With that in mind, I perceive both an increase in: 1) outsourcing aspects of development to low-cost providers in other countries and 2) companies establishing their own offshore development office in countries with low-cost personnel.  Yes, western countries have used countries like India have been used for outsourcing and/or offshore development work in the past, but the rate (IMHO) will increase appreciably.  With the current state of the US & European economy, the pressure is on to reduce costs.  Continuing to use India as an example, if development can occur for 25% to 33% of the cost of using U.S. resources, this makes India an enticing prospect as an ideal low-cost service provide or off-shore site for development (and other engineering areas).  Imagine reducing your development costs by 66% to 75%!

However, while I believe there may be a significant push to lower costs by utilizing significantly lower-cost offshore opportunities, it is much easier said then done.  So what can we do as Configuration Management (CM) professionals to prepare ourselves? 

First, we must understand that CM plays a key role in the sharing of development work (from requirements to production) across sites.  Secondly, CM professionals must be properly educated on the global success factors that will help them make their company’s global venture successful.  The global success factors include (and not limited too): 

The Direction of the Project.  Requisites of this area include:

• Strong Project Management – project plan that clearly maps out the work tasks across the sites and must be updated regularly.  Also, the project manager must intelligently allocate & assign and dynamically manage the work

• Clear and Concise Requirements Management – requirements that are plainly articulated and estimated so that the offshore site is clear on the requirements (and therefore the work ahead). 

• Modular Product Design & Architecture – architecture that is understood in a modular way so that division of work can be allocated more effectively.   

• CM’s Role: Global Change Control – this function can effectively manage the changes to Requirements, Planning, Design, Code, and Infrastructure baselines to dynamically handle and articulate the changes to the appropriate site(s).  This becomes critical to ensure baselines at all sites are managed together and in harmony.  Your current change control process may have to be adjusted to allow for a global approach.  

• Collaboration technologies  – technologies that allow multiple sites to share information that allow for people to virtually collaborate. 

• Communication technologies – technologies that can be used at multiple sites consistently for regular and constantly communication.  This provides a channel for communicating project artifacts like requirements, project plan, etc.

• CM’s Role: Global CM Procedures & Technology – the CM procedures & technologies must help the identification and control of important communications (those that have key global project decisions and impacts to the off-shore site(s)) and provide repository technology for sharing and collaboration to improve communication.   

• Server/Workstation Environment – reliable systems that work effectively as either part of a remote environment or local environment on which other development technology is layered.   

• Standard SCM & Replication Technology – version control, build technology that has replication or sharing capability across multiple sites.  Also, the capability of branching, then merging code between sites so that exact code baselines are available at each site.

• Release Engineering – a migration process & technology of how deliverable code between sites gets migrated to production (potential at another site). 

• Telecommunication Infrastructure – a network infrastructure that has the bandwidth that can support the development effort across multiple sites.

• CM’s Role: CM Infrastructure – the CM version control, replication, build, and release technology provides the infrastructure for the identification and control of much of the software development processes.  Due consideration must be given to the approach.  For example, will you use the “Replicated Code Base at each Site”, the “Single Code Base accessed from all Sites”, or another approach? 

• Managerial Techniques – techniques that management can use to motivate people (resourcing, training, etc.) & the project (RAD, RUP, etc.) to more effective results. 

• Appropriate Awards & Recognition – appropriate incentives to motivate personnel to complete projects on-time and on-budget.

• Project Success Metrics – objective & increment measurements that allow the project manager to track the objective progress of a project on an on-going basis.  

• CM’s Role: Global CM Auditing & Reporting – the use of CM auditing & reporting as a part of the overall reporting process can help determine success of the CM processes and the integrity of the requirements, code, and infrastructure baselines.   

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