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How Offshore Outsourcing Failed Us: Page 7 of 10

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Why did our offshore software project fail?

Root Cause #1 -- Inexperienced Labor

Indian software labor is highly educated and dedicated, to be sure, but we found that workers lack the technical and people skills that come only with experience.

Our vendor's employees averaged only two years' experience. Because so much was riding on this trial project, the vendor assigned us a "senior" team: The Java and JSP developers each had four years of experience, and the tester had two years of experience. By comparison, any one of our internal Life Time software developers has more experience than the entire offshore team combined.

The on-site liaison explained that one reason offshore developers and testers are on such a junior level is because as soon as they gain experience, they're promoted to project management, account management and other nontechnical roles. Apparently, there isn't much of a promotion track for developers.