Outsourcing: The obvious and the less than obvious

Apart from the really obvious things like assessing your prospective outsourcing partner (get their client list and scan the computing press for client-related screams), and planning outsourcing there's a few less-obvious things to be tried: one really clever thing would be to outsource to two companies: one to write the requirements specifications and test the delivered system, the other to do everything in between. Then (providing the requirements were well-written - which in my experience Reuters always did well) the conflicts would be between the two companies with Reuters simply standing in the wings saying "come on, you're late". Another big improvement on Reuters' current practice would be to ensure that no code was used without an associated unit test. This failure was the direct cause of the News2Web fiasco. ■