of the parties would take complete responsibility of the association of the problem to their developed component. And therefore, troubleshooting problems would get further complicated (Ahmed, 2006). Even besides testing, verifying and validating the software on test data, it could happen that the software shows different results when installed in the actual environment. In that case, the software maintenance crew (in-house or outsourced) would have to take over as the purchase would already have been made from the vendor. In case of poor documentation and low quality code, the maintenance team would be placed in a critical situation as the maintenance would be too complex and length a process while success of the software depends on the actual successful deployment. In case the vendor is obligated to provide ongoing maintenance to the outsourcing company on basis of some contract, the solution is not only costly but may also lead to a security breach. In order to provide such support, the vendors would have to leave hooks within the program to return to later and fix any issues and problems. These hooks mean that the vendors would gain access to the software system. This is highly undesirable when no intrusion within the production system’s network is acceptable. 3. Remedies In case of outsourced software products, reliability in the maintenance phase can be achieved only if sufficient precautionary measures are taken in advance i.e. during the development, maintenance planning and documentation phase. Whether domestic, near-shore or offshore, before beginning an outsourcing cooperation, a maintenance contract or Service Level Agreement (SLA) should be devised by the contractor and agreed upon by the party the software development is outsourced to (vendor) (Ahmed, 2006). This would ease the maintenance process and allow the contractors to monitor and measure the supplier’s performance. As per the contract, the vendor will be required to provide the product or component to the contractor while satisfying a specific professional standard of quality. The product must be required to pass specifically modeled acceptance, validation and verification test cases and it must be properly documented. The contracting company should have the right to review the received documents. In case, the deliverables received fall short in any of these areas, the necessary action agreed upon in the SLA must be exercised. By ensuring that the product coincides with the SLA, in-house maintenance can be made possible. This would overrule the need of vendor leaving behind hooks within the program to provide ongoing maintenance and support. In case the software was outsourced as components to multiple vendors, the contractor must define the roles and responsibilities of each party stating them clearly in the maintenance contract and SLAs (Ahmed, 2006). In case of occurrence of any problem, the specific party can be contacted directly for assistance. Outsourced software must never be accepted merely on basis of the testing results achieved by the vendors alone. The tests must be devised as per the deployment site by the contractor. An extra effort might be required in devising these tests, but every bit of it would pay off when the final product would work in the actual site. Furthermore, in case the entire product is outsourced offshore, it must be thoroughly assessed whether the vendor is aware of the cultural setup and processing of the contracting company as well as the software product (Krishna et. al, 2004). In case of offshore outsourcing, it is generally better to perform requirement gathering in-house. The requirement document provided to the offshore vendors must be simple and complete as the SLA shall be based on them. Secondly, it must be confirmed that there exists a compatibility of languages for better understanding and communication. And lastly it should be ensured that the offshore country supports outsourcing i.e. has internet connectivity and the required human resources, etc. (Krishna et. al, 2004). The low quality of the delivered product could be due to inadequacy in communication between the contractor and vendor (Haq et. al, 2011). Awareness of these factors helps in reducing chances of communication gaps and misunderstandings which in turn would improve the quality of delivered product limiting the maintenance complexities and costs. 4. Conclusion Most of the maintenance problems arise due to inadequate involvement of the contractor in the different phases of the outsourced software. This leads to improper communication, raises misunderstandings, and therefore leads to the production of low quality software with incomplete documentation. By agreeing with the vendor on exercising involvement in various software phases to ensure that a standardized, tested deliverable with properly reviewed documentation is being delivered, a contractor can ensure a smooth maintenance phase and save any extra maintenance costs. The document identified certain issues related to the maintenance of outsourced software development and suggested the necessary remedies to mitigate these maintenance issues. 5. References Ahmed, R. E. 2006. ‘Software maintenance outsourcing: Issues and strategies’. Computers and Electrical Engineering, Elsevier, Volume 32, pp. 449–453. Krishna, S., Sahay, S. and Walsham, G. 2004. ‘Managing Cross-Cultural Issues in Global Software Outsourcing’. Communications of the ACM, Volume 47, No. 4. Haq, S., Raza, M., Zia, A. & Khan, M.N.A. 2011. ‘Issues in Global Software Development: A Critical Review’. Journal of Software Engineering & Applications, Volume 4, pp. 590-595. Earl, MJ. 1996. ‘The risks of outsourcing IT’. MIT Sloan Management Review, Cambridge, Volume 37, Issue 3, pp. 26-. Viewed 21 November 2011 http://itom.fau.edu/sgalup/outsourcing_risks.htm Read More