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Jakob Nielsen on Offshore Usability: "To save costs, some
    companies are ou
From rssfeeds@jmason.org  Thu Sep 26 16:34:05 2002

URL: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/news/20020917.html
Date: Not supplied
Jakob Nielsen on Offshore Usability[1]: "To save costs, some companies are
outsourcing Web projects to countries with cheap labor. Unfortunately, these
countries lack strong usability traditions and their developers have limited
access -- if any -- to good usability data from the target users."
Offshore usability is a specific case of the general "offshore design" problem.
Put simply, software teams are not successful when
design or management are done in a different physical location than
programming. Once I actually had a job where I was in New York, my direct
manager was in Singapore, _his_ manager was in Hyderabad, and if I needed
any management input I had literally no choice but to go to the CEO because at
least he was awake during the same hours as I was. You can't get things done
like this. A good project team relies on hundreds of small interactions a day.
Here in the Fog Creek offices, we have 10 small conversations about FogBUGZ 3.0
development every day.
What I don't understand is people who think it's OK to move the developers ten
time zones away from their managers and expect good results. Those same people
would scream bloody murder if you told them that you were going to
send the whole _management_ team to Bangalore or Beijing.
[1] http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020916.html

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Peruvian congressman has challenged his Vice President to a duel.
    "My honor, I say my honor is at stake"
From rssfeeds@jmason.org  Thu Sep 26 16:41:37 2002